Awadagin Pratt

Awadagin Pratt ( /ɑːwɑːˈdɑːdʒɪn/; born March 6, 1966) is a concert pianist from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.When he was 3 years old, Pratt moved with his parents to Normal, Illinois, where Illinois State University had offered his mother a position as a professor of social work and his Sierra Leone-born father, Theodore, one as a physics professor. Pratt began piano lessons at age six and violin lessons at age nine, but for much of his childhood his first interest was tennis, in which he achieved ranking in the US Midwest. He eventually chose to concentrate on his musical talents, however, and at age sixteen he declined tennis scholarships at other schools to accept one in violin at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he enrolled as a freshman. Later, he transferred to the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, as, unlike other schools, it accepted him both as a pianist and as a violinist [1]: "He was the first student in the history of that institution to earn certificates in piano and violin and a graduate diploma in conducting" (Shepard 1998).