“Prince the artist” &&& his music makes me move!  I was listening to the radio as I was lying on my yoga mat stretching yesterday morning and the news came in that Prince had died.  Such a premature death and lose for those of us that would have loved to have heard the music he would have produced had he lived another few decades.

His classmate Eben Shapiro at the WSJ writes about how he played the trumpet in middle school and that they “all knew that one kid was the best player in the band”.   He handled many of the band’s arrangements and his fellow students thought his rendition of “Shaft” was even better than the original. By the time he was in high school he was already playing professional gigs (i.e. weddings and bar mitzvahs) and would spend hours playing the piano alone in a practice room at school.

David Schmader’s excellent Seattle Time’s article this morning calls Prince a “one-of-a-kind musical genius” who also became a pop superstar.  He clearly loved to create and play music.  It was his passion from the time he was very young as he shared with Larry King.  He also shared that Stevie Wonder was a role model and inspired him with the spirit with which he plays music.  Well, it seems that music was exactly what fed Prince’s spirit and we all were the beneficiaries of that passion and love.

In the New York Times, Jon Pareles perfectly describes Prince as a “sex symbol devoted to romance and pleasure, not power or machismo” and that on his biggest hits he sings “affectionately and playfully about sex and seduction”.

In Seattle, Prince played on the radio all day long on the day he passed.  I moved from stretching to a sweaty heart-pumping cardio workout because I just had to rise up and dance!  Thanks for encouraging me through the years to get up and move Prince-I can feel your spirit!

jan@wellhealthyways-just one of your millions of fans