When Shinichi Suzuki died in 1998 at the age of 99, the Japanese violinist and teacher was known around the world as the founder of the Suzuki Method, a hugely popular approach to early music education. According to the Talent Education Research Institute, an organization that Suzuki founded in 1948, about 400,000 children around the globe are now learning to play music the Suzuki way. Particularly in the U.S., where it was introduced in the late 1950s, the method has become synonymous with the musical education of preschoolers and school-age children. Today, the great majority of those who were very young when they picked up a violin—or cello, viola, piano or flute—have likely come across his instructional approach in one form or another.

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