Notable Obituaries.

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Andre Watts - The first African-American classical pianist:
Born in Nuremberg, Germany, on June 20, 1946, to a Hungarian mother and a Black father who was in the U.S. Army, Watts moved with his family to Philadelphia.

“When I was young, I was in the peculiar position with my school chums of not being white and not being Black, either,” Watts told The Christian Science Monitor in 1982. “Somehow I didn’t fit in very well at all. My mom said two things, ‘If you really think that you have to play 125% to a white’s 100% for equal treatment, it’s too bad. But fighting will not alter it.’ And, ‘If someone is not nice to you, it doesn’t have to be automatically because of your color.’

He was nominated for five Grammy Awards and won Most Promising New Classical Recording Artist in 1964 for the Liszt concerto with Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. He was nominated for a 1995 Emmy Award for Outstanding Cultural Program and received a 2011 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal from then-President Barack Obama.
 
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