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Child prodigy blazed a short path

At 14, the precocious musician and biology student left his parents with a puzzle.

He started reading as a toddler, played piano at age 3 and delivered a high school commencement speech in cap and gown when he was just 10 - his eyes barely visible over the lectern.

Brandenn Bremmer was a child prodigy: He composed and recorded music, won piano competitions, breezed through college courses with an off-the-charts IQ and mastered everything from archery to photography, hurtling through life precociously.

Then, last Tuesday, Brandenn was found dead in his Nebraska home from what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head.

He was just 14. He left no note.

"Sometimes we wonder if maybe the physical, earthly world didn't offer him enough challenges and he felt it was time to move on and do something great," his mother, Patricia, said from the family home in Venango, Neb., a few miles from the Colorado border.

Brandenn showed no signs of depression, she said. He had just shown his family the art for the cover of his new CD that was about to be released.

He was, his family and teachers say, an extraordinary blend of fun-loving child and serious adult. He loved Harry Potter and Mozart. He watched cartoons and enjoyed video games but gave classical piano concerts for hundreds of people - without a hint of stage fright.

"He wasn't just talented, he was just a really nice young man," said David Wohl, an assistant professor at Colorado State University, where Brandenn studied music after high school. "He had an easy smile. He really was unpretentious."

Patricia Bremmer, who writes mysteries and has long raised dogs with her husband, Martin, said they both knew their son was special from the moment he was born. The brown-haired, blue-eyed boy was reading when he was 18 months old and entering classical piano competitions by age 4.

"He was born an adult," his mother said. "We just watched his body grow bigger."

He scored 178 on one IQ test - a test his mother said he was too bored to finish.

Brandenn was homeschooled. By age 6, when many little boys are learning to read, he was ready to tackle high school. He enrolled in the Independent Study High School in Lincoln through the University of Nebraska, taking most of his courses by mail.

His mother said his mind was so facile that if a topic interested him, he could complete a semester's work in 10 days. She said she sometimes worried she couldn't keep pace with her son's intellect, and the family hired tutors.

"He set the pace," she said. "We only did what he wanted."

Brandenn was taking biology at Mid-Plains Community College in North Platte, Neb., and had recently decided he wanted to become an anesthesiologist. He also studied for years at Colorado State, polishing piano skills.

Brandenn turned away from his classical roots and started writing his own spiritual, New Age-style music. He was booked for a concert in Kansas next year.

His family, meanwhile, wonders why he is gone.

"We're trying to rationalize now," his mother said. "He had this excessive need to help people and teach people. . . . He was so connected with the spiritual world. We felt he could hear people's needs and desires and their cries.

And so, she said, Brandenn's kidneys were donated to two people, his liver went to a 22-month-old and his heart to an 11-year-old boy.

[Last modified March 20, 2005, 01:09:07]