At 13, Kit Armstrong already has composed music in a variety of genres from solo piano to full symphony. BY ENRIQUE FERNANDEZ efernandez@herald.com
At a year old, he was counting.. At 7, he got a university scholarship. At 9, he was a full-time undergraduate student.
Kit Armstrong is a 13-year-old pianist, composer and mathematician. Of course, he's already played Carnegie Hall.
And Monday night he will play a solo recital at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts as part of the ''Prodigies and Masters of Tomorrow'' concert series, sponsored by Patrons of Exceptional Artists.
His repertoire will include Bach's Prelude & Fugue in F# minor, Mozart's Piano Sonata in D, Debussy's Images, Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 29 in E, and Chopin's Three Mazurkas and Ballade No. 3 in A-flat.
As a composer, the prodigy, who lives in London with his mother, has written in a wide range of genres, from solo piano pieces to a full symphony, Celebration, which he composed at the age of 7. For four consecutive years, he has won the Morton Gould Young Composer Award.
Writing in The Guardian this month, Stephen Moss admitted to being ''fervently opposed to child performers.'' But his negative theories about prodigies ``largely exploded the moment I heard 13-year-old Kit Armstrong play the first two movements of Beethoven's Pathétique sonata at an assessment at the Royal Academy of Music.
``His playing was so cultured, his joy in performing . . . so obvious, his commitment as he stretched his small frame to reach the low notes so total, that my objections seemed mean-spirited.''
His mother, former Wall Street broker May Armstrong, recalled how ``at 3 he was reading The Wall Street Journal and Business Week . . . and before he turned 5 he had already finished high school math.
''We have to be extremely careful with him,'' his agent, Jilly Clarke told The Guardian. ''We are in some ways acting as guardians.'' Armstrong is already performing in the United States, but Clarke said that ``here [in the U.K.] people are more cautious about hearing very young people. He is in it for the long term and so are we. We don't want to interfere with his education.''
One of his U.S. performances was in South Florida, also sponsored by Patrons of Extraordinary Artists. That was two years ago, when he was 11. Now that he's a ripe old 13, local audiences can expect, at the rate at which Armstrong matures, a seasoned virtuoso more than a prodigy.
