Julius Schmidt writes:

“I was improvising on the piano as far back as my memories go, and so my mother began sending me to piano lessons when I was three years old. I started learning the violin at seven, and played violin and viola in several different orchestras in my youth. I began taking clarinet lessons when I was ten, playing the Mozart Concerto in a local competition by age thirteen, and played in several bands and also an orchestra as a teenager. Since nineteen, though, all of my energy has gone into piano and composition.

I began writing down compositions (I found it very hard, because I was used to improvising, and it required a completely different way of writing music) when I was sixteen, and spent many years learning the craft. My writing gets better as compositions are written, and I hope it always will. I have had several pieces performed (quite sporadically), and some of them were prepared into wave files using a computer to play them (I think they sound horrid this way, yet many people have begged me for copies of the CDs, and I know quite a few people who listen to it all the time).

I have a CD of improvisations that was recorded in 2006 (home variety using a Fostex MR-8) that has had much more popularity than I ever thought it would, and copies are currently in circulation (privately, not commercially) in th USA, England, Scotland, South Africa, and other places.”