![]() But her real education wasn’t in the classroom. When she finished, the auditions director whispered, “I am in the presence of a genius.” Damrosch agreed and Scott was admitted to Juilliard. In the journal that Chilton quotes, Scott wrote: “I was only reaching for the closest thing that sounded like it, not even knowing what a sixth was at that age.” Since eight-year-old Scott’s hands couldn’t reach the piece’s intervals, she played the sixths to make it sound the way she intuitively knew it should. It was sacrilege, he thought, until he saw who was playing. As such, his blood began to boil when he heard someone in the audition room improvising over Rachmaninoff’s “Prelude in C Sharp Major.” Marching down the hall to confront the blasphemer brash enough to attempt such a thing, he heard the ninths being substituted with the sixths. German-born, wearing a meticulous goatee and a pocket watch, and steeped in the traditions of European classical music, Juilliard founder Frank Damrosch was the very model of high culture in New York City. The story sounds more like legend than fact, but several sources, including Scott’s journal and the accounts of the parties involved, confirm it. She kept playing piano, kept stunning audiences, and impressed one person in particular. Scott resolved never to be so naïve again - nor did she allow the incident to dictate her life. They were involved and they resented it and me.” “They, too, were white,” Scott wrote in her journal “They had witnessed the horrible act. The workmen who rescued Scott had the unmistakable look of “fear and guilt” in their eyes. When she did, the girl pushed her into the trench. A white girl from the neighborhood who she had been playing with told her to “Turn around so that I can brush you off and send you to school,” as Scott recounted in her journal, which is featured in Chilton’s book. Finally, as police sirens grew nearer, the boys ran off with her blood on their hands.Īnother time, Scott was playing near the trench being dug for the subway line that would become the A train. They beat her black and blue, and Scott still refused to turn over the cash. When word got around that, in her house, a child paid the bills, a gang of white teenagers broke in and demanded money. Scott grocery shopped, prepared meals, and handled the household’s money. But economic opportunity was hard to come by, and when her parents’ marriage fell apart in 1923, her mother decided she and Scott would emigrate to New York City. At three years old, Chilton writes, Scott played parties, churches, and gatherings. Scott’s arc was fixed in the stars from that moment on. Her grandmother woke thinking, not wrongly, that she was witnessing a miracle. Unbeknownst to her family, Hazel Scott absorbed everything she heard until one day she woke her grandmother from a nap by playing a familiar hymn on the piano, two-handed and with perfect pitch. Hazel Scott: The Pioneering Journey of a Jazz Pianist, from Cafe Society to Hollywood to HUAC, Scott’s whole family played and her mother, Alma, an aspiring concert pianist, taught music to help make ends meet. As Karen Chilton recounts in her biography, She had been rehearsing for this moment her entire life. Speaking with a voice that simultaneously conveyed clarity and nuance, strength and warmth, she knew what she was doing. She told the committee’s members, “Mudslinging and unverified charges are just the wrong ways to handle this problem.” With the same poise she brought to the stage as a musician, she testified that “what happens to me happens to others and it is part of a pattern which could spread and really damage our national morale and security.”Ĭhin up, shoulders back, she warned against “profiteers in patriotism who seek easy money and notoriety at the expense of the nation’s security and peace of mind,” and that continuing down this road would transform America’s artists from a “loyal troupe of patriotic, energetic citizens ready to give their all for America” into a “wronged group whose creative value has been destroyed.” She believed she had a responsibility to stem the tide of paranoia that gained momentum by the day. But her appearance at HUAC had a greater purpose than personal exoneration. Failure to respond would be seen as an admission of guilt. The publication “Red Channels” had accused Scott - along with 150 other cultural figures - of communist sympathies. Jazz pianist Hazel Scott stood in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee hoping to clear her name.
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