Education

Paul entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in 1969, at the age of twelve, and graduated with the class of 1975. Curtis admits only a few dozen students a year and teaches them one to one; the people he studied under there had a profound influence on his life.

His teachers

• David Spicer

  Organ. Director of Music at Wayne Presbyterian Church in Pennsylvania. One of Paul’s first teachers and mentors.

  

• Alexander McCurdy

  Organ. Taught organ at both Curtis and Westminster Choir College. See below for a sample of Paul's letters from McCurdy.

  

• Max Rudolf

  Conducting. Former music director of the Cincinnati Symphony and author of The Grammar of Conducting.

• Vladimir Sokoloff

  Piano. A long-serving Curtis faculty accompanist who worked with many of the great instrumentalists of the century.

• Rudolf Serkin

  Coach, inspiration, and mentor. Director of Curtis during Paul’s years there, and the reason he spent his summers at Marlboro.

  

Letters from Alexander McCurdy

Paul kept his correspondence from Alexander McCurdy. Here is a sample of those letters.

Marlboro Music School and Festival

During and after Curtis, Paul spent a few summers at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont, playing organ and piano among the chamber musicians Serkin gathered there each year.