From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Rzewski)
Frederic Anthony Rzewski (born April 13, 1938 in Westfield, Massachusetts) is an American composer and virtuoso pianist.
Biography
Rzewski (pronounced zheff-skee) began playing piano at age 5. He attended Phillips Academy, Harvard and Princeton, where his teachers included Randall Thompson, Roger Sessions, Walter Piston and Milton Babbitt. In 1960, he went to Italy, a trip which was formative in his future musical development. In addition to studying with Luigi Dallapiccola,
he began a career as a performer of new piano music, often with an
improvisatory element. A few years later he was a co-founder of Musica Elettronica Viva with Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum. Musica Elettronica Viva conceived music as a collective, collaborative process, with improvisation and live electronic instruments prominently featured. In 1971 he returned to New York.[1]
