WMUK contributor Jonathan Boyd, a violist and music student at Western Michigan University, talks about the extraordinary life of an itinerant virtuoso from New Orleans. Louis Moreau Gottschalk broke new ground in the Romantic era by incorporating Afro-Cuban rhythms and dances into his Chopin-influenced works.
To learn more about this composer, Jon recommends the biography Bamboula!: The Life and Times of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, as well as Gottschalk's own published correspondence in Notes of a Pianist.