Over at The New York Times’ Art Beat blog, Anthony Tommasini ran a two-week project of blog posts and videos where he revealed his top 10 composers of all-time. As lists usually do, it provoked a slew of responses from his readers. One response came in the form of a hand-written, two-sided letter on blank paper from an 8-year-old boy in Manhattan.
Lucas Amory is the son of two violists and a serious piano student himself, attending the Special Music School at the Kaufman Center—a public school for the musically-gifted, designed after the music schools of the Soviet Union. So, he is not your typical 8-year-old. But still, he’s 8 friggin’ years old, and he’s listing his top 10 composers.
The best line: “6: This is hard. I’ll go with Brahms. He was supposed to be lower but when I learned he burned his music …”
Brilliant, but still very much 8-years-old. Here’s the letter:
The back:
(Via Arts Beat)
Google cache of original goodmenproject post:
8-Year-Old New York prodigy sends in list of top 10 composers to … Feb 16, 2011 … Lucas Amory is the son of two violinists and a serious piano student himself, attending the Special Music School at the Kaufman Center—a …
goodmenproject.com/newsroom/meet-your-next-child-prodigy/ – Cached
son of two VIOLINSTS, not viola. Cleaned up the copy later, Henry?
Just for clarification, his parents play the viola, not violin.
Right. Which is why they’re called violists, not violinists.