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SINGAPORE: For most parts, eight-year-old Marc Yu is just like any other kids his age – he loves spaghetti and meatballs, he plays catching with friends in the park, and his favourite television channel is Nickelodeon.
But when seated centre-stage at a piano, the American-born Chinese boy joins the ranks of musicians all over the world who have awed audiences with their music.
The music prodigy started his musical exposure even before he was born. His mother, Chloe Yu, would play the piano or play classical pieces on music players for him while he was still, as Marc himself puts cheekily, "an embryo in my mother’s tummy".
Because playing classical music for an unborn child to listen to is not an unusual custom, Chloe says it was never an intention to nurture his love for music and was pleasantly surprised when Marc started humming along to classical symphonies when he was just two.
At that same age, Marc played full melodies from nursery rhymes with two fingers on the piano.
At three years old, Marc began proper training with Chloe on the piano and after a year, he started on the Cello. He made his orchestral debut three years later at the age of six.
Apart from effortlessly executing classical greats the likes of Beethoven and Mozart, the boy musician has also composed 10 short pieces.
He has performed in numerous recitals, master classes, benefits, and orchestra concerts.
He is also the youngest person to have ever been named a Davidson Fellow (someone who the Davidson Institute for Talent Development has awarded an amount of money for completing "a significant piece of work”) and is currently a scholarship student at the Colburn School of performing Arts in Los Angeles.
But Marc's musical journey hardly stops here – the pint-sized musician has big ambitions to be a world renowned musician in the future. At this tender age, he has already grasped the important qualities of a serious musician.
"There are two hardest things to playing music," he says. "One of them is interpretation - lots of people can memorise and play some notes. But to interpret a piece and to deliver the composer's message to the audience is not easy."
"The second thing is persistence. One cannot give up so easily if he or she wants to succeed."
Marc is currently on a mini educational tour which will take him to Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Marc will perform in Singapore for the very first time at the Victoria Concert Hall late Tuesday evening.
- CNA/yb
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