The Fredösphere

Last night I was reading the alumni magazine from the University of Michigan School of Music, and I was pleased to see a notice from an old friend, Suzanne Sheppard.  She announced the release of a CD of piano music.  (How can you learn more, you ask?  Visit her website, of course.)

Although I have not maintained contact with Suzanne through the years (part of a pattern of relational laziness I'm not too proud of) I remember her with great fondness. Suzanne was really the only person in the U-M school of music I was buddies with.  It's a compliment to her outgoing personality that she was able to make friends with me.

I mainly recall her extraordinarily fruitful, not to say mercurial, creativity.  In other words, she's a genius of the classic mold.  She loved to initiate jam sessions with her on the piano and me singing.  Such improvisations were outside my usual deliberate approach.

Well, here I am, writing about her as though she were dead.  I'm going to send her an email right now.