Frank Wildhorn - Early Years

Early Years

Wildhorn was born in Harlem and spent his childhood in Queens before moving to Hollywood, Florida at age 14. Though he was never interested in music growing up, he became interested at age 15 "when he started fiddling around on the family organ in between football practices." Soon after he taught himself how to play the piano, and Wildhorn realized he wanted to compose music. During high school, he played in and wrote for various bands, ranging from rock and roll to Rhythm and blues to jazz. He attended Miami-Dade College for two years before transferring to the University of Southern California, where he studied history and philosophy. He started writing Jekyll & Hyde with Steve Cuden, who was working at USC when Frank was a student.