Pianist Zhou Tianyu: The keys are her life

　　At first glance, in her white T-shirt and blue jeans, Chinese-Canadian pianist Zhou Tianyu seemed like an overseas student spending her summer vacation in Beijing.

　　However, the 22-year-old had returned to China to give shows and master classes in Wuhan, Hubei province, and Changsha, Hunan province.

　　It's a busy summer for the young classical pianist, who has made her name by winning a number of awards and touring the world.

　　In June, she performed at a concert to welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan, at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, Poland.

　　In August, she will perform at one of Poland's biggest music festivals, the open air Evening of Chopin Concert. And in September, she will give a recital at the Shanghai Oriental Art Center.

　　In her programs, Zhou not only performs pieces familiar to Chinese audiences－like Mozart's Sonata in C major and Franz Liszt's Venezia e Napoli: Tarantella, but also works that surprise them, such as Schumann's Kreisleriana Op. 16 and Spanish pianist-composer Enrique Granados' Allegro de Concierto, Op. 46.

　　"I listen to a variety of music, such as opera and symphonies. I also like listening to hip-hop while working out at the gym. So when I play the piano, I am not just playing the instrument but incorporating different musical influences," says Zhou.

　　She is currently pursuing her master's degree at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Poland, an established music school founded in 1929, whose alumni include composer Wojciech Kilar and pianist Krystian Zimerman.

　　In the early 1980s, Chinese parents in big cities started to send their children to learn the piano and violin. And Zhou was one of them.

　　However, unlike millions of children in the country, who learn Western instruments only because they are pushed by their parents, Zhou was keen to learn the piano.

　　Recalling her interest, her mother, Xiang Yaqi, says: "Usually children would fall asleep when they listened to slow and soft classical music, but she was very focused.

　　"We didn't want her to become a professional pianist but it seemed like she was fated to be a pianist."

　　Zhou, whose father is a composer, was born in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, and grew up in Beijing. At age 4, she started learning the piano with her mother, who has majored in piano and vocal performance at Central China Normal University in Wuhan.

　　She made such rapid progress that she gave her first public performance one year later.

　　She moved with her parents to Canada when she was 9 and received a scholarship to study at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.

(Photo provided to China Daily)

　　Speaking of her passion, Zhou says: "Music is a natural thing for me. I enjoy the atmosphere when I play onstage. I am totally in the zone once I start playing."

　　Zhou has performed regularly since she entered her teens.

　　At the age of 16, she was invited to perform Liszt's Piano Concerto No 1 in E minor at the Orpheum Theater to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Vancouver Academy of Music. At 17, she won the grand prize of the Kay Meek Music Competition, where she performed Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No 2 in C minor.

　　In 2011, she gave her first performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations. She was 18.

　　Zhou is also keen to seek her own musical expression. To that end, she has read lots of books about her favorite composers, such as Bach and Schumann, to better understand them.

　　"I once went to a graveyard near the campus to feel death to better understand Beethoven," she says.

　　Zhou has decided to further her studies at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music because of her professor, Polish pianist Wojciech Switala.

　　She first met Switala in 2014 when she flew to Poland to participate in an international piano master class in Katowice.

　　"Switala helps me know myself better," says Zhou.

　　Zhou, who will graduate next year, has also composed some music.

　　During the interview, she plays a piece, which she wrote and produced at 15. With the contemporary music beats and fast rapping, the young pianist says that this is her entertainment after school.

　　She certainly knows what she wants, and doesn't mind the tight schedules, living between airports, hotels and concert halls that come with it.

　　An early indication of this came when she was 13. Zhou had just performed at the Niagara International Chamber Music Festival.

　　Recounting the story, her mother says: "On our way back home, it was raining heavily. We had driven for hours when I asked her, 'Are you tired?' She replied: 'No. This is the life of a pianist and I like it'."