Piano praise rolls in for Niagara teen
When he was seven, Terrence Wu simply couldn’t sit still. He was always moving, never complacent.
“I was kind of like, antsy … impatient with activities,” he recalls.
His mom, Isabella Yang, didn’t want to put him in sport. Instead, she took a chance on piano lessons, hoping it would demand his attention enough to stop fidgeting.
He started taking lessons with St. Catharines instructor Theresa Pothier, and while he wasn’t a natural, she could see something taking hold.
“Playing piano, you have to use your eyes to focus, and then your body will follow,” she says. “At the beginning … he enjoyed the noise he was making on the piano.”
She preached the need for practice, and soon enough the piano became an extension of him. When he was 11, he started studying with Niagara Falls instructor Rivoli Lesulauro, who once taught hit songwriter and composer Stephan Moccio, and started branching out into violin.
As the accolades started mounting for the St. Catharines teen, so did the festivals. In June, Wu nailed his biggest one yet — first place in the 15-year category for piano at the Canadian Music Competition in Montreal.
He performed Edvard Grieg’s “Concerto in A Minor” for a score of 94 per cent, tying him with three other pianists.
“It was awesome, I couldn’t believe it,” says the Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School student. “I was just going there for experience and hoping the adjudicators would give me feedback I could use in the future.” His mom was equally shocked. “I was so surprised, because we were there to listen to other kids playing,” she says. “Everyone there, they’re awesome.
“So I thought, ‘OK, Terrence did his best.’”
About to enter Grade 11, Wu hopes to graduate early and focus on piano and violin training at university sooner than later. In the meantime, he’ll continue to be a choir accompanist for the Chorus Niagara Children’s Choir and volunteer with St. Catharines hospital and Royal Henley Retirement Residence.
That is, whenever there’s a spare moment: He’s up to six hours of practice every day for piano, and three hours for violin.
“I take a break in between,” he says. “(And) I have to work on my classical history … the composers, opera and stuff like that.”