Liz Lee- Full Article

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Some of my earliest and most powerful memories are tied to the piano. At 11, I entered my first competition—the Illinois Music Competition in Chicago—to play Beethoven’s Sonatina in G. For weeks, I practiced the piece over and over, chasing perfection and battling the frustration of every mistake. When the day finally came, I was filled with nerves. Then the winners were announced, and everything seemed to stop. My mom pressed my face so hard into her chest that I thought I might break my nose, but I did not care. I had won. Even now, I can return to thewonder of that moment. But my competitive piano years did not last much longer. Nerves and anxiety began to overwhelm the joy of playing, culminating in the terror of auditioning for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Youth division—an experience that did not end nearly as happily as that first competition. I stepped away from competitions, then slowly from the piano itself, until that part of me felt like a distant memory. Years later, at Whittier College, I needed an elective and chose a piano course taught by the Artist in Residence. One day, he played a Chopin mazurka, and in an instant I was transported back to my childhood and to the classical music I had loved so deeply. It took everything in me not to cry. The joy was overwhelming, but so was the recognition: this music was still part of me. Classical music has always felt like a second skin, like coming home. And yet I had kept it at a distance, perhaps because I had pushed it away so young and carried a guilt I never quite understood.