Sunday/ a young Mozart

From the website about the upcoming American debut of the young composer Alma Deutscher: ‘Our Cinderella image is a painting, perhaps by Leonardo Da Vinci, of a young girl, a little older than Alma. You can imagine it is Cinderella, or you can imagine it is Alma—it has an uncanny resemblance to her profile. We like to pretend that Leonardo divined that Alma would be born 500 years in the future’.

We had another pitch-black national news day here, with a church shooting in Texas that left 26 dead and 20 wounded.

So it was really nice to see a segment on the Sunday night documentary program ’60 Minutes’, of a music prodigy, a 12-year old British girl Alma Deutscher.

Science doesn’t yet understand the human brain and its ability to create something new, nearly enough, to explain her extraordinary abilities.

Robert Gjerdingen is a professor of music at Northwestern University in Chicago, and a consultant to Alma’s education. He says very difficult assignments given to her, when she was six, and seven, came back, and it was like listening to a mid-18th century composer (Mozart, Mendelssohn).  She is a virtuoso on the piano and the violin.

In December, the Opera San Jose Orchestra will stage Cinderella in Alma’s American debut.

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