Nerine Barrett

Nerine Barrett (born 3 February 1944) is a Jamaican classical pianist, one of the few black women who have achieved international recognition as a pianist. She was selected in 1966 by the Young Concert Artists to appear at Carnegie Hall and the following year won the Mozart Memorial Prize of the Haydn-Mozart Society of London. In the 1980s, she began teaching music as a professor at the Hochschule für Musik Saar and later at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold. She continued to perform both as a solo artist and as part of the Trio Paideia.

Early life and education

Nerine Barrett was born on 3 February 1944, in Kingston, Jamaica to Mary M. (née McDonald) and Everald A. Barrett. She was the youngest of three sisters and had a younger brother. Her mother worked as a teacher and secretary and her father was a mathematician and physicist, who was the headmaster at Cornwall College. Barrett began to play the piano when she was two years old and performed on Radio Jamaica for her third birthday. She was first taught piano by Ena Helps and then studied with Trinidadian teacher Rita Coore. She attended Wolmer's Girls' School in Kingston.

In 1958, Barrett was selected along with Maxime Franklin...

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