CARSTAIRS - A 10-year-old piano student who won awards at a local music festival -- and provincially -- impressed judges at a national competition so much that they created an extra prize for her, according to her teacher.
Jocelyn Zhou took third place in the 12-and-under category during the first Canada West Performing Arts Festival, held in Saskatoon July 21-23.
She also received awards during the Olds & District Kiwanis Music Festival this spring and the Alberta provincial Music Festival, which was held totally online this year, in the wake of COVID concerns.
Another student, Ella Challoner, was slated to compete in Canada West Performing Arts Festival in the musical theatre category but was unable to attend, according to Olds & District Kiwanis Music Festival Society treasurer Arlene Wilde.
However, Zhou did. She played a Mozart concerto.
“I thought she did phenomenally well. She’s very young; only 10, and a very tiny, tiny little girl too,” said Zhou’s piano teacher, Kathleen van Mourik, who lives south of Carstairs.
Van Mourik noted the competition was tough. A lot of Zhou’s competitors were 12, going on 13.
"I had said to her, ‘this is a great opportunity, just play your best,’" van Mourik said. “She played beautifully and she placed third.
“They actually only had a first and second prize and they added a third prize, which I thought was great recognition for her talents, so that was actually really nice.”
As a national competition, the Canada West Performing Arts Festival could be daunting, but Zhou handled it well, van Mourik said.
"She loves performing. She gets maybe a little bit nervous, but I think she just enjoys the thrill of getting up there and playing,” van Mourik said.
“She’s a very mature performer actually. And I love teaching her, because even though she’s only 10, she seems almost like an adult, like a young adult. She’s very mature and very responsible.
“She works very hard also. She practises between three and four hours a day. She’s a very dedicated musician.
“Sometimes when we talk about music she says, ‘I’m obsessed with playing the piano.’”
Zhou, who lives in Calgary, has been coming to van Mourik for piano lessons for about three years.
When Zhou first started, she was already playing at a Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM) Grade 2 level but only three years later is already playing at RCM Grade 10 pieces.
“I mean, she’s tiny, so we have to be very careful with her hand size, so certain music is limited in terms of what she can physically play,” van Mourik said.
“But certain composers, like Mozart and Chopin and certain composers are really fine composers if you have a smaller hand,” she added.
"We’re careful with the music we choose so that we don’t pick pieces that are too big for her musical development.”
Over the years, van Mourik has worked with some very talented students. She ranks Zhou right up there.
"I feel like when I teach her it’s like teaching a university student or a young adult. Like I really feel like I can work with her on a very sophisticated level.
“And that’s definitely a gift, because a lot of kids, you work with them as kids, right? You can teach them of course, lots of wonderful things about music, but you’re working on an intellectual level that’s a lot younger,” she said.
“I would say she performs like professional. Like when you hear her play, she plays extremely well. She doesn’t play like a child, she plays like a professional pianist.”
Van Mourik thinks Zhou is good enough that she could indeed turn professional if she wanted to.
"She’s serious enough and dedicated enough. I think she’d like to be. I mean she’s as good as a lot of professionals, actually,” she said with a laugh.
“I think the challenge is to maintain a path that is still giving her a childhood. She has a wonderful childhood, but you don’t want to push them to the point where they lose interest because they’re forced to play all the time.”
During an interview with the Albertan, Zhou said she may indeed become a professional musician some day.
“Maybe, probably, yeah,” she said. “Music just – like sounds really beautiful and really pretty.”
Zhou mostly plays classical music.
“I play Mozart and like Chopin; like, romantic stuff. And sometimes baroque stuff, but I kind of hate it,” Zhou said. “It’s really hard.”
She was asked if she likes rock or jazz.
“I’m starting to like jazz,” she said.
In the coming years, Zhou hopes to accompany music students as they perform in middle school and high school classes.
She figures she ended up in third in the Canada West Performing Arts Festival because her competitors were bigger and older than her and could therefore “play larger pieces, bigger pieces.”
However, Zhou is confident she’ll do better next year because she too will be older.
Zhou was asked why she goes all the way to Carstairs to take piano lessons rather than working with a teacher in Calgary.
“Because she’s awesome. She’s a really awesome musician and a really nice teacher,” Zhou said.
Besides, “she lives in Carstairs, but she also comes to Calgary to teach.”
Zhou is thankful for the training she receives from van Mourik and for a scholarship she received from Olds & District Kiwanis Music Festival organizers.
