Musical Start

I grew up with music everywhere.
My mother says that when she was pregnant with me she would put headphones around her belly and  play Sir Elton John for my listening pleasure. I'm sure many mothers do this across the world, and I'm going to say as the baby in the womb, I'm sure it was pretty useful.
When I was learning my ABCs and 123s I depended on song to memorize them thanks to programs like Sesame Street and Barney. (And the sad thing is I still do use the songs to help me out in times of brain fart-age)
By the time I was 6 my parents enrolled me in piano lessons to see if I could become the next great piano genius. Unfortunately that didn't happen, but that's when I began to build the basics of music in my neurological pathways. By the time I was 8 I wanted to be a singer, so along with piano and learned the about my voice. This was extremely beneficial because at 18 I  still go back to recall what I learned from back in the day to help me learn music.
Through my childhood my mother also always had the radio playing in the house. Not the Top 40, but easy rock stations filled the air of our house. In the car, my father would blast the classic rock. From there I fell in love with Billy Joel, Sarah McLachlan, Bob Dylan, Tina Turner, The Beatles, Madonna, Rolling Stones and Shania Twain.
From there my musical tastes grew and currently on my iPod I have such a huge diversity of genres.
Unfortunately I stopped taking piano and singing lessons for personal reasons, but it's helped me immensely in my theatre training, more than I could have imagined.

I'm going to pose a question, and feel free to answer in the comments.
Do you think it's important to have a basic music background as a theatre artist? Why or why not?
And how has music shaped your life?

Remember you can tweet me @LAALVEZZ

With love,
Lisa Alves