Becoming a prodigal piano maestro a musical journey
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every good morning to one and all i’m so
happy to be here and addressing all of
you on this beautiful event
and thanks to uh tedx for inviting me
here as a speaker and also as a
performer
and the piece what you heard me play now
is called uh turkish march allatuca
by ulf gangamedes mozart one of the
greatest composers ever
and the species uh this piece is really
special to me is because this is the
first piece i started to play in piano
so that’s why i started today and uh
let me share you my musical journey so
when i was two years old i started to
play drums
and the very next day my father bought
me a baby size drum kit
and he taught me many patterns and he
plays keyboard in concerts
and i used to accompany him playing the
drums while my sister sang along
so we treated a lot of concerts all over
tamil nadu
and when he was four years old during
2010 we went to australia as a family
and performed there in sydney and
melbourne that was my first
overseas concert that was really an
unforgettable experience
and few years passed and i started
learning a few indian percussion
instruments such as
tabla and in 2013 i was announced as the
india’s best youngest child drummer and
in 2014 i joined a.r ramon until sk
music conservatory
in chennai to learn tabla and by the end
of the year
my father showed me a youtube video of a
chinese boy playing the piano and i got
inspired by that and my sister plays
piano and even my father plays piano
so i also got inspired by them and so i
started to play piano
and i joined in km and then i went
to russian piano studio and came music
conservatory under dr suraji chatterjee
sir
so there i learned for like a year and
there was an amazing experience and came
and i got inspired by the video which i
told and then
i was more interested in taking more
complicated pieces in piano such as
flight of the bumblebee
composed by rimsky-korsakov and fantasy
impromptu
composed by frederick chopin and also
the moonlight sonata
by beethoven’s and so on so i was more
interested in this piece called flight
of the bumblebee
and one day i saw a youtube video of a
pianist playing that piece and i showed
it to my father
and he told that uh okay i’ll give you
one month time you need to finish this
piece
and i was like okay but if i finish this
piece you need to get me
a few symbols for my drum kit and he
accepted it and even i took it as a
challenge
and i completed this piece within four
days and he was so surprised and happy
and uh thank you
thank you and he was so surprised and
happy that i completed this piece within
four days
and he bought me the expensive drum
symbols what i asked for
so the sp sounds like this thank you
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so ladies and gentlemen that was flight
of the bumblebee and i played in 230
beats per minute
and back to the story uh and a month
passed
after finishing this piece and i was
keep on practicing
and we started to take video and my
father said that uh
we want to upload videos on social media
of me playing the piano and
other instruments so the flight of the
bumblebee was the first ever video that
we uploaded in youtube
and it took more than six hours to
record this one the one single piece
and uh the six hours whole time my
father was encouraging me and motivating
me
even i didn’t give up and even he didn’t
give up and finally we finished
and we took one single video and even
now you can view that in youtube it’s
still there
that was our first post and i kept
practicing these
this piece and again and again and again
and again and now i can play this piece
in 300 beats per minute
so here we go
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thank you so much western classical
isn’t only my favorite journal
i also listened to jazz and pop and when
it comes to pop my biggest inspiration
is none other than king of pop michael
jackson my father used to tell me from
my childhood about
mj that is how how he struggled to
reach this level and how he composes
and how how hard he works and how famous
he is
so mj inspired me a lot and he’s not
only mastered in dancing but he also
mastered in singing
and composing and so on so he inspired
me to
learn more instrument and my master in
those
now i can play few instruments in fact
the first ever english song i learned
how to sing
is mj’s uh super hit beat it song
from its album thriller and thriller is
still the world’s largest selling album
till date so thank you mj for a
wonderful
album so now i’m i would love to play uh
two office compositions which is my
favorite
when i play them you’ll know what song
it is thank you
so
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thank you so much uh thanks to mj for
composing such beautiful songs
and uh as i said that i can play some
variety of instruments apart from piano
and drums
i can play a few instruments like tabla
miratangam
guitar bass guitar harmonica malaria and
herpegi merlin
the chinese instrument cr1 and flute
ganjira
and i work in music softwares and singh
as well
thank you thank you so back to the story
so uh in 2015 uh when my sister
and myself was playing at home uh she
unexpectedly covered my face with a
thick towel
and told me to play the flight of the
bumblebee and i attempted to play it
even without a mistake
and that time my family realized that i
can also play blindfold
so that’s a story for another another
day for now
uh and uh now i’m going to do something
special that is in my right hand i’m
going to play
a western classical piece called
baronary composed by j.s bach
and in my left hand i’m going to play a
jazz piece called spain composed by
chichoria
so both are different genres different
time signatures
and the western classical piece is
technically really difficult
and so was the the ja jazz piece so
uh here we go enjoy
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so that was uh veterinary in spain for
you
and i would like to share my experience
about the world’s best competition
from my childhood my father used to say
that if if you do this
at such a young age you will be
definitely called as the world’s best
if you do this you will be called as the
world’s best so i’ve been hearing that
world’s best
word for years and a competition pitched
to us entitled the world’s best
so we didn’t want to miss it and we
participated in that and finally we were
in la for the competition
and there i got to meet so many talents
around the world from 195 countries and
50 judges
50 different countries and three
american prime judges were there
and i was so thrilled to see all of them
and that was my first international
competition and i cleared all the rounds
and became the finalist and i played uh
in the finals i played
two pianos together simultaneously and i
won the title
and uh thank you
and then we got invitation to be
appeared on the ellen show
and i was really surprised after hearing
that good news and we went to l.a we saw
ellen and i appeared on her show
and we spoke a lot of things together we
discussed a lot of things together she
was so
kind and so sweet and that was a dream
come true moment for me
and many people ask me how do you manage
your studies and your music
it’s simple i’m not going to school i’m
doing my homeschooling
so that’s the thing thank you
okay and also people ask me what you
would like to say to your future
generation so
maybe i can say something from what i
was taught be passionate and dedicated
to whatever you do
since in my case it is music so i need
to feel it too
be honest and work hard and don’t envy
others
just be yourself stay healthy with good
food habits
and always be a learner so this is what
i would like to say to the future
generation
to wrap up the session of mine today i
have some special performance for you
and this machine as you can see over
here this is called a loop machine
what it does is of course it loops
everything so i’ll explain the process
so uh when i play instrument and i’ll
stop play that
but that keeps playing so by the end of
the loop you’ll hear multiple lydians
playing at a time
and we’ve just bought this two days ago
my father bought this in mumbai and this
is the first time i’m performing with
this
and there are a lot of international
musicians play with this but this is the
first time for me and it’s new for me
and i’m sure i’ll explore with this loop
mission in the future
so thank you
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thank you so much