A long time ago, in a state far, far away...

A little boy named Michael sat at his mother’s piano and picked out the delightful little March from The Nutcracker ballet. A week later his mother gifted him with piano lessons so he’d learn to play something else.

A couple of years later, Michael was in second grade. He read a lot and got good grades, but wasn’t the social wizard he would like to have been. He was, in a word, nerdy. He was also playing the piano. A lot. This was 1977, the year Star Wars came out. Michael decided he wanted to learn the whole score. None of the music was in print, so he worked it out the hard way, just like he’d done with the Nutcracker March.

Mom was tolerant.

There was a school talent show that year. Michael was “volunteered” (by Mom) to participate, so he figured there was only one thing he could play that wouldn’t add to his nerdy image. He got up in front of his entire second grade class and banged out a bunch of Star Wars music.

Wouldn’t you know it? Michael was Cool For A Day.

Several years later, Michael was still taking piano lessons, and helping out with his High School theater program (wall-to-wall nerds - he was in Heaven). The director also ran a statewide Children’s Theater program. As soon as Michael saw that, he was hooked. He worked with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of children over twelve happy years. Along the way he earned a degree in music composition, performed in far-away lands, and began teaching piano himself.

Mr. Michael eventually found in Kindermusik a way to bring all his varied passions under one umbrella (he had also been a magician, and a playwright, and a singer, and a choir director), and to wrap them all up in one big, beautiful present to give to the little ones he loves so much.

Of course, he’ll still play all that Star Wars music at the drop of a hat if you ask him to.

(For Mr. Michael’s non-whimsical bio, click here.)

Once Upon A Time... a little girl was born in the far-off kingdom of California. She was beautiful and good, and she loved to sing with her mama. She was named Elizabeth, which means “God’s Truth.”

As she grew, she played with rainbows and danced with fairies. She loved to frolic. In fact, she once whirled a grocery bag containing a dozen eggs over her head as she and her mama walked home from the store, because she just... couldn’t... stop... frolicking...

She sang a happy little song as she helped her mama clean up the mess.

She was still beautiful and good. Elizabeth found, as she became a young woman, that she wanted to help other children learn to frolic. So she went to the land of Ecuador to teach songs and dances to children who had no mamas or papas of their own. And she travelled to the far, far land of China and used songs to teach her own language to children who did not speak it.

One day, she said good-bye to her mama and went off to the Great University called Columbia to learn how to teach wonderful things to even more children. Yet she knew that at heart she still loved to frolic. And so Miss Elizabeth also became a Kindermusik teacher.

She is still beautiful and good. And she still loves to frolic.

(For Miss Elizabeth’s non-whimsical bio, click here.)

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