Cut & Paste — St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Music Director Stéphane Denève

When Stéphane Denève was a 10-year-old child growing up in a small town in the north of France, he heard something he liked.

A nun liked to play the pipe organ in the chapel at his Catholic school, and Deneve would hide there to listen.

“I thought the sound of the organ was extraordinary,” he said in an interview at his new office in Powell Hall. “I was enchanted.”

Fortunately for classical music lovers in St. Louis, the nun found little Denève hiding there and suggested he take piano lessons.