A Fistful of Keys

Came across a nice article on the musical abilities of Clint Eastwood. I did know that he played jazz piano (and fairly well), but what I didn't know is that the had been composing music for some of his own films.

What is not generally known is that Eastwood -- amateur jazz pianist and occasional singer ("Paint Your Wagon") -- has been contributing piano pieces and occasional themes for his movies as far back as "Tightrope" (1984). Recently, he scored his own film "Changeling" and co-wrote the title song for his follow-up, "Gran Torino."

check it out.

All in all, a nice write-up that left me wanting to know more.

And then there's this tidbit to consider from actor Dustin Hofman:

a piano was put in front of me when I was about 5 years old, and my lower-middle-class Jewish parents were kind of cliché in the sense they said, “You’re gonna start piano lessons and you’re gonna wind up at Carnegie Hall” [laughs]. That was that generation. And I was one of many, many Jewish kids who did not wind up in Carnegie Hall. But I had practiced classical music, and I actually studied in Los Angeles, where I grew up, at the L.A. Conservatory. And, by the time I got into junior high school and high school — my brother had been in the service and come back from Korea, and he brought back with him from Japan, for some reason, 78 records from the early '50s of the Dave Brubeck Trio. And I knew nothing of modern jazz, and that introduced me, and then I said I want to be a modern jazz pianist

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