Dreams of a Kitten by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Dreams of a Kitten

Page 205

instead of NEE-gro to avoid racial connotations. However, after

Laura left high school, she chose her own surname, "Nyro,"

having it pronounced as NEAR-oh.

"I've created my own little world, a world of music, since I was

five years old", Nyro told “Billboard Magazine” in 1970, adding

that music provided, for her, a means of coping with a difficult

childhood. "I was never a bright and happy child." As a child,

she taught herself piano, read poetry, and listened to her

mother's records by Leontyne Price, Nina Simone, Judy Garland,

Billie Holiday, and classical composers such as Debussy and

Ravel. She composed her first songs at age eight. With her

family, she spent summers in the Catskills, where her father

played trumpet at resorts. She credited the Sunday school at the

New York Society for Ethical Culture with providing the basis of

her education; she also attended Manhattan's High School of

Music and Art.

Nyro was close to her aunt and uncle, artists Theresa Bernstein

and William Meyerowitz, who helped support her education and

early career.

While attending Joseph Wade Junior High School in the Bronx,

Nyro performed an early version of the song “Eli's Coming” in