Early Life
Born in Guelph, Ontario, he studied violin at eight and began playing harmonica at aged eleven as a member of his father's band. In 1935 the family moved to London. At the outbreak of the Second World War he was a student at the Leipzig Conservatory. Reilly was arrested and interned for the duration of the war in prisoner of war camps. However it was there that he developed his virtuosity on the harmonica, basing his ideas of phrasing and interpretation on the playing of Jascha Heifetz.
Read more about this topic: Tommy Reilly
Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)