You're listening to "Shortnin' Bread" arranged and performed by John Rosasco. (Copyright Clusterchord Music/BMI. All Rights Reserved.)
I am a musical composer, arranger and pianist. I am also a
mathematician. My areas of musical interest are jazz, gospel, modern classical and music for film and television. I've received four Grammy nominations for records I produced; had songs on the Billboard country charts; had eleven 'number one' songs on the contemporary Christian music charts; and some of the films I've scored have been nominated for Academy Awards. Currently, I compose music for the new Documentary Channel on cable television. Every week I also play piano in an orchestra for an internationally syndicated television show, The Hour of Power with Dr. Robert Schuller. I've played, written and arranged for several well-known artists including Al Green, CeCe Winans, Michael Crawford, Yolanda Adams, Amy Grant, Oak Ridge Boys, Andy Griffith, Aaron Neville, Cynthia Clawson, and others.
My areas of mathematic interests are geometric topology and teaching and tutoring gifted children. I published a topology research paper on planar continua in the Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society before receiving my master's degree in math. My interest in helping gifted children stems from my own background. Influenced and encouraged by my musical parents, I was singing in public when I was two years old and by five, I was performing on television. In high school I had a songwriting and recording contract with Universal in Los Angeles. I went on to study jazz piano and theory in high school with Jerry Murphy, pianist with the Woody Herman Jazz Orchestra. I also studied arranging with Herbert Harrison, a student of French composer Darius Milhaud.
In college, a math professor spotted my math ability. She offered to teach me privately, then arranged for me to study individually with several other math professors for college credit. I believe that math should be taught to gifted students as an art form. From my viewpoint, a math lesson is similar to a piano or voice lesson. I teach my students to memorize, perform and create in math, much like how a music teacher coaches and trains an artist to perform. Just as musical talent is developed and accelerated on an individual basis, so it is, I believe, with mathematical talent.
"The Foundry" Music composed by John Rosasco for The Documentary Channel.
