The coveted spot to close the concert is arguably the most important spot, given that one would always want to create a lasting impression with an exciting piece to end the concert, which also happens to conclude the 2011-2012 season for the Bravura Philharmonic Orchestra.  Charlie’s concerto is an exciting one, and his playing was consistently praised by the renowned pianist and conductor of Bravura Philharmonic Orchestra, Ms. Chiu-Tze Lin, during the rehearsals.  Charlie’s teacher, Professor Ingrid Clarfield, commended Charlie after learning that he was to close the concert.

The concert is held at a beautiful venue – the Princeton Alliance Church in Plainsboro, NJ.  After a sound check, a quick dinner, we arrived at the concert.  Charlie was a little nervous, and when I pointed out that he’s performed so many times in public already, he quipped – but I never played with an orchestra before!  Of course, being the ever so helpful dad, I joked with Charlie about the importance of his spot before we headed to the backstage, ending by saying it was not meant to create pressure for him.  Charlie laughed, still a bit nervous but that’s understadable – he is, after all, an 11-yo kid.  There are many adults that’d get nervous just standing before a crowd!

Finally, it was time for his performance. Ms. Lin introduced him as a very talented kid with great power, and also a hockey player whose fingers just got hurt.  That startled Mrs. Clarfield a bit, but Ms. Lin quickly added that it was not an issue.  Indeed, Charlie only had a small injury in school (not hockey) when he accidentally hit his hand on desk pretty hard, injuring his right middle finger.  Surprisingly, the recovery was slow despite that he did very little piano practice since, and even days later, on this concert night he couldn’t clap very well, saying that it hurts to clap. But piano wise, he was able to play, and with this being one of the biggest moments of his public performances, he’s not going to let it affect his play.

And with a short and somewhat lyrical section, the Bravura Philharmonic Orchestra and Charlie opened the performance.  Charlie was very focused, easily handling the not-too-fast yet quite exciting tempo chosen by conductor Ms. Lin.  The orchestra and Charlie worked very well together, with beautiful lyrical sections and intense action sequences (corresponding to the story).  Charlie’s cadenza was fun and well phrased with nice contrasts.  And quickly after the cadenza, the piece reaches the climax of the story and ends with a roar!

Bravo! The audience exclaimed.  Charlie shook hands with Ms. Lin and the first violinist, and took a bow a few times, leaving the stage and coming back.  The majority of the audience responded to the brilliant orchestra play and Charlie’s and other soloist’s virtuosic performances with a standing ovation at the conclusion of Charlie’s Shostakovich performance!  One can’t ask for a better ending of the concert.  The audience was clearly wowed by the 4 young soloists great talent, and Charlie succeeded ending the concert on a high note!

What a beautiful concert, and what a memorable orchestral debut for Charlie!  Thanks to all of our friends and colleagues who came and enjoyed the concert with us! For those who couldn’t make it because of Mother’s Day and other plans – there will be more opportunities and we’d love to see you guys there in the future!

As a winner, he gets to perform with the orchestra in the upcoming “Concert Extravaganza” event this Sunday, May 13, at 7pm in the Princeton Alliance Church (20 Schalks Crossing Road, located on the corner of Scudders Mill Road and Schalks Crossing Road, Plainsboro, NJ).  It’d be a great concert as well, with cello, violin and piano concertos scheduled with a brilliant community orchestra.

General admission is $15, $12 for seniors and students.  Premium seating is available at $25 each. Tickets purchased in advance are $12 and can be obtained online from the Bravura Philharmonic Orchestra website www.bravuraphil.org, calling (609) 790-9559 or (732) 792-2070.

This concert has been a long time coming and means a lot to Charlie personally.  So we sincerely hope some of you could be there sharing this great moment with us!

So when he finally got his first win at age 11 in the 17-and-under age division in the biggest concerto competition in NJ – the Bravura Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition, we were thrilled and so happy for Charlie.  That is one of his biggest wishes in music, and he finally gets this cherished opportunity!

Charlie’s teacher, Professor Ingrid Clarfield of Westminster Choir College, plans her student’s concerto competition participation early, and Charlie got 2 concerto competitions assigned before the competitions started. So yesterday we went to the other competition as planned.

It took us a 95-min drive in traffic to get to the audition site for the Lansdowne Symphony Orchestra‘s Youth Concerto Competition – Settlement Music School in Philadelphia – a nice school in a beautiful location, which unfortunately was the reason for the traffic jam.  As a result of us arriving too close to the audition time, Charlie only got to finish half a piece as a warm up.  Despite that, he played the piece beautifully, and his accompanist Ms. So Young Kim, did a great job accompanying him.  Again, his winning piece is the Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 2 Mvt. I, and his playing was musical, powerful, and exciting.

So today, we received an eagerly awaited email notifying us that Charlie was chosen to be 1 of the 4 winners for the competition and the only piano winner.  We’re naturally thrilled again! Since turning 11, Charlie gained the much needed power that was lacking when he was younger, and so far is two-for-two in concerto competitions. In fact, he has another orchestral performance scheduled in August (more on that later). So he’ll get to fulfill a top musical wish of his 3 times this year!

What a great experience to be able to work with two excellent community orchestras – Bravura is an ascending star in NJ community orchestras and Lansdowne is rich in tradition, being one of the oldest community orchestras in Philly.  Congratulations again, Charlie, for a job well done!

What a pleasant surprise!  A few days ago Charlie nonchalantly mentioned it was kinda interesting that for Continental Math League, getting half the points on all tests would qualify, but for NJML one has to gain 5 out of 6 in at least 2 tests or sth.  I asked how many qualified then, he said it seemed only the Math A&E (Accelerated & Enriched) kids did, and seemed at least over half of the Math A&E kids failed to qualify. I commended him for that. But I didn’t know he did this well, not only was he top in his school, he’s the top in the county!

So congratulations and well done, Charlie! We’re so proud of you!

BTW, if you’re interested, the entire winners list can be viewed at here.

Due to the many activities of Charlie, it was somewhat unfair that we simply could not put as much time on William. But he might have felt differently, as he gets less piano practice time than Charlie at similar stage of piano learning, and gets a lot more games – at same time/age, Charlie just got his first Nintendo DS and only just venturing into the gaming world. William at this age is already a DS/DSi, iPod Touch, Wii, XBox360/Kinect, Angry Bird/Minecraft veteran!  From the parents’ perspective, we feel it’s unfair to William but couldn’t do much about it, given how little time we have ourselves; from Charlie’s perspective, he feels it’s unfair to him as he had to work hard most of the time for homework, hockey and piano while William’s having fun.

As a way of pushing William and ourselves to focus a bit more on music/educational activities, we entered him into the Crescendo Competition’s Little Mozarts competition.  This competition has 3 winners levels. 1st place winners get to perform in the Weill Recital Hall of the Carnegie Hall; 2nd place winners perform in the Merkin Hall in NYC; 3rd place winners perform in Caldwell, NJ.

We were of course hoping for the best, but William has not been practicing enough. Still, we paid enough attention to this event to have William work harder than usual.  Luckily, too, is that this competition only requires one piece.  All the better.

Charlie and William are quite different, despite looking quite similar at same age. Charlie is a fast learner and seldom makes random/new mistakes once he picks up a piece. William, on the other hand, is not as reliable in these aspects.  Still, he reads his own music from the start of learning piano and is not slow in learning pieces. He also pays attention to details more than Charlie at the same age.

I have to say that it’s unfair to William that with Charlie’s piano skills improving, our listening skills are also improving. Therefore William really has to play better than Charlie was able to play at the same stage of piano studies to make it sound good. Luckily, with his teacher Ms. Chang Liu’s instructions, along with his attention to details and increased piano practice time, he managed to make good on the piece he was playing (William Gillock’s Ariel).  The remaining question is really whether he would make mistakes, and if so, how badly, as he tends to do that.

As the competition time came, we feel ready for it.  William went in, calmly played, and came out happily announcing that the judge told him “Bravo” and “Well done” after his playing.  He said he was nervous because he thought there would be other kids listening, but after he got in and saw only judge there, he wasn’t nervous at all!  So he played quite well, not exactly perfect, but with details and musicality.

As such, he won 1st place in the competition and is heading to the Carnegie Hall at 1 year younger than his older brother first appeared!  Of course, Charlie won bigger competitions then. Still, William really did a great job and achieved beyond our expectations (given his and our efforts).  Congratulations William!!

Charlie performed a beautiful Mozart Sonata (K280) in entirety at age 8, as part of his 10-piece solo recital.  We uploaded this complete sonata to Youtube in 2009 right after the concert, and everyone loved it.  But fast forward to 2011, one day I noticed that the video of the first movement of the sonata is blocked.  I logged into our Youtube acct. and found a copyright notice on this video, noting that EMI claimed “sound recording” copyright violation on the video.

That was a first! Actually, since Google developed some silly auto-detection of copyright infringement algorithm, practically every one of our uploads got labeled as ‘Matching 3rd party content’. Most of them are matching composer names only, and it’s mind-boggling why Google would allow 3rd party to claim copyright on anything matching names of, say, an 18th century classical composer, whose works are all in public domain.  But, those frivolous copyright claims are relatively easy to fend off. All one needs to do is to file a dispute, and then the label goes off on the video.  It was annoying and tedious as hell to do this for every video, but at least it’s doable.  Not this particular blocked video though.

Now, a “blocked” youtube video is a lot more serious. In fact, Youtube claims that for such videos, it’s three-and-out. You get struck the 3rd time, your account gets closed. As such, I assume that this type of blocked videos are high-confidence ones, most likely manually verified cases of copyright violations. It might have even been verified by the 3rd party that claimed copyright, in this case, EMI – that is because we have at least one other video also labeled matching ‘sound recording’ but it wasn’t blocked, presumably it matched audio signature but wasn’t manually verified.

Naturally, we wouldn’t want this mislabeled copyright claim on our video and for it to count as a “strike” against our acct., so we disputed the claim.  Since then, I always see “dispute submitted, waiting for copyright holder response” on this video, which remained blocked.

After at least 3-4 months since we submitted the dispute, we finally saw EMI’s response. And guess what? EMI’s response was that our video indeed violated their sound recording, and this time they even provided the info for the matched recording – “Daniel Barenboim-I. allegro assai”, so they reinstated the claim (see the screenshot below)!  In another word, in all but certainty, our dispute got rejected after manual verification comparing the sound recording of Charlie’s and Daniel Barenboim’s performances.

How did EMI, after manual verification, still think that the 8-yo Charlie Liu’s Mozart performance matched their Daniel Barenboim’s recording of the same piece is beyond my comprehension. But, I guess they consider Charlie to be as good!  Yay! EMI, why don’t you sign Charlie to a contract then, I’m sure it’d be a good deal for you guys!

EMI, thanks again for complimenting Charlie’s performance in your own way. It was disturbing, uncalled for, but still, extremely flattering.

Charlie Performance Quality Apparently Matches Daniel Barenboim

In 2009-10 season, they did not do great overall but managed to win a hard-fought BSA Ice Arena Thanksgiving Tournament Championship, against two teams that beat them earlier in the season no less!

In 2010-11 season, they had tremendous success under Joe Gural’s coaching and became the regular season Champion in their NJ division, a big accomplishment as there are 11 teams at the same level and 20 games are played over the season. They were the runners up in the NJ playoff championship as well.

This season, they have ups and downs as a team but progressed well overall under Coach Joe’s instructions.  They missed the playoffs by 4 points but ended the season on a tear with 4 straight wins.  They went on to win their division in their 1st tournament this year, but lost an extremely hard fought semifinal game 6-7 on an overtime sudden kill goal.

This weekend, they ended their long season with the 2nd tournament of the year. It’s a tournament that is a little below their level – Charlie’s team was the 3rd team in their hockey association, so it’s considered C level, but since NJ doesn’t have C level for PeeWee teams, so everyone’s marked as B team. Because this tournament has C level, coaches and our team manage Bill entered our team in the C level at season start, as tournaments usually get arranged early.  Turns out, we underestimated how well the team was playing. So in all but one game, our team won by 9 goals or more (this tournament schedule rewards points for each period that’s won, that’s why a team has to try scoring as much as possible to ensure getting the most points to make it into the championship game).

However, the tournament is NOT a walk in the park either. In one game, our team met another team that plays at similar level and was also breezing through their games.  Our kids fought hard and took a 1-1 tie into the 3rd period. Then as the end of game drew near, the other team scored twice from the slot (in fact, all 3 goals they scored were from the same setup, a cross and then a shot from the slot).  It was clear that this team is a tough opponent, yet it was also clear that we’re neck-n-neck with them. In fact, if we fix the holes in the defense in the slot area, and the offense challenges their passer/shooter a bit more, it could’ve been a different game.

Expectedly, we met this team again in the championship game. They won all of their games and we only lost to them once. But, that one loss apparently gave that team added confidence for the championship game. Before the tournament, they were already talking about beating everyone up in the hotel, which we stayed at as well. Their win against us, their toughest opponent, only made them feel better about their chances.  In fact, so much so that a mother on that team went to buy the tournament T-Shirt, requesting a Champions sign printed on the shirt!

Now that was disrespect!  Coach Joe told our kids about it, and naturally everyone was upset about it.  Do they really think they’re much better than us that the outcome’s predictable?  The last game was even until the last minutes.  The result of the upcoming game could be quite different. We know this first hand because last year we beat a team in divisional play but lost narrowly (0-1) in the semifinal to the same team and failed to win the tournament we were aiming at winning.

As the game started, it was clear that our kids were not going to be denied this time. The other team fought hard too, but our team jumped off the gate faster, taking a 2-0 lead as the 1st period ended.  In the 2nd period, they scored once during a powerplay and our team scored once.  With a 3-1 lead into the 3rd period, winning is not yet insured as a 2-goal lead could be wiped out in a period easily.  So, naturally, our kid scored again and maintained a 4-1 lead until the last 2 minutes or so, when the other team managed to score again & then the intensity and suspense just went off the chart.  As they pulled goalie and carrying a 6-5 player advantage, our kids played extremely hard and held the 4-2 score till the final whistle.  What an unbelievable win, and extra sweet given the pre-game disrespect our kids received!

Congratulations Luke (2 goals as he stepped up his game), Jack (2 goals and a million assists and saves on defense end, a truly brilliant player and the best pure talent that’s played on Charlie’s team), Brian (our goalie made tons of great saves), Anthony, Collin, Gordon, Paul, Sam, Matt, Tyler, Boris, Kyle and Charlie! Well deserved win and what a way to conclude the hockey season!

Click on photo to enlarge!! Back row: Coach Joe, Anthony, Jack, Sam, Coach Drew; 2nd row: Charlie, Collin, Matt; front row: Brian, Luke, Paul, Kyle, Tyler, Gordon, Boris

Not to be deterred, Charlie entered the 18-yo-and-under Bravura Philharmonic Orchestra’s Young Artists Concerto Competition 2012, the biggest concerto competition in New Jersey right now. He entered with the piece that he struggled with in Virginia Waring due to his smaller hands and lack of power a year ago – Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2. In Virginia Waring, he had only 4 months of learning and practice on the full concerto (all 3 movements) while also preparing 35 mins worth of solo music. It was tough, and he didn’t do well. This time, he only needed to focus on the most challenging 1st movement of the concerto, which BTW was used in Disney’s Fantasia 2000 as the background music in the Steadfast Tin Soldier. The music matched the animation perfectly and in my opinion it’s the most remarkable music story told in the original Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 combined.

The competition is tough – it is open to the Tri-state area (NJ, NY, PA) and there’re several Julliard teachers’ students entering. In all, 39 talented young musicians competed vying for the 4 spots to perform with the orchestra, 21 of them pianists. In the end only 2 pianists were picked (the other winners being a cellist and a violinist), and Charlie received such compliments from the musicians and teachers present that made this win particularly sweet.

Charlie’s piano teacher, Professor Ingrid Clarfield prepared him very well, and Ms. Soyoung Kim, Charlie’s accompanist, helped a lot as well to give Charlie confidence and suggestions that improved him a lot.

Charlie, of course, worked very hard as well, given the circumstances. In fact, it’s rather surprising that this school year he even managed to win 1st place in NJ back in Nov. and now this concerto competition – he literally only practices piano up to 8 hours a week from Sept. 2011 till Jan. 2012, and that’s not counting the cruise vacation we took in October 2011 (a very very bad idea) that almost killed any practice time for the week or two afterward making up the school work he missed. It’s all because of how much school work they now have in middle school (Charlie is first year in middle school at 6th grade). He spends an average of 3.5-4 hrs on homework, 12 hrs a week on hockey, 1.5 hrs on swimming, and 3.5 hrs playdate, and then 4-6 hrs video/PC game time.

In Feb. we finally managed to push piano practice to around 10-11 hrs a week by reducing the game time accordingly. Still far from enough to keep competing at the highest level, especially not after years of lack of piano practice time compared to other top young talents in the world. But let’s not digress too much …

Back to the concerto competition, courtesy of this win, Charlie will be introduced along with the other 3 winners during the Bravura Philharmonic Orchestra’s March 4 special televised concert to the audience (advance tickets on sale online), and he’ll finally get to perform with the orchestra on May 13th, Sunday, 7 pm in the Princeton Alliance Church in Plainsboro. You’re cordially invited!! From what we know of the orchestra and the young talents, a good night of music is guaranteed!

PS: Right after the Bravura Concerto Competition, Charlie went with his team to a President’s Day hockey tournament in PA. They fought hard and won 1st place in the 4-team subdivision, but lost 6-7 in overtime in the semifinals. Despite the loss, the team showed character and resolve, and congratulations to the Princeton Tigers PeeWee B Orange team! BTW Charlie played extremely well throughout and got his second game puck of the season! A good weekend and a great reward for the hard work he put in!

Patrick had been one of the greatest supporters of young musicians on Youtube, and in real life he had been supporting piano prodigy Aimi Kobayashi for years and helping the young music talent organization AADGT in recent years.  He had always left insightful and encouraging comments on Charlie’s videos and communications with him has always been pleasant.  His recommendation of Charlie and others to AADGT had led to them be noticed by the Lang Lang Foundation and Charlie was eventually selected as one of first Lang Lang Foundation Scholars.  He is a true friend who work hard for young musicians all over the world.  His passing away is young musician’s world’s loss.

Charlie is dedicating the beautifully sad Albinoni’s Adagio to Patrick.  There is no other piece better suited for honoring Patrick, and he would’ve been so proud and happy to hear it.  We hope you could still hear it in heaven. Patrick, R.I.P.!