In 1947, he auditioned successfully for a piano scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music's Preparatory Division for Children, which he attended on Saturdays. He demonstrated musical aptitude in his second-grade choral class, and when his teacher sent a note home suggesting he take piano lessons, his mother took a part-time job in an Abraham & Straus department store for six months to pay for a second-hand upright. His father's cousin Rachel Gorman (née Cohen), the daughter of Isaac Cohen and Calo Cohen (née Sedaca), was married to Morris Gorman (né Gormezano) (paternal uncle to singer Eydie Gormé). He grew up in Brighton Beach, on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. Sedaka's mother, Eleanor (née Appel), was an Ashkenazi Jew of Polish and Russian-Jewish descent. His father, Mordechai "Mac" Sedaka, was a taxi driver and a Sephardi Lebanese Jew whose parents came to the United States from Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1910.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |