Interesting to learn of Roberta Flack’s classical roots. Playing the organ, exposure to “Messiah,” the Bach “Christmas Oratorio,” the Mozart Requiem. At 9, she began to study classical piano. Her early ambition was to become a concert pianist.
From an article in The Oklahoman from 2004:
“Flack said her earliest musical influences came from church. Her mother, Irene Flack, played piano for a Methodist church, and her father, Laron Flack, was a self-taught jazz piano stylist. At home, Flack’s father repaired an old upright piano, and she began to pick out tunes while sitting on her mother’s lap. At age 9, Flack began taking piano lessons and also started to listen to a wide range of popular music, R&B, jazz, blues and pop.
“‘Everyone in my family did something, and I guess, in terms of who got the buzz among my siblings, it was me,’ she said. ‘I wanted to be a concert pianist for many years, and I worked hard at it. I was one of the most blessed young people in this country.’
“Flack cited teachers Alma Blackman, the late Hazel Harrison and Vivian Scott for providing her educational foundation in classical music.
“Blackman was a classical music teacher at Oakland College, a Seventh-Day Adventist College in Huntsville, Ala. Harrison, who taught at Howard University, was known as the ‘premiere black classical pianist’ for four decades and studied with Ferruccio Busoni and performed with the Berlin Philharmonic. Scott, a concert pianist, was a former student of Harrison and studied the Juilliard School of Music in New York and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.”
FLACK STUDIED WITH A STUDENT OF FERRUCCIO BUSONI??? My head just exploded.
She talks more about her early musical experiences here:
Flack died yesterday at the age of 88. That piano is no mere prop (even if on “Killing Me Softly“ the instrument is electric).
Boy, this song sure does take me back…
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