Biography - Musical Prodigies: Perilous Journeys, Remarkable Lives - Bejun Mehta

What must it be like to start composing music at age two and create an opera at age ten as Samuel Barber did? Or to go deaf at age eight and yet become a world-renowned percussionist as Evelyn Glennie has? This is a celebration of the remarkable lives of forty-four musical prodigies from the eighteenth century to the present, including the amazing stories of Mozart and Paganini, Andrés Segovia and Samuel Barber, Van Cliburn and Ruggiero Ricci, Shauna Rolston and Yo-Yo Ma, to name only a few.

The author explores early family life, first teachers, the importance of peers, and the inevitable struggles for independence and acceptance as an adult musician. For some, the promise of childhood was borne out, the difficult passage through adolescence successfully weathered. For others, fate dealt a different hand. In a fascinating conclusion to the volume, Bejun Mehta offers an insider's view. His is the remarkable story of a celebrated boy soprano who struggled to find his muse again after his voice changed. His insights illuminate many wondrous elements of the prodigy's experience. Parents and families of gifted children in all the arts will welcome these insights into the many wondrous elements of the prodigy's experience.

Claude Kenneson is a cellist and professor emeritus of the University of Alberta who has nurtured several prodigies among his own cello students. He lives in Edmonton, Alberta.

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