Is this how a "big break" starts? →[More:] My son finished his sophomore year in college, studying music. He spent his first two years in a paid position, singing in a church choir. Through contacts there, he's met and made a favorable impression on one of the music professors from University of North Texas who may help him get into grad school there. UNT has a locally well-regarded music school (Nora Jones went there).

This summer, he landed a job playing praise music on piano for another local church, giving him the opportunity to learn music with a more contemporary vibe and also the challenge of learning new music each week (as opposed to taking 3-4 months to learn a complicated piece for an end-of-semester recital).

Tonight, I found out that a local singer and old friend of his from high school has asked him to sing a duet with her. She is pretty huge in the local/regional hispanic community, and I think she might ask him to sing at the local mall-turned-hispanic-entertainment-center.

The beauty of this, really, is that if he actually ends up with any kind of performing career it will be a bonus; his goal is to study music theory and history, hopefully getting a doctorate in it. Because he is not actually trying to make a go of performance, he feels very little pressure when he does perform.

I don't know that this will be any kind of big break for him or not, but I'm thoroughly enjoying his successes in a vicarious sense.