When 7-year-old William Zhang’s fingers touch the keys of a piano, it feels like he’s figure skating, like his fingers are dancing, like he’s projecting the images he sees in his head, he said.
“When I play piano, the music turns into images,” Zhang said. “For example, when I play the Chopin Minute Waltz Op. 64, No. 1 in flat major, I imagine there’s a horse in a wheat field that’s playing tag with a bumble bee.”
Zhang’s family refers to him as a “piano prodigy.” However, his imagination and talent have allowed him to live up to that title beyond the four walls of his home in Lawrenceville.
In fact, he’ll have a national stage Sunday night when he appears on NBC’s “Little Big Shots” with Melissa McCarthy.
In his short life, he’s already been named the winner of the American Protege International Piano & String competition and was invited last year to perform at New York’s Carnegie Hall, his mom, Julie Wang, said.
“I feel really proud of myself,” William said. “I don’t get nervous unless I feel I’m not ready, and when I play piano I have to be very excited to play. When I play, I express joy to (people) and it makes me more excited because they bring the joy back to me.”
William’s father, Todd Zhang, said he doesn’t think his son quite understands yet what it means to be a piano prodigy. Like other kids, William enjoys playing Legos and playing basketball with his friends and has noticed that people are good at different things, even things he doesn’t necessarily excel at.
For William’s parents, piano is more like a hobby they will support for as long as William enjoys it and gives it all he’s got, Todd said.
His philosophy is that as his father and that of William’s two older siblings, his job is to support them and to provide guidance. How fast they will run is up to them.
“There’s no limit if you want to grow,” Todd Zhang said. “... The philosophy is that if you want to do something, you do it best. Don’t do mediocre. You will do everything good.”
Todd said he immigrated to the United States from China about 30 years ago. Unlike families who teach their kids to play music whether they like it or not, he said he doesn’t push his kids to do anything they don’t want to do.
“So what happens when he plays piano is that he really enjoys it,” Todd Zhang said. “That makes a big difference. ... He has his own passion. I think it started the moment he was about 1.5 years old. I saw that. ... Later on, he just continued to build up.”
As the father tells the story, when William was just over 1 year old, he touched a piano for the first time at the Georgia Institute of Technology, playing both the white and black keys, while his mom was in a meeting. After that, he started taking lessons from someone at their church in Lilburn when he was about 4 years old.
As time went by, Todd searched for a more advanced music teacher, as William quickly grasped the different concepts. He inquired about lessons at Emory University, University of Georgia and Georgia State University, but everyone except one professor said they didn’t teach anyone that young.
A professor at GSU, however, invited William to play in his office and offered to find him a graduate student that would teach him, but after listening to him play for just 5-10 minutes, the professor said he was interested in giving William lessons at his office once a week from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Eventually, William competed in the American Protege International Piano & String competition, where out of thousands of video submissions, he was selected as one of 80 first-place winners. Then, out of those 80, he was one of the top four given a Judge Distinction award, Todd said, and invited to play at Carnegie Hall.
“I think we still don’t believe it,” Todd Zhang said. “Everything in our life changed after that because the media interviewed us and then this past summer ‘Little Big Shots’ invited William to film. So far, that’s William’s story, but it doesn’t stop yet.”
William said he hopes to play piano for many more years. This Sunday, he will appear on NBC’s “Little Big Shots” with Melissa McCarthy as the only classical music player.
In a completely reimagined new season, McCarthy will meet with kids from all corners of the globe, including William, who will take viewers into their world, share their remarkable stories and show viewers the talents that set them apart, Melissa Cuasito with NBC Entertainment Publicity said.
“It’s a celebration of how resilient, funny and inspiring kids can be when we allow them to be unabashedly themselves,” she said. “They may be little, but their hearts are big.”
Last year, William started writing his own music. He will play one of his songs on the show.
“When he started playing piano,” Todd Zhang said, “I felt so happy because I’ve seen the concert pianists and their technical skills and the artistic expression. It’s so beautiful. I just think: ‘Oh, we’re so lucky.’”
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