Arts & Entertainment
Music in Her Fingers
Westporter Connie Zhou to perform as first-place winner in the Musical Club of Hartford's piano competition.
When Connie Zhou plays the piano, she does so with intensity and focus.
On a recent afternoon in her Westport home, Zhou played this Patch reporter a sample of the Rachmaninoff "Moment Musical," Opus 16, No. 4.
Her fingers flew over the keys of the Steinway grand in the elegant living room where she lives with her parents and 12-year-old younger sister Katie, a violin player. It's easy to believe 16-year-old Zhou practices for two hours every day, and that she does well in most of the competitions she enters.
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The Rachmaninoff piece was part of the repertoire that earned her first place in the Musical Club of Hartford's 2010 High School Scholarship Piano Competition earlier this month. Zhou, who was the youngest competitor there, won $500 for placing first. As part of her accomplishment, she is performing in a winner's recital Sunday at the Westminster Presbyterian Church in West Hartford, where the competition was held.
A piano student since the age of five, Zhou currently studies with Edith Sullivan of Danbury. By the time she was six, she had already entered her first competition.
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Zhou remembers that her parents played a lot of classical CD's as she was growing up, and she enjoyed them from an early age. "I always thought it looked really cool, when I saw performers on TV," she answered when asked what sparked her interest in piano.
The toughest part about playing, according to Zhou, is that, "when the competitions are far off and the pieces are new and don't sound very good yet, I have to discipline myself to practice slowly so that I learn them right."
Zhou maintains she's not focused on winning, but on playing the best that she can.
"Competitions are a mental game," she said. "I try not to make mistakes in practicing on the day of the performance – and I try not to worry about how the other performers sound."
Over the years, the practicing has gotten easier, Zhou said. It used to be that when her mom would go out, she might say she'd practice, and not always do it. But lately, she is finding she gets a lot of joy from her time at the ivory keys, and rehearses willingly.
Zhou, a sophomore at Staples High School, has every intention of keeping up her performance skills through college and throughout life, but she doesn't plan to major in music, or attend a conservatory. She has other interests, she said, including painting, of which many of her works are displayed on the walls of her parents' home. According to Zhou, the young people who go into careers as professional solo pianists must make that the focus of their lives, and often need to be home-schooled.
"They practice more like five hours a day. Way more than I do," she said.
Zhou loves to play, though. "When I play," she said, "my mind is constantly thinking about what's next, but once you know a piece well, you kind of zone out."
She laughed as she confessed, "People tell me I sometimes look like I'm in another world when I'm playing."
The High School Competition Winners Concert is open to the public, and admission is free. It will include Zhou as well as the top three winners from the Piano, Strings, Winds, and Voice sections of the competition, and is scheduled for 2:00 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 31, at the Westminster Presbyterian Church, 2080 Boulevard, in West Hartford.
