In fact, Robinson was just seven years old when he appeared in "No Leave, No Love. Naturally, he was in great demand to record and perform. The story goes ‘Sugar Chile’, who was the youngest of the seven children, would climb up onto the piano bench and taught himself to play what he heard on the radio.Īt just three years old he won an under-18 talent contest - you can imagine everyone’s eyes popping out of their head when a toddler sat down at the piano and began to sing and play the blues. Neither of his parents were musical but the family of nine did own a piano that had been left at the house by an aunt. This video is an excerpt from the 1946 post-war film "No Leave, No Love," starring Van Johnson, Keenan Wynn, and Pat Kirkwood, and the piano-playing wunderkind featured in the movie is Frank “Sugar Chile” Robinson:įrank was tiny when he showed unusual gifts for singing the blues and playing the piano. She recently was appointed associate dean of the Pennsylvania Academy of Music in Lancaster, Pa., a position she was to assume in June.Although Richard Penniman was undeniably musically talented as a youngster, he is not the child seen in this clip. Information Agency as American cultural specialist for a production there of "Porgy and Bess." Harris went to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, at the invitation of the U.S. She later returned to Broadway to work on the musical version of "Two Gentlemen of Verona."įive years ago, Ms. Tonight, he returns at 77 to meet the first black president. Harris played, composed and conducted across a broad spectrum of musical styles from classical to rock.Īs musical director of "Hair" in the early 1970s, she played piano and conducted the orchestra - seven men all older than she - from her keyboard. A 7-year-old piano prodigy was the first African American to perform at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Her bachelor's and master's degree programs at Juilliard were paid for by a grant from the Leopold Schepp Foundation, for which she later served as a trustee.Īn extremely eclectic musician, Ms. With the help of a scholarship she earned playing with the Chicago Symphony at age 10, she entered the prestigious Curtis Institute in Philadelphia that year.īy age 12, she was attending the Juilliard School in New York City. Like go to school."Īnd go to school she did. This girl had more important things to do. "The funny thing was that they knew I could have done it," she said in an interview in 1972, when she first performed in Los Angeles. Somebody immediately offered her parents, Clara Harris and Dewey Harris, a Pennsylvania Railroad mechanic, $13,000 for their only child to play the piano on television. When the concert ended, she picked up her doll and ran to her mother. She yawned at one point, but never missed a note. The precocious pianist played her first recital at age 3 in the Cary Temple Auditorium of her native Chicago.ĭressed in a white satin dress, with her favorite doll perched next to the baby grand piano, she enthralled her audience as she played - from memory - 18 works by Bach, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Mozart and Brahms. Harris taught music, played solo recitals from London to New York and San Francisco, conducted the orchestras of 16 American cities and several ballet companies, and composed television scores, two piano concertos, two ballets and an opera. Margaret Rosezarian Harris, 56, a child prodigy pianist who grew up to become the first black female conductor of major orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, died of a heart attack March 7 in New York.
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