“That’s something I never thought I’d be doing in my life.”

Nina Shenoy

“I’ve been playing piano for ten years. I started playing when I was 6 years old. Since then, I’ve had a new appreciation for music. If I have a bad day [at] school, I just start playing and then all my emotions go away, and I’m just in a calm environment. I played at Carnegie Hall last year and I’m going again this year. That’s something I never thought I’d be doing in my life. The experience there is just so cool. You go there and have these $800,000 pianos that are just there for you to play on. It’s like, even if you wanted to make a mistake while you’re playing, you can’t just because of how nice the pianos are. It makes me feel so special because everyone is there in the audience just to watch other performers and watch me … It makes me feel like I really accomplished something and I realized that this is something that I’m actually really good at … It really encourages me and makes me feel like I have newfound self-confidence.”