Eugene Haynes
*Eugene Haynes's birth is celebrated on this date in 1927. He was a Black classical pianist, composer, and music pedagogue.
Eugene Haynes was born in East St Louis, Illinois. He started playing piano at the age of 4. As a teenager, he worked in a warehouse and used his lunch breaks to play a piano nearby. His bosses accidentally discovered his talent and paid for his musical education. After graduating from Lincoln High School in 1944, where he played piano to classmate Miles Davis' trombone, he joined the Juilliard School of Music.
At the end of his studies, he won the Morris Loeb prize for 'overall excellence in graduate studies.' After a brief study at Lincoln University in Missouri, he continued his studies with the music pedagogue Nadia Boulanger in Paris from 1951 to 1954. Haynes' time in Europe between 1952 and 1962 is the best-documented period of his life and career. He debuted at Carnegie Hall in 1958 and played there again in 1969. However, Haynes spent most of his career teaching and composing. He was the artist-in-residence from 1958 to 1974 at Lincoln University, where he had briefly studied.
In 1974, Haynes won a prize from the National Association of Negro Positions and returned to St Louis to contribute to the education of young musicians in his childhood neighborhood. From 1965 to 1973, he hosted a local AM radio show. In 1979, he became the leader of a Centre for Performing Arts at Southern Illinois University in East St. Louis. In 2000, a book of letters and diary writings called To Soar with Angels was published, the European Travels—Remembrances of Isak Dinesen.
At that time, Haynes was over seventy, but the writings in the book are from 1952 to 1962. In 2001, the year after publication, his first CD came out, and his last public concert was in 2005. Finally, a CD was released in 2004. He died on February 5, 2007, at the age of 80.
To Become a musician or Singer
To Become a Conductor or Composer
