Ross Lee Finney

Ross Lee Finney’s mother used to rock him in rhythm to poetry she read or to folk songs she sang. When he was six he would sit at the piano with the Bible upside down on the music rack, and improvise little pieces, pretending to read them.  His mother, a pianist, gradually taught him what [...]

Serge Prokofiev (1891-1953)

“I bumped ma head against an iron trunk when I was three years old,” Sergei Prokofiev tell us in his autobiography, ” and the bump stayed for something like twenty-five years. A painter who did my portrait said, ‘Perhaps your whole talent is in this bump!’”
Wherever it was, it manifested itself early. He improvised a [...]

Alexander Tcherepnin

From his earliest days Alexander Tcherepnin heard beautiful operas in his home…for his father, Nicolai Tcherepnin, was one of the most famous Russian composers and conductors of his day. Young Alexander was destinated for a musical career and studied piano and composition at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. While he was still a very young man, [...]