STAFF PHOTO/SJOERD WITTEVEEN
Ovation instructor Vincent Cheng (top) teaches student Jimmy Nguyen, 14, of Richmond Hill the ins and outs of performing while at his home recently. This work can help him to build his stage presence, which is the result of a new partnership with York Symphony and Ovation.
Richmond Hill
November 18, 2008 05:14 PM
York Symphony Orchestra partners with Ovation to promote young talent
Kim Zarzour, Staff Writer
Words don’t come easily to Jimmy Nguyen.
That’s not unusual for a 14-year-old stuck in a room full of adults and strangers.
What is unusual is this young man’s dream.
The Richmond Hill teen wants to move people. He wants to inflame them with passion and make them feel the same overwhelming emotion that he feels when he hears the great classical composers. He wants to compose and perform, to hold the stage, enthral an audience and soak up the applause. And he wants to do it all with his piano, although he has only been taking lessons for three short years.
So, being your typically tongue-tied slightly shy teenage boy, he sits at his lunch table staring down at his bowl of soup, hands clasped in his lap, jean-clad legs jiggling with pent-up energy, and lets his father talk about his dream, which – against all odds – seems strangely possible.
It’s against all odds because not only is the teen not your typical razzle-dazzle showman, but his parents are not your typical upper-class classical music family.
Jimmy Nguyen’s parents have both been through hell and back. They have suffered the kind of slings of fate that would defeat most people, and yet they ooze with enthusiastic optimism.
They have also managed to connect Jimmy with a ground-breaking new program organized by the York Symphony Orchestra and Ovation Arts Academy, designed to transform budding musicians into captivating entertainers.
Now, the Nguyens say, they can focus on the future, put behind them their difficult past.
Jimmy’s mother Lein escaped the Viet Cong 17 years ago aboard a rickety boat from Vietnam, tossed by rough seas, chased by pirates who raped women, tossed children overboard, shot passengers and stole their food. For four days she went without food and water. When she landed in Canada, sick and weary, she took on any job she could find – “the kind of work you or I could never do,” says Jimmy’s father Austin Lochhead.
“She worked horrible factory jobs, 44 hours a week, never complained, never took a day off, all for the chance at a better life.”
When little Jimmy was born, Lein held him in her arms and stroked his tiny fingers, marvelling at how long and nimble they seemed – how very much like a pianist – and the dream began.
For his part, Jimmy’s dad Austin Lochhead had his own mountains to climb. Seven years ago Mr. Lochhead, who operated his own business, was nearly killed in a car accident.
He survived but hasn’t been the same since. He no longer wears a diaper or relies on a walker, but his brain still doesn’t work properly. He is helped by the York Region Brain Injury Program in Oak Ridges, supporting his family on a $1,500 monthly disability cheque.
Jimmy lives with his sister and parents in a co-op townhouse, a humble rent-geared-to-income unit tucked beside the railway tracks. The fancy-looking piano keyboard, which his family scrimped and saved for, is the only thing of noticeable value in the tiny room.
And yet when the 14-year-old sits down before the instrument, places graceful hands aboard the keys and begins to play, all the misery of a difficult life fades away.
In the dappled morning sunlight filtering through Lein’s faded curtains, Jimmy begins. Outside the open window a bus lumbers by, a boy in headphones bounces a basketball in the parking lot. Nguyen’s music fills the space and that everyday clatter disappears.
He leans forward into the sound, then back again, hands leap and fingers dance. The single mother and her three daughters in the unit next door stop what they’re doing and listen. On the other side, an immigrant from Russia often pulls her chair over and presses up against the wall to hear more clearly.
“That’s my pay-off!” says Austin Lochhead, when the final crescendo stops its echo. “All our sacrifices, all that we’ve been through, all that we do – this is what it’s for. Sometimes I just say to him, ‘Jimmy, play something – anything’.”
Clearly, Jimmy Nguyen can play piano with astonishing talent. He is a prodigy - but is he a performer?
Like many musicians, he has a dream and potential, (after his first three piano lessons he was teaching the class), but no musician can succeed without that special something that draws the audience and make him shine.
Which is why, sharing Jimmy’s piano bench today, is Maestro Vincent Cheng, Ovation’s director of classical music.
Quiet Jimmy may not be a ‘razzle dazzle showman,’ but Cheng hopes that by working with him on showmanship skills, and providing opportunities to play before an audience, Jimmy will make that leap to become a bona fide performer.
It’s all part of the new partnership between Ovation and the York Symphony Orchestra to help make budding musicians more comfortable with taking the stage.
Along with lessons in theory and composition with Alina and Michael Mirzoev, Jimmy spends time with Vincent Cheng learning the finer points of showmanship.
He learns what’s involved in ensemble work – the subtle shared breathing that duets require to get their rhythms in synch. They focus on connecting to the music, to understanding and feeling the composer’s intentions, using facial expression and body language to communicate it to the audience.
Communicating with the audience may be the classical musician’s only hope. Competition for time and a ‘disconnect’ between musician and concert-goer has led to dwindling audiences. David Frieberg, president of the York Symphony Orchestra, has seen a “greying” of symphonic concerts, with the majority of audience members over the age of 60, and few younger faces.
“Either they’re not interested because they have so many other things these days, or they’re being schooled in totally different areas.”
Those who do attend classical performances are not as well educated about the art form as audiences were in the past, says Bonnie Craig, academy director at Ovation.
Concert-goers often rush into the theatre at the last minute without knowing ahead of time what to expect from the music they’re about to hear – which is why it is so important for today’s musicians to drop their introverted or stand-offish demeanour and reach out, draw in the audience and bridge that gap.
“Otherwise people would just buy a CD or sit down with their laptop and download the music themselves,” she says.
Under the new partnership, York Symphony will help by providing audition opportunities.
“We’re always looking for talented players. We may ask top students to perform as guest artists,” Mr. Frieberg says. It’s great experience, he says, and can be a springboard to launch careers.
The Nguyen family hopes Jimmy’s springboard will be Nov. 23, when he takes the stage at Markham Theatre as opening act feature for Vincent Cheng’s choir, Vocal Horizons.
And after that? Jimmy shrugs. He knows he wants to “go all the way,” but struggles to express why - much more comfortable communicating with music than with words.
His father, brimming with pride, has no such difficulty.
“People like me, we do dishes. People like him, they can do so much more ... It’s full steam ahead, pedal down, no looking back.”
He thinks Jimmy is destined for greatness, but if not, that’s okay too.
“Look at us here. We live modestly, we haven’t got much, we live month-to-month. But we have this blossoming beautiful flower here and he enhances us all. So we sacrifice. Big deal.”