Why no child prodigies in biology?

Indeed. It's why there aren't wunderkind medicine Nobel laureates as opposed to wunderkind physics Nobel laureates or Fields medalists. There's just too much that simply can't be derived from first principles and pure thinking and that needs long, hard-earned experience.

— Ash Jogalekar (@curiouswavefn) August 4, 2026

Ellen Alaverdyan Takes 5

Ellen Alaverdyan skirts the “Wrong Side of the Law”

The Big Ol' Nasty Getdown - "Wrong Side Of The Law" (featuring Ellen Alaverdyan & Dino Jelusick)

“Wrong Side of the Law” (feat. Ellen Alaverdyan & Dino Jelusick)
By The Big Ol' Nasty Getdown
Written by Hovak Alaverdyan & Dino Jelusick
Produced by John Heintz & Hovak Alaverdyan

Musicians on the Recording:

Vocals: Dino Jelusick
Bass: Ellen Alaverdyan
Guitars: Hovak Alaverdyan
Drums: Kenny Aronoff
Keys: Murzo (Ara Torosyan)

Mix: Hovak Alaverdyan
Mastering: Dave Gardner

Video Personnel:

Vocals/Outlaw: Dino Jelusick
Bass: Ellen Alaverdyan
Guitars: Hovak Alaverdyan
Drums: Billy McNicol **Kenny was on tour at the time of filming
Keys: Murzo (Ara Torosyan)
Sheriff played by: John Heintz

Hair and Make-Up: Marine Sargsyan
Director: Karen Khosrovyan
Grip & Lighting: Zhirayr Avetisyan
Editing: Karen Khosrovyan
VFX: Mihran Stepanyan
Color: Hovak Alaverdyan

Producers: John Heintz & Hovak Alaverdyan
Executive Producers: John Heintz

Ellen plays bass [does she ever!]

Nine-year old chess prodigy hopes to become the youngest grandmaster ever

Isabella Kwai, At 5, She Picked Up Chess as a Pandemic Hobby. At 9, She’s a Prodigy. NYTimes, July 21, 2024.

Since learning chess during a pandemic lockdown, Bodhana Sivanandan has won a European title in the game, qualified for this year’s prestigious Chess Olympiad tournament, and established herself as one of England’s best players.

She also turned 9 in March. That makes Bodhana, a prodigy from the London borough of Harrow, the youngest player to represent England at such an elite level in chess, and quite possibly the youngest in any international sporting competition.

“I was happy and I was ready to play,” Bodhana said in a phone interview, two days after she learned that she had been selected for this year’s Olympiad, an international competition considered to be the game’s version of the Olympics.

The fourth-grader, who learned chess four years ago when she stumbled across a board her father was planning to discard, knows exactly what she wants to accomplish next. “I’m trying to become the youngest grandmaster in the world,” she said, “and also one of the greatest players of all time.”

Chess is one of the arenas in which prodigies emerge. Music and math are others. Why? I assume it has something to do with their brains. What?

I note also that playing chess has been central to the development of AI and that it is the first arena in which computers and equaled and then surpassed the best human performance. What can we make of that? I don’t know, but surely there’s something to be discovered here.

* * * * *

Note the final paragraph of this post, On the significance of human language to the problem of intelligence (& superintelligence).

The question of machine superintelligence would then become:

Will there ever come a time when we have problem-solving networks where there exists at least one node that is assigned to a non-routine task, a creative task, if you will, that only a computer can perform?

That’s an interesting question. I specify non-routine task because we have all kinds of computing systems that are more effective at various tasks than humans are, from simple arithmetic calculations to such things solving the structure of a protein string. I fully expect the more and more systems will evolve that are capable of solving such sophisticated, but ultimately routine, problems. But it’s not at all obvious to me that computational systems will eventually usurp all problem-solving tasks.

Sayesha Chowdhury TABLA WIZARD

From the YouTube page:

A Tabla duet by Pt. Pandit Keshab Kanti Chowdhury & Sayesha Chowdhury (grand daughter & shishsya at age of 7) performing on the occasion of CA TV California Festival on 15 Jan 2023 in the Church of Scientology of Los Angeles under the direction of Shuvananda Puri Maharaj Ji who heads the media broadcasting channel CA TV California.

Thanks a lot Shuvananda Puri for giving us this opportunity to showcase Delhi Gharana original Tabla in a duet form.

Sayesha Chowdhury, age 7, is learning Tabla since the age of 1.5 years and have been performing for the last 3 years in national and international level. She has been awarded by CATV California, Sarb Akal Music Society Calgary Canada, Born to Shine ZEE India, Sangeet Kala Kendra Agra and many more.

Listen to the vocables that they utter while they're playing. 

Kwak Dakung, relaxed and in the pocket on a classic blues: "Now's the Time"

MUSE - "Hysteria" - KIDS Collaboration Cover

Produced by Kids Rock For Kids
www.kidsrockforkids.com

KRFK brought together extraordinary young performers for a mind-blowing collaboration!
FOLLOW and SUBSCRIBE to @kidsrockforkids for more incredible content
This first of a series of music videos including these future legends!!

Cover: Hysteria by Muse @muse

Vocals: Vinya Chhabra • age 13 from New Jersey
YOUTUBE @vinya.chhabra
INSTAGRAM @vinyachhabra

Bass: Ellen Alaverdyan - age 11 from Las Vegas
YOUTUBE @ellenplaysbass
INSTAGRAM @ellenplaysbass
FACEBOOK @ellenplaysbass

Drums: Yoyoka Soma - age 14 from Japan
YOUTUBE @yoyoka_soma
INSTAGRAM @yoyoka_drums
FACEBOOK @yoyoka_soma
Spotify @yoyoka

Guitar: Bay Melnick Virgolino (aka The Only Bay) - age 9 from NYC
YOUTUBE @TheOnlyBayMusic
INSTAGRAM @the_only_bay

Guitar & Backing Vocals: Charlotte Milstein - age 14 from San Diego
YOUTUBE @charlottemilsteinguitar
INSTAGRAM @charlottemguitar
TIKTOK @charlottemilsteinguitar

Backing Vocals: Ella Milstein - age 16 from San Diego
INSTAGRAM @ellairismusic

Shoutout to the music video tech team!!
Video: Brian Tweedt @briantweedt
Video: Rob Cammidge @cammidge
Audio Mix: Hovak Alaverdyan @hovakalaverdyan
Music Director: Josh Margolis @gowanusmusicclub
Video Edit: @henry_xie0902
Recorded and Filmed at Tropico Union Los Angeles, CA @tropicounion
Cover Graphics: Cara Radom @csradom

KIDS ROCK FOR KIDS is a NYC-based nonprofit that brings together exceptionally talented and passionate young musicians from around the world – giving them the opportunity to do what they love and connect with their kindred spirits in music, while helping kids in need.

KRFK - Helping the next generation help the world!

Gavriil Scherbenko on May 1

Checking if fingers have grown enough - Проверяет, выросли ли уже пальчики

Гаврилушке сейчас 2 года и 7 месяце. Ему очень хочется играть всей ладошкой, а ручки маленькие. Но он все время проверят, подросли ли пальчики :)) 

 Gavriil is 2 years and 7 months. He wants to play with all hand, but it is too small. Anyway he is always checking if finger has grown enough :)

Kids these days

Theme and variations on root position

Um, err, "root position" is a technical term in musical analysis. It refers to a chord (another technical term) with the tonic (another technical term) voiced on the bottom of the voicing (another technical term). Gavriil is playing triads, though he is doubling the tonic on the top of the voicing as well as having it on the bottom, so the chord he is playing have four notes. He does other things, too, but mostly he's playing chords in root position, or trying to.

Keeping up with Gavriil [thumbs!]

A young composer considers his craft

There's definite order what young Gavriil does here. He starts with some not-quite-random plinking.

He (obviously) hears something and sets out to explore it at 0:37, where he plays a repeated note in the left hand, adds a note with the right (0:43), and then opens it up, adding more notes with both hands (0:48).
Pause.
Repeat the sequence (0:56), starting with a higher note.
Repeat (1:24), quickly.
Repeat (1:33), moving higher, with some variations thrown in (1:36).
Repeat (1:47), moving higher (notice how he shifts position on the bench, 1:49) – follow his eyes.
Repeat (2:03), notice how he lays into that first note (even dropping his right arm to the side), adding the right, filling it out, increasing the volume. The repetition slows, becomes more insistent...
Pause, both hands raised (2:37),
Repeat (2:38), really laying it on with the left, adding the right (2:43)
He's thinking (2:51), and now begins developing some new material.

That's the really significant thing, he introduces some new material after having worked through one basic idea seven times (by my count). I leave it as an exercise to the reader to attend to how he deals with this new material, which seems a bit more concerned with what the two hands are doing at the same time.

After a bit be pauses and thinks a bit at 3:35, and is figuring out whether or not he's done (3:45). Ah, not quite. Last note at about 4:00. But he keeps working his arms and hands without sounding notes, moving them back from the keyboard at 4:10, down to his lap (4:15), then back up. 4:24, hearing his mother (I assume), he's done, and moves away.

Is this how young Johan Sebastian and young Wolfgang got started?

Addendum: From a note to a friend:

Let me offer some observations about young Gavriil. At 2 years and 3 months he’s got problems with fine motor control which have to do with the immaturity of his nervous system. Differentiated control of his fingers is tough. I rewatched half the video, focusing on his fingers. He does most of the work with the first and index fingers of both hands. Ring and pinky are curled under and not used. I saw him use the right thumb twice. I can see how small hands make it difficult to use ring and pinky, but not thumb. This is mostly about motor control, not physical reach. For that matter, why not thumb and pinky to span a fourth, perhaps a fifth? Will he be using thumb and pinky alone anytime soon? That’ll be interesting to watch.

Now, what’s he hearing? You have no trouble those neo-soul chords. Your problem is controlling the hands and fingers to produce them. I’m guessing that young Gavriil is still learning to hear and to organize those sounds. Notice that he does avoid hitting two adjacent keys. He’s figured out that much. Has he gotten as far as a triad, which he could easily produce across two hands? I suspect not. If I had a graduate student who could notate everything he’s doing, which fingers and keys, etc. Better, sit him at an electronic keyboard that records every motion. He may well be playing triads in some inversion, but it’s probably hit or miss and he has no sense of harmonic progression. What he’s controlling seems to me to be rhythm speed and density, pitch density, movement up or down the keyboard, and volume. Which is quite a bit.

Is this what Mozart was doing when he was just a toddler?

On Being a Virtual Exotic Uncle [my Korean trumpet niece]

In the early days of the internet’s available to the general public, as opposed to the military, for whom it had originally been created as ARPANET, there was considerable earnest discussion over whether or not it would amount to anything. Could people do, you know, REAL things over the internet, get REAL work done, have REAL relationships with other people. We now know that the answer to all of those questions is YES.

The internet has certainly been important to me. As a scholar and thinker without any academic affiliation it has made possible an intellectual life that would otherwise have been all but impossible. But that’s not what this is about – thought if you’re curious about that, check out Personal Observations on Entering an Age of Computing Machines. This is about something more intimate and personal.

Back in the early days of the academic blogosphere, which has all but disappeared beneath the traffic on social media, I hung out at Michael Bérubé’s blog, American Airspace, which has now disappeared, though you should probably find traces of it through the Wayback Machine. There I met Bruce Simon, online at the time as The Constructivist, who was with his family in Japan on a Fullbright. He would post photos of his two young daughters at one of his blogs, Mostly Harmless. Before you knew it I was posing Gojochan (a small plastic Godzilla figure) and Sparkychan (a colorful plush doll) for those daughters. That activity grew and grew until it became The Collected Adventures of Sparkychan & Cojochan (Thus Far). (I tell this story in greater detail in this post.)

And that’s how I became a virtual exotic uncle to two young Japanese American girls living in Japan. The oldest is now in college and the younger will be going next year. I’ve never met them in real life, nor their father for that matter, though we keep tabs on one another through social media. But there’s some kind of real relationship three, not deep and strong by any means, but real nonetheless.

More recently I’ve been following the YouTube videos of Kwak DaKyung, a Korean trumpet prodigy who started playing when she was quite young.

She was eleven when I first ran into her videos. Trumpet prodigies are rare, probably because it is so difficult to get a sound out of the instrument. In contrast getting sounds out of the violin or piano is easy; playing those instruments well, that’s a different matter. Moreover, she was interested in jazz. So I’ve followed her quite closely, and wrote a blog post in which I examined eight of her videos.

I also commented on her videos, often with very specific comments about what she was doing. In that way I developed a relationship with her father, who ran her YouTube channel, and indirectly with her. Sometimes we would have a little conversation, back and forth, in the comments section of her videos. Then, a bit earlier this month, her father post of video with just the two of them playing “It’s You or No One,” a jazz standard.

It was excellent. Even before it was finished I was moved to comment: “Love it from the beginning. Nice tempo, nice bounce.” As it finished I realized that I’d heard something else, a new maturity in her playing (after all, she’s now 13!): “Do I hear a young woman emerging from the chrysalis?”

It's a wonderful age we’re living it. Mixed up and crazy and scary, but wonderful. And to be an exotic uncle for young girls half way around the globe, is that not fantastic, the stuff dreams are made on?

Ellen Alaverdyan plays Victor Wooten

Victor Wooten - “Victa” 🎶❤️#bassplayer #victorwooten pic.twitter.com/hyg8CVgzG1

— Ellen Alaverdyan (@EllenPlaysBass) October 26, 2023

Listen to the confidence in her playing

Liszt, childhood, and improvisation

I’ve been reading a fascinating book about improvisation in 19th century classical music, Dana Gooley, Fantasies of Improvisation: Free Playing in nineteenth-Century Music (Oxford 2018). Here’s a passage from a remarkable discussion of conceptions of childhood in relationship to prodigies and improvisation (pp. 204-205):

The prevailing response to both Liszt and Mozart as improvising prodigies was a feeling of wonder and uncanniness. Their mastery of the piano was extraordinary in itself, but their capacity to generate music off the cuff heightened the sense of awe. Improvisation manifested mental and inventive capacities that were thought to belong to adults alone. In his classic study Centuries of Childhood, Philippe Ariès argued that the conception of the child as a different type of being, distinct from adults, be- came more pronounced over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and took its modern form in the educated middle classes of the eighteenth century. The educational philosophy of Rousseau, in particular, promoted the idea that children lack knowledge and need prolonged tutelage to acquire it. Yet Rousseau’s ideas attained general dissemination only in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, after Mozart’s prodigy years, and there is a measurable shift of response between Mozart and Liszt.16 Responses to Mozart were dominated by a discourse of wonder that greeted extraordinary phenomena with assertions of absolute inscrutability. The Englishman Daines Barrington, in his famous 1769 anecdotes of Mozart, did not try to explain how the child prodigy did what he did. Bracketing causal explanations, he merely reiterated the “extraordinary facts” and “amazing and incredible” performances he witnessed, in which improvisations figured prominently: “his extemporary compositions also, of which I was a witness, prove his genius and invention to have been most astonishing.”

By the time of Liszt, however, the conceptual differentiation of children from adults had become more pronounced, and contemporary observers focused less on the “divine gift” than on the precocious maturity of Liszt’s mind. This shift of focus did not entirely kill off the discourse of wonder. A Toulouse paper, for example, reported that “the young virtuoso reawakens the memory of pagan mythology, and it is merely a child that has produced these marvels, this magic, these prodigious feats.” This same review, however, invoked more up-to-date psychological ideas, claiming that “this likeable child manifests a superior mental constitution [organisation].” The notion that a child might possess a mature, adult musical mind had a latent insurgent potential. It suggested that children were not only behavioral mimics, but might also possess independent cognitive-productive power. This was not only at odds with a general perception of children as “unformed,” but also with the way the professional music establishment upheld its authority. As discussed in Chapter 2, improvised free fantasies were often valued for the guild-like learning and professionalism they put on display. Liszt’s fantasies threw into doubt the cherished idea that deep study of harmony and counterpoint were really necessary to improvise well. Czerny, recalling Liszt’s audition to study with him, was struck by the boy’s intuitive grasp of musical rules: “at his father’s request I gave him a theme for improvisation. Without the slightest learned harmonic knowledge he nevertheless brought a certain intelligent sense [genialen Sinn] to his playing.” Critics responded similarly, making a categorical separation between the child’s technical and mental capacities:

Performance on the piano is little more than mechanical work. Thinking, so to speak, plays no role in it . . . but the faculty of improvising music, of pursuing a theme long enough to move from one key to another, of vigorously attacking the most difficult modulations without getting lost and without breaching the rule of composition, this talent is truly the effect of a mind quite particular to the young Liszt. (Pandore, 14 April 1824)20

The baffled responses to Liszt’s early improvisations belong to a more general uncertainty surrounding improvisation. The question of its origins, of how it is possible at all, returns perpetually among both insiders and lay spectators. Answers tend to fall into two polarized lines of explanation: a disenchanted one, according to which it is a “mechanical” reshuffling of learned and practiced patterns, and a quasi-theological one, according to which it channels some supernatural agent or spirit beyond human volition (in romantic discourse, “genius”). Even authors who recognize the binary terms of this debate rarely find a way to avoid them. This persistent undecidability about improvisation’s originating agency affected the discourse around the young Liszt. Any child who exhibited adult-like behavior seemed to cross a “natural” threshold. Paradoxically, though, “nature” also offered the best account of how a child prodigy could do what he did. Liszt, according to the writer just quoted, was “endowed by nature with the rarest capacities.” A conceptual conflict arose between the theory that children’s minds are shaped by conscientious education and the theory that these minds are formed by natural endowments. Liszt’s improvisations pressed this conflict to the fore, and the explanation by “nature” only reaffirmed the mystery of origination.

With the help of his free fantasies Liszt managed to escape the skepticism and suspicion critics increasingly expressed toward child prodigies. In the fifty or sixty years intervening between Mozart and Liszt there had emerged an entire world of keyboard pedagogy oriented specifically toward children—a world represented well enough by Czerny’s incessant stream of private lessons and published exercises. Consequently, musical prodigies and pseudo-prodigies cropped up more often than they had in previous eras. By the 1840s a musical observer could write that “musical child prodigies are shooting up from the ground like mushrooms after a night of warm rain.” It was becoming more difficult to resist the impression that an exceptionally talented child was not the product of a punishing educational regime or an overbearing, exploitative parent.

I’m struck by this sentence: “Any child who exhibited adult-like behavior seemed to cross a ‘natural’ threshold.” It’s interesting to think about that threshold in the context of, for example, Henry Lau’s presentation of young Korean prodigies [1]. He’s aware of both their musical abilities and the fact that they’re still children and is at ease with both roles. But there is also the remarkable performance of the Nakagurose Elementary School band [2]. There’s no reason to believe that any of these children are prodigies, nor is the composition they perform particularly difficult, though few middle-school bands in America could play so well. But, as they perform, they are neither children nor adults; rather, they are simply musicians, human beings engrossed in making music.

References

[1] See my posts:

• Kids and Music 6: Get Aboard Henry Lau’s Freestyle Express [Born to Groove]
• Kids and Music 5: Kwak DaKyung, Jazz Trumpeter [Born to Groove]
• Born to Groove, Kids and Music 3: Henry Lau has a good heart & knows how to work with kids [kawaii alert!]

[2] They are the third of three examples in this post: Born to Groove, Kids and Music 1: Three Examples. I would also call your attention to the second example, Colt Clark and the Quarantine Kids. This is a family band, father (Colt) and three children, Cash (bass), Beckett (drums), and Bellamy, who fronts the band in various ways. While both Cash and Beckett are capable enough, Cash is certainly not at good as Ellen Alaverdyan and Beckett is not as good as either Nandi Bushell or Yoyoka.

Ellen & Yoyoka Q&A: “I usually just start to feel the music and go crazy”

Yoyoka is a Japanese girl (12 years I believe) who plays the drums and has become fairly well known on social media. Ellen is 10 and plays bass. Ellen's father, Hovak, is asking the questions. This exchange happenes at about 22:17.

Hovak: How did you develop your feel for different styles of music and precise timing.

Ellen: I don't know why but for funk I had bang, I had banged like rock for some reason so and I kind of feel the beat no matter what. Like I just automatically start going like this [moves body, Yoyoka, too]. For rock, for rock I usually just, instead of having like you know automatic like you know b' or anything, I usually just start to feel the music and go crazy, unless, unless, you know, you're not at the place for that, but and usually for pop or soul music it's gonna' get stuck in my head and I'm gonna' sing, sing it whenever I feel like singing. Basically that's the whole, that's I'm just I'm just basically saying the main idea of the feel that I get. And there's a lot of music genres that would be very, in that case this question would be a very long question so OK.

Yoyoka [on-screen translation]: So the first thing she said was uh so, whatever music regardless of the you know category of music, if I like it, I just enjoy it, feel it, and then I can't you know play, I can you know play with it naturally. I just happens. The second thing, for example funk music, it's very unique, so it's very upbeat, so I have the intention in my mind like you know um uh so just move like the body movements like up and down. [they all move their heads up and down and chuckle]

Kids and Music 6: Get Aboard Henry Lau’s Freestyle Express [Born to Groove]

Let’s pick up where we left off with my previous post on Lau, Born to Groove, Kids and Music 3: Henry Lau has a good heart & knows how to work with kids [kawaii alert!]. We know he was born in Canada to Chinese parents and was headed for a career in classical music when SM Entertainment sent him to K-Pop stardom. Last year he started a series of videos in which he appeared with various young Korean musicians, Henry Together. My earlier post featured a young violinist, YoEun Seol. I also covered his work with Kwak Dakyung, a young jazz musician, at the end of my previous post in this series.

Henry worked with twelve musicians in the first season of Henry Together. Now we’re ready for a second season. But first...

Music Genius friends from Henry Together

Some of the musicians from the first season got together and did a collaborative performance of one of Henry’s songs, “Trust Your Face.” The music was arranged and the project coordinated by the guitarist, Sean Song.

Listen to how all the voices and instruments work and coordinate together.

Kids these days!

Now we’re ready for the first post of Season two, after which we’ll return to season one. It’s confusing, I know, but this isn’t about chronology.

Can We Do A Concert Through Zoom?

They’re all on screen chatting with Henry. Have they become a community? Henry suggests they get together and perform that tune that we’ve all heard a jillion times, “Canon in D.”

And so Henry leads them through putting an arrangement together. I don’t know whether or not it simply happened online Just Like That, or whether there’s been some behind the scenes work, and how much editing has been done. None of that really matters. What matters is that Henry is showing us that music doesn’t just fall from the sky. It has to be planned out and arranged.

So they give it a try (at about 3:32). Sounds a bit disorganized, no? Still, Henry is encouraging. They give it another try (about 4:24). They run through it, but we don’t hear most of it. They finish, Henry’s encouraging, but they all know better. After all, they are good musicians. They’re not fooled by this well-intended positivity. They work on things and we get the finished version, with Henry joining on violin (about 6:01).

Henry’s family having a little recital

Let’s leave Henry Together for a minute and see him with family and friends. His brother plays some stride (boogie-woogie), with Henry joining. His mother sits down at the piano, then his father.

Nine Year Old Piano Prodigy’s Fast Hands

Let's return to the first season of Henry Together. Henry meets young pianist, Seo Yul Shin in episode 6.

They chat. She tells Henry she’s ten “this year” (c. 2:04) and that she’s seen every episode of Henry Together. And she thinks that she’s a better pianist than Jichan (Episode 1). What does she want to eat? Chicken. He orders two fried chickens.

She says she was nervous in the car coming over, but not now. It’s cool “to see someone from TV sit right in front of me” (2:51). Ah, the melding of two worlds, TV world and the Real World. He brings in the chicken and they eat – as you may know by know, sharing a meal is part of Henry’s protocol for these meetings. And then, out of nowhere, she asks him his blood type (3:14): “Just the ideal type for a lot of people,” a remark she regards with well-justified bemusement. I'm sure many of Henry's fans want to know the answer to that question, but a ten-year old? Back to eating and more chit-chat. They talk about music lessons and stuff. “More cola?”

To music. She plays Chopin, Waltz No. 3, aka “Cat Waltz” (about 5:07). When she’s finished we hear off-screen clapping. Henry’s impressed. How does she react? “I made a lot of mistakes.” She may be a child, but you don’t get as good as she is without being rigorously self-critical.

Henry suggests that they play some Paganini together, remarking that eye contact is very important in collaboration (c. 7:13). After they’ve finished Henry gives the piano a glissando from the upper register down. She follows, doing it in the middle-to-lower register. “I’ve never tried scraping before.” “You’ve never done this? Try again. Mom’s not watching, right? Because my mom didn’t let me do this stuff either.” They play around until they get together on a gliss and a final note.

She starts playing a Piazolla tango (8:26). Henry joins in on violin (reading music laying on the piano), occasionally having intonation problems. I can’t really tell whether he’s sharp or flat, but he’s definitely a bit off here and there. But who cares? They’re getting acquainted. At the end she throws in a gliss to a high note.

Now Henry gets serious (at about 9:31). “Let’s just play what we feel.” She’s puzzled. He shows her, playing some arpeggios on the keyboard. She follows. “You’ve only been playing off the sheet music so far. Forget the sheet music for now. Today you just play what you feel. So far you practice a ton and you try to be perfect, but music is also about being free.” He works with her a little. She plays two hands. Henry joins in, one hand. They stop. Chat a bit. Start again, she’s on piano, he’s on violin. The video ends.

See what he’s going? Do you understand why I’ve entitled this post Henry Lau’s Freestyle Express?

Henry and Piano Prodigy Perform a New Song

Here’s their performance. They open with one of many sets of variations on something by Paganini – ending with that glissando she learned from Henry. Then Seo Yul Shin plays a solo (don’t recognize it, couldn’t make out the title on the screen), and another, Chopin’s “Cat Waltz.”

They conclude with the song they made up during their “getting to know you” phase (6:30). She decided to call it “Wind.”

Season One Reunion

Henry opened season two with a reunion of the musicians from the first season. Here it is almost without comment. Henry does say that he learned from his young prodigies, that they forced him to new music. Any reason to doubt him? No.

Coaching Bonus

Henry is doing a lot of coaching with these young musicians. I have two other posts involving coaching:

An interesting example of vocal coaching, Oct. 16, 2014, https://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2014/10/an-interesting-example-of-vocal-coaching.html.

Ride the Lizard, Valkyrie, Ride It!, November 15, 2013, http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2013/11/music-ride-lizard-valkyrie-ride-it.html.