Forget Chopsticks; Amateur Pianists Show Real Chops

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. He also has an MBA from Montréal’s McGill University, and, this fall, he will enter Stanford as a graduate student in education. Meanwhile, he arranges classical music for the steelpan and plays regular piano recitals; upcoming programs feature music by Kapustin, Prokofiev, and Scriabin.

Read full article: Classical Voice North America, June 29, 2016