Just Being Me - Sippy: a world class pianist that i know

Just Being Me - Sippy

a simple plain jane who believes Jesus is her only saviour. she has an awesome family but in need of salvation. her current addiction is 2pm but shinhwa will always remain as the love of her life.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

a world class pianist that i know

Mei Yi and Mei Kuen, 2 lovely sis that were my neighbours when I'm in kindergarten.

Allow me to introduce you this very very talented, down-to-earth and beatiful world class pianist who's in her early 20s now. She's the girl who next to the red-shirt girl and her name is Foo Mei Yi.

I know Mei Yi when I was very very young, before I enter kindergarten. Both sisters were my neighbour that time. I wasn't close to Mei Yi because of age gap but I do remember my parents tell me from time to time on how talented she is. Mei Kuen, her sister isn't as talented as she is in playing piano but she's good too. I always listen to my mom telling me the tale that Mei Yi can actually play by ear when she was just 3. She played a song that she heard from a show using her toy piano. Not sure how many of you owned that piano as your toy before but I did, when I was very very young. Don't think they sell it anymore. These toy piano was replaced by toy keyboards. =P

Knowing Mei Yi's talent, her parents tried their best to develop her skills in playing it. When she was still in her primary, the mother sent her to KL for piano classes 2 to 3 times a week under a teacher called Miss Lai who's very very experience in teaching. Under her, Mei Yi improved a lot. She had to practice for several hours a day since Miss Lai was a very strict teacher as well. Due to her talent and hardwork, a genius is born.

At the age of 15, she was sent to England to further her studies on music. Since then, she has been living in England all this while. Her spectacular performance has been winning her a lof of awards and attentions from the music field itself. She majors in piano and able to play well in violin too. I admire her talent and hardwork. Surprisingly a girl like her isn't proud at all. She'll still smile at you, talk to you and even laugh at you.

I have been to their house many times. There's this special room where the piano is located. On the wall, you can see the award and newspaper cutting about Mei Yi's achievement in music. In the cupboard, you can also see the awards that she has won. Just last year, she joined an international competition in Germany. Of all the contestants, she was the youngest. She made her way to the final and she's the only Asian too. The Germany media praised her on her playing. There's only 10 contestants on final and she got the 10th place. For a pianist as young as her, this is consider a very very remarkable achievement. In time to come, I'm sure she will be able to get first place. I can see that her parents are really really proud of her. Wish my parents will be proud of me as well. =)

Mei Yi came back to Malaysia for holiday, just in time for the HSBC Classic, to perform her solo piano in Piano Festival. The show started at 8:30pm, we arrived just in time for the show. My seat was in front, at B. Too bad I can't look at her playing, the grand paino was blocking my view. I can only see her facial expression. As she plays, her facial expression changes as well. My mom said she's like a cartoon. To me, she's like communicating with the notes. She feels their emotions. When the notes are happy, she's happy. When the notes are sad, she shows a sad expression, then trying to comfort them. It's as though there's a life in whatever she plays, very very amusing, can't take your eyes off her.

There's a 15 minutes break in between. When we reentered the hall, we didn't follow our previous seats, we sat at other places instead, somewhere where we could see her fingerings, see her hands playing on the piano. This time, when she played, I could see how the piece was formed under her magical touch. You could see her fingers jumping gracefully around. CW said her finger was like jumping spider. It's a compliment for a pianist if you say their finger curves like a spider, at least that was what my piano teacher told me when I was in my primary school. Dad said it's amusing when all 5 fingers were accurately placed on the right notes at the right time especially she was playing so swift and so smoothly. Looking at her I know it took her long hour of practice to achieve such results.

After the performance, people went down to meet her in person, congratulating on her magnificent skill. I feel there's a gap between me and Mei Yi. A gap that is so wide that nothing much can do about it. There's no way mending the gap unless I'm in her world too, which was surrounded by classical music. I'm pretty sure that's something I don't want to get involve with. At least, I'm glad to know Mei Yi personal, at least she knows my name. I should be grateful for that.

posted by sippy @ 11:24 PM

1 Comments:

At 10:34 PM, Anonymous said…

Thanks for sharing your personal encounter with Foo Mei Yi. I watched her concert too and I read about her in Air Asia magazine today. She loves what she is doing and she is going somewhere with it too. Awesome! !