On this morning's broadcast of Studio360 over public radio, I heard
for the first time about this gifted composer, musician, writer, whose
frustrated life ended in a helicopter crash in Vietnam when she was 35.

The child of an African American father who was a journalist and a White
Texan artist mother, she was the latter's experiment in what farmers call
"hybrid vigor", and as a child lived up to her mother's expectations,
reading at two, studying piano at three and composing shortly thereafter.
Widely received as a prodigy in her childhood (Mayor LaGuardia proclaimed
a day in her honor at the New York World's Fair), her popularity in the
U.S.  evaporated as she emerged from childhood to become simply a female
musician of color, all though she continued in her popular success abroad.

There's a short bio of her that can be found by following the link at
www.studio360.org and a Google search discloses other material about her,
of which I've so far read only the one at

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/reviews/composit.htm

Walter Meyer