Summary: A lot of powerful and successful people say their music backgrounds and experiences are directly related to their professional achievements. That’s according to Joanne Lipman, in her New York Times piece “Is Music the Key to Success?” Lipman is a former editor at The Wall Street Journal and Condé Nast Portfolio, and she’s the co-author of a new book, Strings Attached: One Tough Teacher and the Gift of Great Expectations. The book tells the story of her own childhood music teacher, who inspired her and countless others. Lipman says that while writing the book, she kept running across "high-profile people who had these secret stealth lives as musicians." "The question I asked all these people - Paul Allen, the founder of Microsoft, and Woody Allen, and James Wolfensohn... who was president of the World Bank and plays the cello - is, 'What is the connection [between music and success] or even is there a connection?' And one of the things Alan Greenspan said was, 'As a statistician I can tell you it is not a coincidence.'" Tell us about your music teachers of past and present. Leave a comment below -- or leave us a voicemail at 866 939 1612.
