Music expresses our souls. Music is a way of knowing the world. When we sing, our hearts remember each other. Music is indeed a universal language. We sometimes overlook the place of music in our lives and think of it as something outside of ourselves and extracurricular rather than one of the building blocks in the foundation of life skills.

During the first six years of children’s lives, they experience a rapid phase of development in their various intelligences. Howard Gardner, a Harvard psychologist, states that music intelligence is equal to the various intelligences such as logical-mathematical, linguistic, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal. A young child’s brain is hard-wired for learning and acquisition of skills. They watch, they see, they listen, they do. Then they do it over and over again for the sheer delight of doing. This is how learning happens.

What a child learns is as much a product of environmental stimulation as it is innate ability. In fact, innate ability atrophies without nourishment.

Ken Guilmartin and co-author Dr. Lili Levinowitz have developed a music program which celebrates the joy, fun and inspiration of music-making while harmoniously incorporating the fundamentals of primary music development. This is Music Together^®.
The 45-minute classes take place once a week for ten-week periods, and are designed to engage children ages birth to five and parents in a delicious smorgasbord of songs, movement and instrument play. Traditionally, communication during Music Together classes is non-verbal. Parents and caregivers encourage their children's initiative through singing, dancing, smiles, eye contact and imitation. Parental enjoyment and participation holds the key to the development of music-loving children.

There has been some confusion around "talent" as it applies to music. Often, people of this culture tend to subscribe to the notion "you either have it, or you don't". More accurately, the have and have not component of this subject addresses "who heard it, sang to it, moved to it and who did not." Anyone exposed to quality musical stimulus from early on probably "has it" now.

Claudia Tulip, Director of Music Together of Scottsdale, feels that the essence of this program is so like her earliest memories of music that she is grateful to give that and more back to the community through Music Together.

"Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiousity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit."   ~ E. E. Cummings