Posted by Mary Jane on May 08, 1999 at 14:50:12:
In Reply to: Sumner Erickson,anyone heard about him? posted by Chris on May 05, 1999 at 00:45:43:
I'll pass along a story I heard about him -- can't vouch for its accuracy, but quite cool, if true. Sumner was some kind of musical genius as a child and was, to a large extent, self-taught. He would pick a piece of tuba music WAY beyond his level and work at the first three notes until he mastered them. Just three notes. Once mastered, he would move on to the next three notes, and so forth until he could play the entire piece. Kind of Zen-like -- just three notes at a time. When he got to the Curtis Institute, he could PLAY pieces by composers whose names he could not pronounce.