We used to have Kaye’s English Tutor come to our place for all of Kaye’s private lessons but lately we’ve been having her come to our place one day and then we drop Kaye off at her place the next.  This is because Kaye loves to go to Sarah’s as the building has a Baby Grande Piano in the community room which she gets to play after class – which she absolutely LOVES.

When we picked Kaye up from her English tutorial today, her teacher told us that Kaye had told her she had written a song.  Well, Kaye played her the song and it was really really good.

When we took her home, she played the song for Lorraine and I . . . as Kaye is twelve (will be thirteen in a couple of weeks) we thought it would be cute but nothing too outstanding.

We were wrong.

It was beautiful.  It’s a two-and-a-half minute short composition but it is very mature and very beautiful.

She also told us that she wanted to play a work in progress which she "made up today because it’s ‘funny’" . . . evidently "funny" to her means incredibly complex finger movements that race across the keyboard but still maintain a playful and beautiful melody.  It is an ultrashort piece as she’s just started it, but you can see the talent there and the potential for something really solid when she matures and her sensibilities mature as well.

Currently, her dream for growing up is to become a professional pianist . . . but if we can give her the right opportunities and experiences she certainly has composer potential.  The pieces she played with and showed us today are not pop music – to complex and intricate for that – more of a classical music feel . . . the second piece reminded me immediately of a piece by Mozart (we watched part of Amadeus today in the Contemporary Drama course I teach at the university so the music was in my head).

She obviously needs to learn the discipline to write the notes down and record her compositions on paper for others . . . for now, she just keeps the notes for her compositions in her head and lets her "fingers remember" how to play them when she needs them.  Eventually, I suspect we’ll be getting her a computer with a midi port for her keyboards and load it with composition and mixing software and the like (not now, she needs to get her math grades back up to a more respectable level – we’ve hired a tutor for math as well and when math gets back up to where it needs to be, she will be allowed to begin learning guitar . . . might be nice for her to learn vocals as well someday but hasn’t really expressed an interest as of yet).

I imagine that when she’s ready and feels like it, she’ll probably record her pieces.  I half-joked after hearing a recording of her composition on her phone (it’s now her cellphone ring), that she only needs nine to eleven more songs and she can release a CD . . . only half-joking . . . she has true potential.  Wow.

Kaye’s father is extremely jealous of his daughter’s talent.  Double and Triple Wow.

All the best,
Brian