Hazel Scott was a born improviser, driven to break the rules. A musical prodigy, jazz sensation and television pioneer and civil rights activist, she was born in Trinidad in 1920, and moved to New York into the heart of the Harlem Renaissance. Her piano playing was so impressive that a Juilliard professor agreed to teach Scott when she was 8. Before she was out of her teens she had performed at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, and was a regular on stage at Café Society, the downtown nightclub