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Hi. My name's Julie Becker and I'm going to be teaching you all the different things you
need to get started on the violin.
So I started playing the violin when I was three and half. I come from a family of musicians.
My grandfather was a fiddle player. He never quite perfected the violin. And my grandmother
was actually a concert pianist and she used to play live on the radio once a week. Hearing
her play Chopin is really out of this world. I believe I started playing the violin because
my mother saw me dancing a lot to music.
The first piece I played was Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I was on Twinkle Twinkle Little
Star for two years. My mom thought we should just give up and quit but then my teacher
said 'no, I think there's something to this.' So I've played at Carnegie Hall a bunch of
times actually. A couple of times with my quartet called Motýl Chamber Ensemble. And
I've also performed there with Itzhak Perlman playing with the Perlman music program, playing
the Mendelssohn octet.
As I was growing up, I was eleven years old and I won a concerto competition and then
I went to Juilliard pre-college. Studied with Sally Thomas. After that, I went to the University
of Michigan where I studied with Paul Cantor and then did my Masters at Manhattan School
of Music.
Now, currently, I teach still at the Manhattan School of Music as I have been for quite some
time. I have some students who I started when they were three and a half and are now winning
concerto competitions and going off to do great things. And it's very rewarding to be
a violin teacher and see that happen.
I love playing the violin because of its sound. It is such a beautiful, beautiful sound. I
feel it most closely, it's the instrument that most closely resembles the voice and
of course the voice is the most beautiful, you know, natural sound that comes from within.
But I feel like the violin has some soaring, you know, abilities to it.
And that's how it all began.