Pianist, 12, strikes chord with seniors
Chopin expert plays for assisted living center’s residents as well as himself
Whenever 12-year-old Christopher Nguyen drops by the senior center and sits down on the piano bench, the residents stop working their jigsaw puzzles. They stop knitting their afghans, and they stop watching the TV news.
All that stuff can wait. Christopher is here, and Christopher is going to play some Chopin.
And not just the easy stuff, but the whirling ballades and the high-octane waltzes and scherzos that usually separate the young pianists from the veterans but — in the case of a prodigy like Christopher — don’t.
Christopher has been performing at the Lodge, an assisted living residence in Alameda, since he was 7. He says he does it for the seniors and for himself.
“It makes me happy,” Christopher said the other evening as he sat down at the polished black piano in the lounge while one by one his audience finished their tilapia and broccoli in the dining room and proceeded, many by means of walker or four-pronged cane, to lay claim to any good seats that remained. “Playing is something I have to do and something I want to do.”
For the seniors, Christopher knocked out all four Chopin ballades. His fingers knew where they were going and knew what to do when they got there. A
cyclist on the bike path outside paused when he heard the sounds coming through the glass door, and even a couple of ducks in the lagoon seemed to stop what they were doing.
“Sometimes you get down on the state of the world, and then a kid like Christopher comes along and he does this for us, and he doesn’t have to do it,” said resident Mike Smith, 78, who never misses one of the Christopher’s twice-monthly performances. “It’s uplifting, and it’s joyous. Good Lord, where does a kid like this come from?”
His mom, Maggie Hoang, provides the driving and the last-minute instructions (“go spit out your gum,” she says) but, after the music starts, she sits, sometimes with her eyes closed, and takes it all in like any other fan.
If there was a missed note or two — as can happen when a pianist tackles the toughest stuff in the repertoire before even becoming a teenager — hardly anyone but Christopher noticed.
“Perhaps I should go slower,” he said and sighed after the fourth ballade left a few notes off the agenda.
“That was opus 52,” he said, “and I know I didn’t play it all that well.”
He switched to a Scott Joplin rag and a couple of pop tunes, but before long, he was back with Chopin, who Christopher said “just makes me happy.”
When he is not doing the extraordinary, Christopher is much like other seventhgraders at Nea charter school in Alameda. He shoots baskets, he watches the Warriors, and he spends most spare moments playing a
“Playing is something I have to do and something I want to do.” Christopher Nguyen, piano prodig y
video game called “Super Smash Bros.” Sometimes, Hoang said, it can be a challenge to get her son to set aside Mario and Princess Daisy in favor of Chopin and Beethoven.
In his blue hoodie and sneakers, Christopher doesn’t dress like a concert pianist, he just plays like one.
His passion for music started in his fifth year, when his parents noticed Christopher had begun calling out the names of the notes he was hearing when songs played on the car radio. His parents bought him a kiddie keyboard, then a real electronic keyboard, then a real piano. He started taking lessons, and a year later, his teacher announced that he had taught his young student all he could. Christopher switched teachers, and one day he’ll probably have to switch again.
When he’s not playing at the senior center, he’s playing in the baggage claim area at Oakland International Airport. The airport runs something called Tunes in the Terminal. Hoang gets free parking, and Christopher gets to keep what gets dropped into the tip jar.
“He’s a normal kid who plays the piano,” Hoang said. “We tell him that video games may not be the best use of his time. But we want him to do what kids do. He’s only 12.”