Posts Tagged Composing

I’ll call her Emily. A junior at Pine Ridge High School, on the Lakota Sioux Pine Ridge Reservation, Emily came into the Composition Academy with dark glasses on and hood up, silent except to say that she was not a creative person. She participated in group warm-ups and games only grudgingly. And yet she would sit at the piano before each day’s workshops, playing Chopin and Beethoven by ear – note-perfect melodies and accompaniments almost exactly as written. She only ever had two piano lessons. The instrument came to her naturally, and she was clearly a close listener.

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