From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend.

Today, piano lessons will talk with a claim classical pianist Jeremy Dank.

His new memoir begins with his first lessons and ends with his last formal lesson when he was 26.

He was a prodigy, but listening to and playing classical music just made him a target for bullies.

He'll tell us about the time he tried to get his schoolmates to love classical music. That didn't turn out well.

And he'll share revelations his teachers led him to about technique and transcending technique.

Also, we'll hear from Frank Bruney, an opinion columnist for The New York Times,

where he's also been a White House correspondent and chief restaurant critic.

His new memoir is about losing his vision in one eye, which was blinded by a rare kind of stroke.

And John Powers will review Amy Schumer's New Hulu series, Life and Bath.

My guest is pianist Jeremy Dank. If you've ever taken music lessons or if you appreciate the

Insights musician's share about the music they play, I think you'll enjoy what he has to say.

He's an acclaimed classical pianist who's also a fine writer with a gift for explaining the

structure of the pieces he performs and what makes them technically and emotionally exciting.

He's written a new memoir called Every Good Boy Does Fine, a love story in music lessons.

The title refers to a phrase children learn when they first start to read music to help them

memorize the notes on the five lines of the treble clef. Those notes, EGBDF, correspond to the

first letter of each word in Every Good Boy Does Fine. The book is about how he learned to play,

the teachers who shaped him, and what it was like to be a classical prodigy in a world where

few kids cared about classical music and some truly hated it. Dank received him a Carthor fellowship,

aka the Genius Award, and the Avery Fisher Prize. His recording of the Goldberg Variations

reached number one on the Billboard Classical Chart. His album of compositions by Beethoven and

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