He cant tell his left from his right and cant count to 10, but he can play every note of every song he ever heard. even if he only heard it once, 10 years ago.
Derek Paravicini, aged 26, was born 14 weeks prematurely and was within an heartbreat of death.
When Derek came along a few minutes later, the doctor presumed that he, too, could not possibly live. And yet just when his mother Mary Ann had given up hope, she heard the faintest of whimpers, the tiniest of muffled squeaks. He had made it.
Three decades on, Derek no longer makes muffled squeaks. Instead, he brings a rapt audience in St George’s concert theatre, Bristol, to their feet again and again, with a dazzling range of music — an Oscar Peterson arrangement of Greensleeves, his own version of Bach’s Air in the key of G, a jaunty ragtime taste of Debussy.
You’ll have heard of perfect pitch. Well, Derek has absolute pitch — a rare gift, meaning that, when he hears a chord with ten notes in it, he can identify every one. Most professional musicians can get about five.
He can master any melody on earth, has a databank of thousands of songs in his head and can play any one of them at will, improvising as he goes.
Because he was born so early, Derek is blind. The oxygen used to revive him at birth caused certain vessels in his eyes to grow abnormally, damaging his retinas, in a condition called retinopathy of prematurity.
As he is blind, he cannot read music — he can’t even read Braille. All his performances — his and the orchestra’s — is encapsulated entirely within his head.
Remember, Life Does not Limit you, Only your own fear can
No comments:
Post a Comment