2015
Indonesian jazz pianist Joey Alexander is just eleven years old, but he will perform this summer in a choice slot at the prestigious Newport Jazz Festival. His debut album will be released this month, leading some to wonder if he has any time to just be a kid. The New York Times reports:
In person he comes across like any polite, intelligent, middle-school boy with highly focused interests. He showed up for a stroll in Central Park last week in jeans and a Joy Division T-shirt. “Um, I don’t know the band so much,” he admitted, “but I like the shirt.”
He clearly loves and respects his art form. “Jazz is a hard music,” he said in response to a question about heightened expectations, “and you have to really work hard and also have fun performing; that’s the most important thing.”
1770
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's childhood successes are the stuff of legend—composing at five, playing for royalty at nine, official court musician before seventeen. Still, however many hours a day Mozart spent in front of a piano, youth still prevailed. Here, in a letter to his sister, the fourteen-year-old recounts some of his recent Italian adventures:
I am not only still alive, but in capital spirits. To-day I took a fancy to ride a donkey, for such is the custom in Italy, so I thought that I too must give it a trial. We have the honor to associate with a certain Dominican who is considered a very pious ascetic. I somehow don't quite think so, for he constantly takes a cup of chocolate for breakfast, and immediately afterwards a large glass of strong Spanish wine; and I have myself had the privilege of dining with this holy man, when he drank a lot of wine at dinner and a full glass of very strong wine afterwards, two large slices of melons, some peaches and pears for dessert, five cups of coffee, a whole plateful of nuts, and two dishes of milk and lemons.
My sole recreations consist in dancing English hornpipes and cutting capers. Italy is a land of sleep; I am always drowsy here. Addio—good-bye!