This began when I was 4 - the nine-year musical school, piano class. Well, nowadays people usually start with rock & pop, but I was fed with Beethoven and Mozart.
Those solfeggio dictations, where I calculated all the intervals very well, but started with a wrong note... My favourite teacher was nice enough to play it after - what a Turkish music I got instead of respected classics. My normal mark was '4': I still calculated well! Just wrong first note... They didn't know I would become a physicist...
In the last school year, I experienced my first Saturn-Mercury problems, when I was called to answer a lesson, but just couldn't open the mouth :) Stuck in silence without any reason, very angry about myself and the whole world :) Thank you for your patience, my dear teacher!
I hated the piano when at school, but immediately after the graduation started playing Chopin: when nobody forces, it is such a fun! Later I saw a cast of the Chopin's hand and was amazed by the similarity to mine (of course, mine is smaller) - that's why I never needed the finger marks and felt which finger should be there, when playing his masterpieces. My musical soulmate...
One of the first and strongest musical impressions, earlier than Chopin, is of course Anna German. Unforgettable and incomparable. Her heavenly voice touches me now just the same as 30 years ago. I wrote a little poem about her and posted on fan sites (international and russian).
I had been musically innocent till 20 years old - no pop, no rock - until I discovered Queen. Then Aerosmith. I am a hard/punk rock fan now... Still loving Chopin and Anna German.
On November 16, 2008, I visited pan Tucholsky, the widower of Anna German, in Warsaw.
I keep finding various musical gems that I value dearly:
Natasha Teodoridou with her hit Παραδόθηκα Σε Σένα
Incomparable Antonella Ruggiero, with her multiple albums, solo and with Matia Bazar, in particular, La Superba
Trio Los Paraguayos who mastered guitar performance and musical irony
Austrian Andrea Berg, whose songs highlighted my Danube cycling
Queen of fado Amalia Rodrigues
Teresa Salgueiro whom I met in a Lisbon park in rehearsal and praised her singing, without knowing how famous she is in PT
King of chanson Charles Trenet
Christian rock radio (yes, such things exist in the USA) K-Love - very good quality music if you do not mind Hallelujah lyrics
Afropop diva Sanaipei Tande