Condoleeza Rice the Musician

Did you know that Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is a musician? During a radio interview January 2, 2005 on Mad About Music with Gilbert Kaplan, Rice expressed her views about music and her tastes in musical style. Condi Rice was a piano prodigy at three and a concerto competition winner at age 15. Kaplan explained that her name is “a variation of con dolcezza which means, of course, ‘with sweetness,’ a direction of how to play the music.” She started piano lessons at three with her grandmother and by ten, she went to the Birmingham Southern Conservatory of Music – “the first black student to go to that newly-integrated conservatory in Birmingham,” said Rice. Her family moved to Denver and she won a young artists' competition playing the Mozart D Minor Piano Concerto. At 15, she entered the University of Denver as a music major. Rice explained, “I planned a career as a concert pianist but I realized in my sophomore year that I was pretty good, but not great.” Her two favorite operas are both Mussorgsky: Khovanschina and Boris Godunov. She said, “I’m quite a fan of Prokofiev and of some Shostakovich.” Rice admitted, “I've always been much more attracted to Brahms, to Schumann, to a certain extent to Schubert. I don't particularly like programmatic music and Liszt . . . has never been particularly interesting to me.” Though obviously accomplished, she says about ability: “I'm one of those people now if you put it in front of me, I can read it. But if you ask me to play it by ear or with improvisation, I have much harder time. . .” With her busy life as Secretary of State, Rice says she has little time to practice. “I now play almost exclusively chamber music and I have to be selective,” said she. Her favorite symphony is the Beethoven Seventh. (Source: Transcript at http://www.wnyc.org/shows/mam/episodes/2005/01/02 )

Biographical notes: Rice was born November 14, 1954 in Birmingham, Alabama. She earned her bachelor’s degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver in 1974; her master’s from the University of Notre Dame in 1975; and her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver in 1981.