Shin'ichi Suzuki, the man who developed the Suzuki Method, was born on October 17, 1898, in Nagoya, Japan. When he was seventeen, Shin'ichi heard a recording of Schubert’s Ave Maria, played by a famous violinist named Mischa Elman, and was amazed at the sound of the instrument and how beautiful it was. After this, Shin'ichi brought a violin home from his father's violin factory and taught himself to play. He would listen to a recording and try to imitate what he heard. A few years later, he took violin lessons from a teacher in Tokyo. Then, when he was 22 years old, he went to Germany and studied with a famous teacher named Karl Klingler.

Shinichi had always loved children and became very interested in teaching them. He thought that children could learn music just as they learned to speak—starting when they were very young and hearing music all around them. He believed that all children have the talent to learn if they are taught well by loving parents and teachers. These were very unusual ideas at that time. If children did play an instrument, they started learning when they were ten or eleven. Also, most people thought that musical talent was a special thing that only a few people had.

When Shin'ichi taught his students, he embodied all of these values and beliefs. Over time, Dr. Suzuki’s young students learned to play very well and everyone was amazed when they performed. He also continued to work on his teaching method by choosing music that would help the children learn. He even wrote some pieces himself (like the Twinkle Variations, Allegro, Perpetual Motion, and Etude). Teachers from many countries came to Japan to learn about his method of teaching, and Dr. Suzuki and his students traveled to play in other countries. Over the years, more and more teachers and parents became interested in Suzuki’s ideas and began to teach children with his method. Now there are thousands of children around the world who have learned to play instruments through the Suzuki Method.