A few weeks ago, I pulled out one of my old piano scores:

”The Italian Concerto” by J.S. Bach

It's a piece I played for my Eastman audition, a piece I knew almost backward and forward at the time. I've come back to it at various points in my career when I want to reconnect to the art or remember why I started.

I was thumbing through the pages one night after dinner, admiring all the markings my teacher added into the score—a different colored pen for every lesson. I stumbled through the first reading, my fingers stiff, struggling to remember how the notes go.

But then, something surprising happened.