Word: pianos
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...theworld." With marriage as the primary goal in 1956, most recall looking back on the previous four years with a feeling of satisfaction. Merle M. Bowser made a list right before Commencement of things to do for the rest of her life. First she wanted to buy a piano, then go to Europe. A graduate degree was a lower priority, about on a par with obtaining her own car. And, of course, she would find a husband along the way. "I was happy with my list, and all the things on it worked out," she says. "Only I forgot...
...Music buffs, if they concentrate hard, can probably glean from Dickson's anecdotes some sense of the excitement it must have been to work closely with Fiedler over the years, and feel the star-watcher's thrill at the Pops parade of brilliant guest performers; those who suffered through piano lessons and drillwork can catch the allusion and laugh at jazz pianist Oscar Peterson's assertion that his keyboard prowess can' from playing "lots and lots of Czerny when I was a kid." But what excitement and color come through does so painfully, in spite of Dickson's uncertain, cliche...
Some people are happy in their delusions, and Bobby Short is one of them: he insists upon calling himself a saloon singer. Oh, yes, he will admit, there is no sawdust on the floor of Manhattan's Café Carlyle, where he has been singing and playing the piano for the past 13 years. And, yes, he always works in a dinner jacket tailored on Savile Row-one of ten that hang in his closet. Still, he is quite certain that he is, was and always has been a saloon singer. But then, for all anyone knows, the Queen...
Short began life there in 1924, the son of a black coal miner in Danville, Ill. He taught himself to play the piano when he was three or four, and when he was eleven, he went touring the country as the Miniature King of Swing. The king was soon deposed, however. Bookings became scarce after a couple of years, and Bobby returned to Danville to finish high school. After that, it was back to the piano and the saloons of Chicago, and then Los Angeles, where he stayed, off and on, for more than a decade. He made one brief...
...obstacles. He plans to give at least six recitals next year, and his strenuous practicing schedule shows no sign of letting up. But the bulk of his musical education, like that of other serious performers at Harvard, will take place outside the classroom. "I'm not here to learn piano performance," he says. "Harvard does not offer piano performance...