11/19/2023 0 Comments Child music prodigy 60 minutesAnd of course, Derek, like this super juke box, can tap into whatever they want. Before you're born, you're musical, way before language. "As people get older and they start to lose some memories and language, music remains. "Now I understand that he's actually begun to work with older people," Stahl remarked. And music is his way to get to people," Ockelford said. To be honest, if he was just a musical computer, he wouldn't be that interesting. Hello, Archbishop of Canterbury!' It's very engaging, though. "And I said, 'You're gonna now meet the Archbishop of Canterbury.' Of course Derek said, 'Hello. And we had the Archbishop of Canterbury there," Paravicini remembered. He will put his hand out…because he doesn't know where the other person's hand is gonna come from. "And it's rather engaging, 'cause he always operates in the same way. "And then he wants to know when he's gonna meet them again," he explained, Nic Paravicini says Derek "absolutely loves" people. He was trembling with excitement and elation, that people are reacting to his playing," Ockelford remembered.Īnd he has been performing ever since - in jazz halls, at benefits, in churches, connecting with audiences in ways most musicians wouldn't dare: taking requests, with a twist. And Derek just jumped off of his piano stool. "When you're on a big stage, the applause hits you like a wave. It was there that Ockelford first saw the thrill Derek got from performing and from feeling the love of the crowd. After three years of daily lessons, Derek was invited to play a few songs at a major charity fundraiser. All the things that we normally do with words, Derek did with notes." "From all this confusion that he must have experienced as a child, not understanding much language, suddenly here was a language that he could control, he could play with, he could dialogue. "So that ability to communicate was revelatory for him?" Stahl asked. And suddenly he just blossomed," Ockelford explained. "I think suddenly it clicked that he could have a conversation in sound. And of course by the time I played that, he was back, and pushed me off and copied it with his karate chops."īefore long, Derek seemed to get it this was not someone trying to take away his precious piano - this was someone trying to reach him. And then in the ten seconds I had before he raced back, I could just play ," Ockelford explained. I just picked him up and popped him the other side of the room. "It was compulsion, I think," he replied.īut how to teach a child who couldn't see, didn't understand much, and wouldn't allow anyone to touch his piano? "It was almost as though Derek, through his pushing me off the stool was saying, 'Help,' you know, he was saying, 'I need.' 'Course he didn't, but, 'I need teaching,'" Ockelford said. Ockelford phoned Derek's dad and told him he'd like to teach Derek. "I thought he was mad, actually, 'cause it was just chaos of notes and hair and elbows but then suddenly I noticed out of all of that was coming 'Don't Cry For Me Argentina.' I thought, 'Crikey, he's not mad at all. And he literally pushed me off the piano stool, and just started karate chopping the keyboard," Ockelford remembered. The teacher was Ockelford, in the middle of a lesson. So he used karate chops and elbows, and even his nose, I seem to remember," Derek's father told Stahl.ĭerek had never met a piano teacher, until he literally crashed into one during a visit with his parents to a school for the blind. "And he didn't know, 'cause he couldn't see, and no one had told him, that you're meant to use your fingers to play the piano. "My daughter suddenly said one day, 'He's just played one of the hymns we heard in church this morning," Paravicini remembered. Derek's father, Nic Paravicini, says the first thing that really interested Derek was a small toy keyboard. He hung on, but was left blind and with severe cognitive impairment. He was born more than three months premature, weighing just a pound and a half. In Derek's case, the problems started early. There are lots of theories about savants, but few real answers. How Derek's fingers can do this but can't button a button or zip a zipper remains a mystery. "And he can just whip out a piece book and a style book and just bring them together. "It's like he's got libraries of pieces and styles in his head," Adam Ockelford, Derek's teacher, told Stahl.
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