Chloe Pang SF Chronicle Article
Alan Page
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/03/15/BAG615KNBD1.DTL
or...
http://makeashorterlink.com/?C54622BB7
PROFILE: Chloe Pang
Orinda girl, 12, has the keys to success
Twelve-year-old pianist Chloe Pang would rather not be called a prodigy.
Sure, at just 8 years old she was the youngest soloist to debut at Walnut
Creek's Bosendorfer Hall. And, come April, she will be the youngest person
to record Bach's "Goldberg Variations" -- a piece frequently named among the
most ambitious and complex ever composed for the keyboard.
But ask Chloe what makes her special, and she replies, "I'm not really
sure."
The Orinda seventh-grader's humility is almost as impressive as her talent.
Despite the slew of national and international awards under her tiny belt,
Chloe says, "I don't like to be raised up. I'm just a normal kid."
A week ago, this normal kid from Orinda smiled and waved for New York
paparazzi as she left "The Late Show With David Letterman."
The late-night talk show host invited Chloe to perform after she won top
prize in the prestigious Pinault International Competition. She faced-off
against more than 100 other young pianists from around the world in a
yearlong application process, culminating in a performance at New York
City's Columbia Artists Management Hall six weeks ago.
The show aired March 5, but just a week after her five minutes of witty
repartee with Letterman, the unassuming preteen struggles to remember
exactly what happened that night.
Zinging the zinger
Letterman asked Chloe about her braces. She asked him about his love of
yoga. He laughed. Letterman had made a sarcastic comment about the popular
exercise in an earlier show. Chloe, a yoga practitioner, didn't catch
Letterman's wit -- she's usually in bed when his show airs.
"He was cracking up. She really got him," explains Chloe's mother, Elena
Pang. "He was joking, but she really loves yoga."
She also loves Pilates, Audrey Hepburn and John Steinbeck -- not to mention
Bach and Mozart.
Whether she's playing a more contemporary Debussy piece or classical
Beethoven, Chloe's fingers dance across her black 9-foot Steinway piano with
miraculous grace and virtuosic form.
Though the performing venues have grown progressively larger -- culminating
in her performance on Letterman for a television audience of millions --
over the years, Chloe's nerves have not once been shaken.
"Nervous," Chloe says, "is not a word in the Pang vocabulary."
Neither is prodigy. Elena Pang hates the word.
"It connotes negative things -- someone who's not normal, someone who has no
childhood," she said.
Outkast on her CD player
Chloe practices for four hours each day but insists the other 20 are spent
doing normal stuff. Her CD player is more likely to be playing the latest
hit by the rap duo Outkast or soulful singer Norah Jones than anything by
Mozart or Beethoven.
She likes skiing and Alfred Hitchcock movies. In her free time, she likes
beading with hemp.
"The legal kind," she assures.
But Chloe, who dreams of traveling the world as a concert pianist, admits
that nothing quite compares to performing for an audience. "It's relaxing,
fun, exciting," she says, her silver braces constantly exposed by her smile.
The petite pianist has been a performer since the womb, her mother says.
Whenever Elena Pang, a piano teacher, would play the famed composer's work,
Chloe would start to kick.
"The doctor told me, 'Sweetie, they're just hiccups.' But she had impeccable
rhythm," Elena Pang says.
Artistic genes
Since birth, Chloe has been immersed in art. Her grandmother is an
accomplished abstract artist. Her mother plays piano and her 8-year-old
brother, Clark, plays cello. Chloe's father, she says, "plays the stereo."
Chloe began studying piano under her mother's instruction at 4 years old. By
the time Chloe was 8, the mother-daughter relationship was making the
teacher-student relationship difficult. Elena Pang asked James Arthur
Gardner, a Walnut Creek pianist known for producing accomplished young
musicians, to hear Chloe play a Hayden concerto.
"Of course I was impressed and wanted to teach her. Any teacher would be
crazy not to want to have a crack at it," Gardner says. But, he admitted, he
did not immediately mark Chloe as prodigy material.
"I thought, 'She does need a little tweaking here and there,' " says
Gardner. "I wouldn't have picked her out to play as well as she does."
Honors collected
But Chloe would not be deterred, and a collection of awards and special
appearances followed.
At age 11, Chloe won the national Pacific Chamber Symphony Concerto
Competition, besting pianists nearly twice her age. In December, she
competed in National Public Radio's "From the Top" Competition and won. In
June, she will compete in the prestigious international Gina Bachauer Junior
Piano Competition, an event the Pangs call "the American Idol" of piano.
"She has remarkable skills and a connection with the audience. That
charisma, that magic -- people completely lose it when they hear her,"
Gardner says.
"I have some students who are very good, but they become very humble when
Chloe walks into the room," Gardner says. "They know the goddess has
entered."
E-mail Simone Sebastian at siseb...@sfchronicle.com
--
Alan
www.best-page.us
~WWWWW~
What a Wonderful Web We Weave
Chase Kimball
news:c360rt$23veec$1...@ID-45826.news.uni-berlin.de...
> Online from Monday, March 15 San Francisco Chronicle article...
>
> http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/03/15/BAG615KNBD1.DTL
>
> or...
>
> http://makeashorterlink.com/?C54622BB7
>
> PROFILE: Chloe Pang
> Orinda girl, 12, has the keys to success
> Twelve-year-old pianist Chloe Pang would rather not be called a prodigy.
>
Thanks much for posting this. I have forwarded it to the Bachauer board.
--
*****************************************************
Chase Kimball, attorney at law
c...@rlmlaw.com
LAW OFFICES OF RANDAL L. MEEK
935 East 7220 South, Suite D-100
Midvale, UT 84047
phone 801-566-8118
telefax 801-566-8244
*****************************************************