<\/p>
Nina Simone was that rarest of things: a master of all trades, with her music infused with influences from Bach to the blues<\/strong><\/a> and was one of the greatest female jazz musicians<\/strong><\/a> of all time.<\/p> However tagged as a jazz<\/a><\/strong> performer was a label that Simone regarded as both disparaging and inaccurate, for the classical repertoire had been her original source of musical inspiration; she would remark that to play it was to be \u2018as close to God as I know\u2019. Her earliest experience of performing it, however, had been less positive.<\/p> Born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in Tryon, North Carolina in 1933, to John Divine Waymon (who worked as a barber, dry-cleaner and an entertainer to make ends meet), and Mary Kate Irvin, a Methodist preacher.<\/p> Her childhood piano lessons were with a diminutive Englishwoman named Muriel Mazzanovich, the wife of the landscape painter Lawrence Mazzanovich who had settled in the area in the early 1920s. <\/p> The couple had no children and Eunice became something of a surrogate daughter to \u2018Miss Mazzy\u2019 as she was known. She recognised and cultivated Eunice\u2019s prodigious ability and co-founded a fund to enable her to continue her studies.<\/p> Local supporters responded, and in the spring of 1943 Mazzanovich organised a debut recital for her pupil as a gesture of thanks to the fund\u2019s donors. Just ten years old, yet steeped in the music of Mozart<\/a><\/strong>, Beethoven, Carl Czerny<\/a><\/strong> and particularly Bach<\/a><\/strong>, Eunice waited nervously as 200 people filed into the building to become her first audience.<\/p> Sadly Tryon, North Carolina, though able to muster support for a young black girl versed in classical music, would still display the kneejerk conventions of racial segregation in more banal ways.<\/p> Eunice had been aware of this with a degree of detachment, but on this occasion the affront was personal: her parents were told to give up their front-row seats to white audience members. With a fearlessness that would become her trademark in adult life, Eunice simply refused to play until they were allowed to return to their original seats. <\/p> Once that had been rectified, the recital went well, concluding with an improvisation based on notes suggested by members of the audience. Reading her own accounts of these events in her autobiography I Put a Spell on You<\/i> and in Alan Light\u2019s biography What Happened, Miss Simone?<\/i>, her reaction was one of outrage mixed with bafflement: why would any parent be denied this simple courtesy, whatever their status?<\/p> Eunice\u2019s ultimate ambition, encouraged by her parents and teacher, was to become the first successful African-American classical pianist. In reality there had been and would be other contenders for this position, but her intentions were clear. On leaving school she was awarded a year\u2019s scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music<\/a><\/strong> in New York.<\/p> The plan was that she should then apply for a full scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Music<\/a><\/strong> in Philadelphia, prompting her family to relocate there. When the expected scholarship failed to materialise, the young Eunice was dismayed. <\/p>When and where was Nina Simone born?<\/h2>
Who taught her music?<\/h2>
At her first performance, her parents were told to give up their front-row seats to white audience members<\/h2>
Dreams of a career as a classical pianist<\/h2>