David: Jenny, how long have you been working here?
Jenny: I've been working here for around four months. David: Do you enjoy working among all these beautiful instruments?
Jenny: Yeah, of course.
David: What instruments do you play? I was told that everyone here has to play at least one instrument. What do you play, and what is your best instrument?
Jenny: I play piano and clarinet, and my best instrument is piano.
David: Very good. How long have you been playing piano?
Jenny: I think I've been playing around ten years. David: Ten years. When did you start playing, and was playing something you wanted to do as a child, or did your parents say, "You must play piano"? Jenny: I think I started playing at around age six, and I just think playing piano is something that girls should do, or something like that, so I started playing.
David: Interesting. So you've been working here-what kind of clientele come in here? You get-I've been told a lot of Asian people come in here, and they look for certain kinds of instruments. What kinds of questions do people ask when they come in here?
Jenny: Usually, the first thing they'll ask me is, "Do you speak Mandarin or Cantonese?" so they get somebody who can help them. My job is actually the school administrator, so most times I deal with the parents who are coming in to join our program, our different instruments program, or sometimes I do help with selling different instruments or books. So they're coming to look for certain books or asking about some instrument, and they have some help. David: Interesting. What do they generally want to play? When you talk to girls your age, when they come in here looking for something, are they looking for-what are the instruments that they're most interested in playing, or continue playing? Jenny: I think the girls, most of them will be piano. So they'll be looking for popular piano books, like something from the Britney Spears or whatever, that their age, they heard it, music they heard, so they want something that guides them to play that kind of music. David: What do their parents say? Of course, they want to play Chopin, they want to play Franz Lizst. Do their parents say, "No, no, no, no, no, not Britney Spears, that's a bad girl. Play Franz Lizst." Is there ever a confrontation like that?
Jenny: I haven't heard of such confrontation; however, there are such parents who actually would like the girls to play piano more than guitar, so they're thinking like piano is more the elegant, classical type that a girl should play, rather than a guitar. David: And what about the boys? The boys come in here, say fourteen, fifteen-what do they normally play at the beginning? Say they come from China, Taiwan, someplace like that, or Japan. They're brought up on what? Playing piano?
Jenny: I think most of them will be piano or violin, but there are also a lot playing guitar, too.
David: So when they come here, and they're trained on piano and violin, do some of them say, "I don't want to play piano anymore. I don't want to play violin anymore. I want to be a rock guitar player"? Does that happen occasionally?
Jenny: Not that I've encountered, because I think they are brought up with the thought that they should play the piano or violin, so they don't have that kind of rebelling. David: What are the questions that are asked most often from here? I mean, I come in here looking for guitar picks and looking for amplifiers, and I play the guitars here. What, generally speaking, do people mostly come in here to speak to you about?
Jenny: Usually for books. They are looking for more of the Asian books or some classical books. Not too much about instruments, but if in the December time, then probably some of them come in to ask for a clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, that kind of thing. They don't know too much about it, but it's just they, "Oh, my kid's teacher said they have to play this, so I'm coming in here to rent one," or something like that. David: Are you also a teacher here?
Jenny: I'm not myself a teacher here. I'm just a coordinator-adminstrator, you know, arranging the time for a teacher we have here, and students. David: Have you taught piano before?
Jenny: I have myself before, but not too often.
David: Is it easy to teach piano? Do people generally pick up on it quick, or do some get frustrated and not want to touch it again?
Jenny: Yeah, some do, actually depending on the system you're going to offer them, because I heard that some of them learn from one of the systems called the Suzuki one, which-well, some parents like it, but I don't. Personally, I don't really recommend it, because it's more of the, kind of, memorization, rather than learning it from, you know, the enjoyment of it. So, we at Tom Lee do not offer such a program. We offer something called the Yamaha program, which is-in Vancouver we are the only dealer of that Yamaha program from Japan, which actually encourages students to learn music in a more fun and interesting way, rather than just memorization.
David: That is an excellent, excellent approach to it, because when I was teaching guitar, I realized that you need to teach them the fundamentals, but you also need to leave them happy, so when they walk out of a lesson, they can play something, and it makes them smile. What was the name of that system you said?
Jenny: Yamaha Music Program. It's designed for age two to ten-year-old children, because when they're young, they might have difficulty, you know, just doing private lessons one-on-one, because they get bored. They're sitting here half an hour, one hour, you're playing the same song over and over and over again. Or even not songs, just scales, over and over again. They will kind of, you know, reject it after a while. So the program we promote is a group class, usually basically keyboard, where there are around ten students in each class, where a classroom can enjoy the music and enjoy playing the keyboard, using different instrument and, you know, doing ensembles. Yearly we have concerts; Christmas concerts, spring concerts, and we have also, you know, different-even boys' concerts of guitar, piano. You know, some days we have-like December 12, we have the Christmas concert-range from 10:30 to 6:30, we have over five hundred students joining in to perform.
David: Where will this concert be? I'm very curious. Jenny: The concert will be in our downtown location on Granville.
David: What is your favorite instrument, and what song are you currently working on? What song do you love to play?
Jenny: Well, of course, my favorite instrument, as I mentioned, is the piano, and I'm currently working on nothing special, but there's one song I really like, it's the "Canon in D," by Pachelbel. David: Beautiful, beautiful, and very melancholy song as well.
Jenny: That's right. David: Well, thank you very much for talking with me, Jen.
Jenny: You're welcome. Thank you.
