But some competitors don’t follow the pattern. Semifinalist Sean Sutherland, 39, grew up in St. Vincent and The Grenadines, and he fell in love with the piano early on. By the time he was fifteen, however, he had exhausted the piano teaching resources available on St. Vincent. He kept up his musical activities by becoming the arranger and manager for a “boy band” (one of his bandmates was Kevin Lyttle, now a highly successful pop singer). After a three-year lapse in his piano study, Sutherland enrolled at MIT, receiving degrees in music and electrical engineering/computer science.