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MP3 John Paul Sharp - Second Base
11 MP3 Songs
ELECTRONIC: Pop Crossover, CLASSICAL: New Age
Details:
Known for his sense of spontaneity and emotion, John Paul Sharp is a prolific recording artist bringing influences from all kinds of musical genres. A little bit of Broadway, Classical, Pop, Electronic, Funk, Rock, etc. can all be found somewhere within the library of music that now exists, titled jps*.
John Paul Sharp was born around the open plains of Kansas, in Wichita in 1979.
"I come from a home where the parents got divorced early on. When I saw The Wizard of Oz for the first time, I knew I was meant for that other side -- the fantastic one with the Emerald City, where you have to depend on your own brains, heart & courage to get where you need to be: Right where you belong."
As an independent child of a single, full-time working mother, John spent many hours at the family''s upright piano, banging out notes that felt good to hear. "From as far back as I can remember, I always had that piano to help me figure out my emotions and feel good about myself."
Through his childhood, John took piano lessons from three different teachers over the period of approximately four years. The first teacher taught him the fingering approach. The second taught him the chord approach. The third taught him how to compose music with a computer. That''s pretty much what you hear in music with the jps* label in today''s world.
John Paul Sharp didn''t always have the best time at learning how to belong in school as a child. From one year to the next, John was either skipping a grade, being held one back, or going back and forth into gifted programs and transitional programs. Some teachers claimed that he was amazingly gifted but terribly lazy. Others shouted learning and behavioral disorders. Either way, people have always been talking about John Paul Sharp.
"When they finally decided that I wasn''t gifted enough to be shipped clear across town to go to the gifted school, they sent me back to my old elementary school, but put me in a class that had both fourth and fifth graders. Technically, if they hadn''t have been trying to place me all the time, I would have normally been in fourth grade. They had me skip a grade and put me in fifth grade. That was when all the bullying started and it didn''t really stop until I started fighting back in high school."
Life as a teenager is never really easy. Having been an extremely independent person for several years before high school even got started, John Paul Sharp went through many struggles, both personally and politically.
At age 14, he came out of the closet to his family, friends and peers at school. While most eventually accepted him for who he was, it was the administration of the public school that he attended that had the most opposition.
From age 5 - 14, John Paul Sharp was heavily involved in musical theater, many times playing lead roles. The first year of his high school career, he had lead roles in all of the plays. That, of course, all changed when the drama teacher had him blacklisted for being the object of her son''s attention.
"I''ll never forget her son kept making fun of me and trying to distract me right before my cue to be on stage during rehearsals. Finally, I just broke down and ran off the stage and cried. My friend Angie went to comfort me, but the drama teacher directed her back into the auditorium and she then proceeded to warn me to stay away from her son. I was horrified. I''ll never forget it for the rest of my life. I never got the opportunity to develop my acting skills again. At that point, I really said goodbye to acting and hello to activism."
As an activist through high school and college, John Paul Sharp wrote monthly columns directed for youth in the Kansas State GLBT Newspaper, The Liberty Press. He was also an editor/reporter for his college newspaper, The Sunflower. In 1998, John was an honorary rally speaker for Wichita''s Gay Pride. The same year he also received the Outstanding Youth award from Kansas'' Gay and Lesbian Association.
John Paul Sharp was a pioneer in online community, creating the first gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered youth support programs for several online services (such as America Online, eWorld, etc.) from 1994 - 2000. By his first year of college, he was offered a job to work with PlanetOut Corporation fulltime.
They relocated him to San Francisco to work as their online community manager. Two years were filled with international traveling, executive corporate experiences and lots of education in humanity. Near the end of the year 2000, John Paul Sharp was laid off due to false expectations for the economy.
What does one do after losing a job that required a lifestyle?
"Why, go back to music, of course! The week after I was laid off, I purchased my first synthesizer, a Yamaha PSR-340. It was only $400.00 and I wrote more music on that thing than anything else I''ve ever owned. That''s probably because I''ve only just recently, in 2004, purchased a new one."
The music didn''t come without pain.
"After I lost that job -- I put a major percentage of my life into that company -- I really had to examine my life and most importantly, my childhood -- to find out what to do next. Some of those discoveries led me into a lot of confusion, fear and loneliness. After living with the pain, without being near family for several years, I finally moved back to my hometown of Wichita. There I sought my parents, therapy and support from loved ones."
From 2002 - 2003, John Paul Sharp spent a year of recovery, growth and healing. Upon a decision made from the heart, John decided his next move would be to Denver, to strengthen his music skills and finish his general education in college.
Due to having shorter fingers than Chopin, John Paul Sharp is not a concert pianist. He is, however, a living breathing artist and the one thing that has been a stronghold all these years is music and the creation of music. Thank you for listening.
For Contact Information:
John Paul Sharp
303-875-5211
me@https://www.tradebit.com
Discography:
The Collection 1994 - 2002 (2002 LP)
Intuition (2003 LP)
Second Base (2004 LP)
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