Philippa schuyler biography sample

1931-1967

Classical pianist, writer

One of the most unusual and perhaps most tragic figures in American cultural history, Philippa Schuyler gained national acclaim as a child prodigy on the piano.

Able to read and write at the age of two and a half, a pianist at four, and a composer by five, Philippa was often compared to Mozart.

Philippa Schuyler was born on August 2, 1931.

Philippa Duke Schuyler is probably the best example in the city of what psychologists call a gifted child.

The first authorized biography of Philippa Schuyler, Composition in Black and White draws on previously unpublished letters and diaries to reveal an.

Philippa Duke Schuyler was a biracial piano prodigy who played for audiences around the world, but is largely forgotten today.

Her picture graced the covers of weekly news magazines, and she was hailed as a young American Mozart. Schuyler's life during adulthood, however, was a difficult one. She struggled with racial discrimination and with issues related to her mixed-race background, traveling the world in an attempt to find not only musical success but also an identity and a place in the world.

She turned to writing in the early 1960s, visiting war zones as a newspaper correspondent, and she was killed in a helicopter crash in Vietnam in 1967. After her death she was mostly forgotten for several decades, but her life story was told in a 1995 biography, and in 2004 American R&B vocalist Alicia Keys, a classically trained pianist of mixed-race background herself, announced plans