Interesting Facts About Sarah
Sarah was born in Alaska.
Because of this, she likes to fantasize about growing up in an igloo house and speaking Inuit, the language of the Eskimos (both, just a fantasy).
Sarah comes from a long line of Samurais from her mother's side.
They are the Aso clan originating in the Kyushu prefecture of Japan.
Sarah made her debut with an orchestra at age 11 playing the Mozart concerto.
At age 16, she became the national champion at the piano and was subsequently invited by the American Academy of Achievements to receive the prestigious Golden Plate award. She gave a speech in front of hundreds of other national champions and celebrities in the audience including former president Ford, Elizabeth Taylor, the actress, Steven Spielberg, film maker and director of CIA Beverage Webster, among others.
She grew up in both Japan and US, moving back and forth due to her father's international job transfers.
As a result, she ended up doing 7th grade 3 times in 3 different schools in 3 different cities; Seattle, Tokyo, and Potomac, MD. (This was due to the fact that school systems in US and Japan have a different calendar; Japanese schools begin in April and end in March as opposed to the US system where it begins in September and ends in June. Moving back to Japan in June, placed her in middle of 7th grade in Japan, and moving back to US in April got her back to 7th grade again for the 3rd time and this was after she had already finished 7th grade back in Seattle where it all began . . . . !!)
She made up for the never ending 7th grade "hell" by skipping 5th grade (not sure how this happened, but it happened), and 12th grade.
When she was just 8 years old, a little frog jumped into her mouth, made a U turn (in her mouth) and managed to escape by jumping out of her mouth.
She found her life theme and obsession at age 5, when she began contemplating Infinity.
This concept later became her purpose, and approach to the rest of her life
Around the same time, she learned about God, which she later concluded was Infinity.
So her entire purpose became clear, to become One with God. Her goal and purpose has not changed to this day.
In her youth, she had many career aspirations. They were ...
minister/nun, author, dancer, astronomer, philosopher. Becoming a musician or a pianist was never one of her aspirations.
She feels very lucky to be born as the last of the 3 children who took Suzuki music lessons ...
(so by the time it was her turn to learn the pieces from the same book, she had already internalized and memorized them, and they thought she was a child prodigy!) so that she learned 3 times faster than her siblings. . . and after that she was fortunate enough to study with the best teachers.
She feels her love of Jazz began when her brother Ken began playing Jazz trumpet.
She would hear Jazz from his playing and records, and it was always in the background.
She is proud to say that she is probably the only person to have ever passed out of a Performance Seminar class in college ...
by playing the notoriously famous 4'33" piece (A Silent Piece!! by John Cage). Not only did she "perform" the piece in all 3 mvmts (yes there are surprisingly 3 mvmts!!) in front of a stunned crowd of 30 (students in the class), but she also had a real live conversation with the composer himself, John Cage prior to the event to make this all legitimate. After holding her breath for a couple of more weeks after this final semester of her Performance seminar, she was able to breathe again upon receiving her report card, that confirmed that she had, indeed, passed this class!!