#60 minutes music prodigy professional#

Alma started playing the piano when she was 2 years old and the violin when she was 3. She could read music before she could read words. Her perceptions, especially calling the clear sky “white,” were reported by her father in his 2010 book, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages.īefore she was 2, Alma was singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” with perfect pitch. Guy and Janie made sure never to teach her the sky was “blue,” for instance, in an effort to understand why ancient cultures never used this term for the sky.

#60 minutes music prodigy professional#

Alma also was the subject of her father’s language experiments related to his professional research. In her first years of life, her mother encouraged Alma’s imagination, telling her stories (both classic fairy tales and improvised). Alma’s paternal grandmother was a pianist, and her maternal grandfather is an organist. Both parents are amateur musicians – mom plays the piano and dad the flute – as it seems music runs in the family. Alma’s Israeli-born father, Guy Deutscher, is a mathematician with a PhD in linguistics from Cambridge. Her mother, Janie Steen, has a PhD in Old English poetry from Cambridge. She was born in February 2005 in Basingstoke, England. 14-year-old Alma Deutscher is a gifted classical composer, violinist and pianist.