Earl Wild facts for kids
Earl Wild (born November 26, 1915 – died January 23, 2010) was a famous American pianist. He was well-known for taking jazz and classical music pieces and rewriting them for the piano. This is called a transcription. He made these pieces sound even more exciting and challenging to play.
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About Earl Wild
Earl Wild was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1915. He was a very talented child when it came to music. He started learning piano at a young age with teachers like Selmar Janson. As a teenager, he began creating his own piano versions of romantic music.
Playing for Presidents
In 1931, when he was just 16, President Herbert Hoover invited him to play at the White House. This was a huge honor! Earl Wild was so good that five more presidents also asked him to perform for them. These were Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson. Earl Wild is the only pianist ever to play for six presidents in a row!
Early Career and TV
In 1937, Wild started working as a pianist for the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Two years later, in 1939, he made history. He was the first pianist to perform a full concert on U.S. television! He later remembered that the bright studio lights made the piano keys get so hot they started to bend.
In 1942, a famous conductor named Arturo Toscanini asked him to play Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. This was a very successful performance for Wild. During World War II, Wild joined the United States Navy as a musician. He often traveled with Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady, as she supported the war effort. His job was to play the national anthem on the piano before she spoke.
After the war, he worked for the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) as a pianist, conductor, and composer until 1968. He performed in many concerts around the world. He played in places like Seoul, Beijing, Tokyo, Argentina, England, and all over the United States.
His Amazing Transcriptions
Earl Wild was famous for his amazing piano transcriptions. He took well-known pieces of music and made them into new, challenging piano solos. He created 14 transcriptions of songs by Rachmaninoff. He also made many versions of songs by Gershwin.
One of his most famous works is "Grand Fantasy on Airs from Porgy and Bess" (1973). This piece is based on an American opera. He also wrote two sets of "Virtuoso Etudes after Gershwin." These were based on popular Gershwin songs like "The Man I Love" and "I Got Rhythm".
Wild also created other piano arrangements. These included a version of Handel's "The Harmonious Blacksmith" and a fantasy based on music from the Disney movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. He even made piano versions of popular songs from the 1920s.
Original Music and Recordings
Besides his transcriptions, Earl Wild also wrote his own music. He composed a large piece for Easter called Revelations (1962). He also wrote a fun piece for piano and orchestra called Doo-Dah Variations (1992). This was based on the song "Camptown Races" by Stephen Foster.
In the 1950s, he wrote music for silent movie and opera sketches on TV shows. In the 1960s, he composed music for TV documentaries and plays.
Earl Wild recorded many albums. He recorded for companies like RCA Records and Ivory Classics. He recorded Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and other pieces with the Boston Pops Orchestra. In 1965, he recorded all four Rachmaninoff piano concertos in London.
In 1997, Earl Wild became the first pianist to stream a performance over the Internet. This was a very new technology at the time!
A famous music critic, Harold C. Schonberg, called him a "super-virtuoso." This means he was an incredibly skilled and talented pianist. Earl Wild passed away in 2010 at the age of 94. His memories were later published in a book called A Walk on the Wild Side.
See also
In Spanish: Earl Wild para niños
