Gabriela Montero sees herself as its modern liberator

‘My first Christmas,’ she relates, ‘when I was seven months old, my grandmother bought a two-octave toy piano for my cousin who was three. I began to play the songs my mother sang to get me to sleep. She recorded me.’ On her third birthday, Gabriela gave a recital made up of improvisations. Formal lessons followed. At eight, she played a concerto with the Simon Bolivar Orchestra and won a stipend to study in Miami ‘with the worst possible person I could have ended up with.’"