Powerful Music

I heard Shankar Vedantam's Hidden Brain podcast last week, "Fresh Starts". In 2006, Derek Amato struck his head after diving into the shallow end of a swimming pool and woke up to discover that he could compose music at the piano. An acquired savant. He can’t pick out “Twinkle, Twinkle”, but he can spontaneously create intricate pieces and play them fluidly.

I don’t watch television, so maybe I’m the last person in America to hear about Derek. He’s teamed up with a jazz singer, Mandy Harvey, who totally lost her hearing in college. Derek wrote a song for her, "The Script".

As I listened to Derek play on the "Fresh Starts" podcast, I remembered a George Winston album: Winter (1980). Winston was creating beautiful albums at the same time Jim and I were creating of our marriage and family. I listened to that tape countless times in the 80s, in southern Indiana and New Hampshire. We chose to have no television, so radio and tapes were my window on the world.

I love classical music: Bach, Mozart, Brahms. But there is something in George Winston and Derek Amato that touches me deeply as well.

Snow covered the ground this morning, brilliant white and light as feathers. Massachusetts is in a George Winston mood.