When Hong Scott Joplin comes along, let me know

“China made 379,746 pianos last year, 77 per cent of global output, almost all of it for domestic sale. Multiply that by ten for second-hand sales and you are still nowhere near the popular estimate that 60 million Chinese children are currently playing the piano, equivalent to the entire population of the United Kingdom sitting down every evening and practising scales for two hours.”

(When the best of those 60 million children audition for Western symphony orchestras, will Caucasian musicians demand job protection?)

“Everywhere I go, the talk is of piano playing. Executives in Shanghai tell me they have to rush home to supervise practice. With a one-child policy in force, mothers cannot afford to let their son or daughter fall behind. On a bullet train to Huangzhou, I meet a five-year-old Manchurian boy who is on his way to an international piano contest. A young woman in music administration tells me that, by taking up the piano as a child, she had fulfilled a parental frustration. 'Both wanted to study music but in those times it was not possible,' she confides.”

http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/5218/full

At www.maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com