In the Key of Genius: Spotlighting blind autistic musical prodigy Derek Paravicini

Filed under: Themes, Blind Visionaries, Auties & Aspies, Irked Videos, Irked Audio

Quoting Derek Paravicini’s official site:

Derek, now in his late twenties, was born premature, at 25 weeks, and weighing just over half a kilogram. As a result of the oxygen therapy required to save his life, Derek lost his sight, and his development was affected too. It later became apparent that he had severe learning difficulties. However, he soon acquired a fascination for music and sound, and, by the age of four, had taught himself to play a large number of pieces on the piano.

Almost inevitably, with no visual models to guide him, his technique was chaotic, and even his elbows would frequently be pressed into service, as he strove to reach intervals beyond the span of his tiny hands! At this time, his enormous potential was recognised by Adam Ockelford, then music teacher at Linden Lodge School for the Blind in London. In due course, weekly and then daily lessons were arranged, in an extensive programme of tuition that was to last for several years. Painstakingly (through physical demonstration and imitation) Derek acquired the foundations of technique that were necessary for him to move forward. His natural affinity for jazz, pop and light music soon became evident; together with his improvisatory talents, ability to play in any key, and flair for performing in public!

Derek’s first major concert was at the Barbican Halls in London, when he was just 9 (in 1989). He played jazz with the Royal Philharmonic Pops Orchestra. Numerous national and regional television appearances followed, in the UK and overseas.

Derek’s talent, love of music, and—above all—the ability to communicate through sound means he will continue to thrill audiences for years to come.

Quoting telegraph.co.uk:

Derek Paravicini, the blind musical savant nicknamed “the human iPod”, is to give his first full concert accompanied by an orchestra.

He incurred brain damage during birth and suffers from severe learning difficulties and autism. He is blind, unable to read Braille and can barely count, let alone read music, but thanks to his extraordinary memory, he can play anything after hearing it only once.

Paravicini is the great-grandson of the writer William Somerset Maugham, the great-great-grandson of Dr Thomas Barnardo, founder of the children’s charity, and also the nephew by marriage of Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall.

Click here to buy Derek’s CD Echoes of the Sounds to Be >>

Quoting dailymail.co.uk:

Thirty years ago, Derek Paravicini was within a heartbeat of death. No other baby born in the Royal Berkshire Hospital 14 weeks prematurely had ever survived. His twin sister was dead at birth. When Derek came along a few minutes later, the doctor presumed that he, too, could not possibly live. And yet, 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.

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. One member of the audience asks him to play Ain’t No Sunshine. Another suggests that he play it in B major. And another, that it’s done in ragtime. No problem — without a pause, his fingers flutter across the keyboard in a hummingbird blur of staggering virtuosity.

For someone so handicapped, it is a godsend that his hidden talent was unleashed at all. Much of the credit goes to his nanny, Winifred Daly, who died 12 years ago. She had looked after several generations of Derek’s mother’s side of the family—the Parker Bowleses, as in Camilla. Derek’s mother, born Mary Ann Parker Bowles, is sister to Andrew Parker Bowles, the Duchess of Cornwall’s ex-husband. It was Winifred Daly who first spotted something unusual in Derek. Looking for a diversion to occupy the blind 20-month-old, she dragged down a small electric organ from the attic of the Paravicini home in Berkshire; the organ had belonged to Derek’s grandfather…

In time, news of Derek’s exceptional talent spread. At seven, he gave his first concert in Tooting Leisure Centre in South London. At nine, he was on the Wogan show. At ten, he was presented with a Barnardo’s Children’s Champion Award by Diana, Princess of Wales. She was unruffled by the fact that he was Camilla Parker Bowles’s nephew, even though her marriage was on the rocks at the time. When Derek suggested playing Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off, she laughed uproariously. In recent years, he has played at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, Las Vegas and has accompanied Jools Holland. He has appeared in two documentaries about genius savants, and the show I attended was being filmed by the popular American show 60 Minutes, on CBS.

As he sits down, his hands reach out for the keys. As soon as his fingers hit the ivories, the hands relax. His head sometimes sways with the music, much like those other blind pianists Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles. At other times, his head is still, his sightless gaze fixed in the direction of the hammers of the Steinway, furiously striking away to Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story. He is doing what he was born to do.

Quoting bbc.co.uk:

Derek Paravacini [is] a blind, autistic musician with an almost computer-like musical ability. Derek can hear a tune and immediately play along and has perfect pitch—an ability shared by only one in 10,000 people.

Click here to buy Derek’s biography, written by his mentor Adam Ockelford >>

Quoting thisislondon.co.uk:

The programme wandered idiosyncratically from Bach and Debussy to Meade Lux Lewis by way of Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue, the piano part delivered, with no little style, as if it were by Rachmaninov.

At one point the audience, encouraged by Paravicini’s biographer Adam Ockelford, was invited to name three notes, from which emerged a credible new piece, entitled South Bank Blues. This is probably where Paravicini’s true gift lies.

Paravicini’s talent is still developing; he may yet become a pianist who astounds us in purely musical terms, without any reference to his circumstances.

Quoting CBSNews.com’s 60 Minutes:

Derek does not dress himself, cannot do a button and needs assistance going to the bathroom. With all his disabilities, though, Derek remembers every song he’s ever heard.

[Lesley] Stahl asked Derek if he could play “Für Elise” as if Mozart had written it and Derek performed the piece “a la Mozart” with a smile. When asked how he knows how to do that, Derek replied, “I can’t remember.”

PLEASE NOTE: Derek is currently several concerts into performing in his first tour with the Emerald Ensemble Chamber Orchestra playing classical, blues and jazz standards as well as sensational improvisations based on audience requests.

DEREK’S NEXT CONCERTS:

1. Sunday June 14th at 3pm—Christchurch, Nailsworth, Gloucestershire (Call the box office at 0117 924 3159).
2. Thursday July 2nd at 7:30pm—Hawth Theatre Studio in Crawley, West Sussex (Call the box office at 01293 553636, or visit www.tickets.hawth.co.uk…proceeds go to Brambles Respite Centre for people with MS).

Watch a great video documentary on YouTube:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

For more, visit sonustech.com/paravicini

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