First Meeting with Lukas Foss

Composer Ken Ueno writes:

Sometime in early September 1995, I walked into a studio at Boston University for my first lesson with Lukas Foss. He asked me my age. After I told him, he responded, "By that age, Koussevitzky had brought me to Boston to be the principal pianist of the BSO. (Long pause.) What do you do?" I was kind of taken aback. "Well," I said, "I'm here to study with you."

Had I engaged in such an exchange with anyone else, I might have been offended. Instead, even upon our first meeting, it was became apparent to me that Lukas operated on another plane from the rest of us. He was the most naturally gifted musician I have ever met. Everything was so natural to him that it was almost savant-like. Mozartian might be a better word.

As a teacher, he always seemed to be looking above our music, as if he was in touch with what the music itself wanted to be. In playing through our sketches, local details were often sacrificed, but we got a glimpse of a flow more natural than what we were clumsily committing slavishly to paper. He was like some guru who could sense the soul of nascent pieces. Realizing that I had an intrinsic inclination to rationalize my process, he often prodded me to trust my intuition.

That first day, the second question he asked me was if I was still in my Wunderkind period. I said, "No, I was never a Wunderkind." "Oh, no. Everyone has a Wunderkind period." He had this childlike quality that assumed that everyone was like him. Of course, none of us are, or ever will be like him.