This is the memory palace. I'm Nate Demet.

One afternoon, Hazel's mom was at work and her grandmother was singing her a little song

to get her to nap. It favored him that pretty much always worked.

But on this day, it was Grandma who fell asleep on the couch.

So three-year-old Hazel got up from the bed and wandered around the sunny house and

turned it at. Worm Breeze coming in through the open windows. And she walked to the piano.

And she played that him. That song her grandma had just sung herself to sleep with.

She had never played the piano before.

She took what she'd learned from watching her mom teach bigger kids lessons when no one knew

she was watching. Took what she'd been able to deduce about the functioning of this marvel's

machine that she wasn't yet allowed to touch. And took what she'd heard. Took the music that

filled her. And she played. Not like a child. These weren't me or probing notes stumbling toward

a melody. What her grandmother heard awake now and a gap in the doorway was music fully formed,

too handed. What she'd heard, she'd say, was a miracle.

One afternoon, Frank Damrush was in his office at Juilliard making notes and some music from

Mendelssohn or Moller. Whatever the professor was doing before he'd heard an atrocity being

committed down the hall. He couldn't take it. He wasn't in charge of auditions, but he couldn't

just sit idly by as someone butchered rock mononov. The point of your Juilliard audition was you

demonstrated your mastery of the masters. The point of the audition was you showed what you'd

learned so they could determine whether you could be taught. But here, someone was ruining the

professor's day by ruining the prelude in C-Sharp minor. Someone was improvising and interpreting it.

And as he stormed down the hall to put a stop to it all, he could hear all the better just what

...