Vera Holczer Interview Research Paper

For this interview, I spoke to Vera Holczer, a 40-year-old immigrant from Hungary. For 19 years, Vera lived in Hungary’s capital with her mother. She has always had a passion for classical music especially on the piano. As a classically trained pianist Vera knew her time in Hungary was coming to an end if she wanted to pursue her dream of owning her own music school due to Hungary not having large openings for people perusing a professional level of music. At the age of 19 with “two suitcases and 8 dollars” she went off to live with her dad in Los Angeles, California. She attended UCLA in hopes of becoming closer to her dream of being a classically trained pianist and opening her own music studio. One of the hardest steps for her when immigrating

She mentioned to me “To really understand a piece of music or a song you must first fully understand the language in which it was written.” One of the biggest things we talked about was the effect language and culture barriers have on immigrants whether it is coming to the United States or anywhere else around the world. As a teenager in Hungary she listened to popular Hungarian pop and rap alongside classical music. When she came to the United States she never lost her love for her music from her homeland, however, it is so hard to find here that she mostly listens to whatever her husband puts on now. Vera became a full U.S. citizen in 2004 and she said it was one of the happiest days of her life. Today she is the founder of the Aurora School of Music which has been open since 2003. She has achieved her dream of her own music school and is excited for what will come

She spoke about her struggles of keeping her dream alive while struggling to learn the language. As said earlier one of the biggest obstacles Vera pointed out for immigrants is learning the language of their new country. This struggle she faced connects to the theme of week 7 in this class. This theme was on copyright, and recording technology and for this comparison the theme of recording technology fits very well. For Vera to be able to hold onto her own culture of Hungarian music as well as connecting her to music in the United States her access to music was very important. One of the most important topics Vera expressed was her wanting to understand the language her music is in fully and you cannot fully experience music from another culture without fully understanding the language first. Through recording technology becoming better and better it not only makes the sound of the music enhanced but also makes the music more available. From this, Vera as a teenager has access to worlds of music. This also relates to week 2 when the class talked about how music travels around the world. As a class, we talked about how music changed as it traveled due to the artist (gypsies) adjusting it to fit their audience but due to the changing culture and language as it moved around the world. As we learned, the music changed in some parts to due language barriers and a