Alan Lazar

I think a hero is someone who can be creative, and has a flexible mindset.  I also think that a hero is someone who isn’t afraid to do something new, and can apply past knowledge to new situations, kind of like making connections to books.  One person who I think exemplifies all of these traits is Alan Lazar..

Alan Lazar is a South African composer and author.  He was born in December 15, 1967. He is 51 years old.  He went to Hyde Park High school (near Botswana). He also went to  Wits University in South Africa. After that, he moved to the U.S. and graduated from USC cinema school as a Fulbright scholar, a prestigious, competitive scholarship!

Alan Lazar was creative when he decided to write a novel-- with music!  His book is called Roam, and every couple of chapters, there is a QR code to scan, a link to type, and a piece of music to play.  This was creative because there aren’t many books with music attached. Also, Alan Lazar has a flexible mindset when he composes music.  He has a flexible mindset because whenever composers write music, sometimes they probably write something, play it, and then have to rewrite it because it doesn’t sound good/right.  Also, he had to be flexible when his editor would tell him that it (a sentence/paragraph/page) doesn’t sound good, because that’s pretty much the editor’s whole job.

Alan Lazar wasn’t afraid to do something new when he wrote his book, Roam.  He had never written a book before, and said in an interview “At first the idea of adding music to my book kind of scared me and intrigued me at the same time.”  But, look where it got him! Now, his book has a four star rating on goodreads, and has been reviewed on goodreads 642 times! Alan Lazar wasn’t afraid to try writing a book and was rewarded.  He applied past knowledge to new situations with his book, Roam, and his past experiences as a composer. “Well, I think all creative folks swim in the same big ocean when it comes down to it. So, there’s a lot in common between writing music and writing fiction. For me, with both processes, I tend to start by being a little magpie, finding and searching for little golden fragments of ideas over a couple of weeks, and then slowly stitching them together into a bigger whole. Then, I try and structure everything very carefully, and get rid of everything that’s not needed.”  Another quote from him about the similarities between writing his book and writing music “As I was saying earlier, great music is very difficult to describe in words, and I think most of us composers would argue it describes life, love and the universe, in a way that words just can’t. In the same way, I think the way a dog experiences the world through scent is probably more powerful in some ways than our typical sight-and-speech based experience of the world. I wish I could be a dog for a day.”  He is very good at applying past knowledge to new situations with connections like the ones above.

Alan Lazar is my hero because he did something that no one has done before.  He is also my hero because he is a very accomplished musician, and music is something that I love, and do in my freetime (I play piano).  He is my hero because he is lots of people in one: he is a dad, a composer, an author, a boss, and a CEO of a musical business. I want to live up to his standards of doing something new, that no one has done before.  Thanks for reading, I hope that you have a hero too, and try lots of new things that no one has done before. Thank you!