This isn't even mentioning how lovely and stirring his pieces are. Probably because there were musicians and theater people in my family, I think I assumed as a small child that everyone in the world spent a lot of time doing music and engaging in the other performing arts.
Children take their circumstances for granted.
So naturally I wanted to do those kinds of things myself also. There was always a big black object in the living room which it was a lot of fun to make sounds on. It was called a piano. When I look back on those years I think I learned more about music and being an artist from sources having less to do with colleges and more with the outside world. One person from whom I learned a lot, about music and also about feisty independence, was the composer Wallingford Riegger.