Cape Town-150711-Visually impaired prodigy Ying-Shan Tsen (12) performs at the Eye 2 Eye summit at the Salt River Society for the Blind. The Summit dealt with challenges and difficulties experienced by visually impaired people. Picture Jeffrey Abrahams. Reporter Nicolette Dirk. Cape Town-150711-Visually impaired prodigy Ying-Shan Tsen (12) performs at the Eye 2 Eye summit at the Salt River Society for the Blind. The Summit dealt with challenges and difficulties experienced by visually impaired people. Picture Jeffrey Abrahams. Reporter Nicolette Dirk.
Nicolette Dirk
WHILE most 12-year-olds are creating music lists on their iPods, classical pianist Ying-Shan Tseng has mastered the art of Tchaikovsky and Mozart.
And she had done so before she reached her eighth birthday.
Ying-Shan provided the musical entertainment yesterday at the Eye2Eye Summit, held at the Cape Town Society for the Blind in Salt River.
The summit focused on the challenges faced by blind professionals. Participants included UCT’s head of disability services Reinette Popplestone and SA Blind Women in Action deputy chairperson Joanne van Niekerk.
Ying-Shan has been blind since birth, and attends the Pioneer School For the Blind in Worcester. When she was eight, the young prodigy was named top junior instrumentalist at the SA Championships for performing Arts.
“When I was younger I used to play the kiddies’ keyboard at my grandmother’s place. I’ve always enjoyed dancing to music,” she said yesterday.
She started formal piano lessons at the age of four, which she continued at school.
Ying-Shan Tseng said her teacher taught her how to play piano by learning the pattern of the black keys on the keyboard.
“My teacher taught me that if I find the two sharp notes, then the note on the left hand side is the middle C note.”
With her flair for dramatic music, Ying-Shan’s favourite composers include the late Russian composer Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff.
Her mother Janet said that despite a rigorous schedule of practising for one and a half hours a day, her daughter needed no motivation to hone her skills.
“She knows she needs to keep up to reach her dream. Being blind is not a disability to Ying-Shan. As long as she is determined, she can do anything she wants because she puts so much effort into it.”
And some of Ying-Shan’s big dreams include being a professional pianist and performer.
Despite not knowing blind pianists herself, the sound of the piano inspired her to do it anyway, she said. “Playing the piano is the one thing that makes me happy.”
Being the only blind child in her family, she felt different only when unable to watch a movie with her siblings, said Ying-Shan.
“Sometimes, when it’s silent, I don’t always know what is going on in the movie. But that is why I love musicals like The Phantom of the Opera.”