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General News: Six Year Old to Play at Carnegie Hall
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| Six year old Eric Willis. Photo Provided. |
February 26, 2014
from Nazym Willis
Eric Willis is a 6 year old first-grader at Cornwall Elementary School. He has studied violin for more than 2 years now. His teacher is Donna Kushner.
Eric participated at the annual evaluation sponsored by the New York State School Music Association (NYSSMA) in May of 2013 where he was evaluated at level 2 and he received an outstanding 27 score out of 28. The assessment included scales, sight-reading, and the unaccompanied performance of a prepared piece.
Eric frequently plays at Culinarians’ home and Waldorf school in New Paltz. He played at a Bach festival in Cornwall in June of 2013 (organized by Ruthanne Schempf and Emily Faxon) at Cornwall-on-Hudson Presbyterian Church. More recently Eric played at a Thanksgiving concert at Case Chapel of the Reformed Church in Poughkeepsie, NY.
Eric participated in 2 international violin competitions and placed in both. For one of them he is performing at Carnegie Hall on March 25th at 7:30 p.m. and for another he is performing at the Engelman Recital Hall at Baruch Performing Arts Center in New York City on Sunday, March 30, 2014 at 4:30 p.m.
Eric moved to Cornwall, NY with hurricane Sandy (October 29th) last year from Kingston, NY. The Cornwall Elementary School (Lee Road) was closed for 3 days because of no electricity during the aftermath of the hurricane. The first several days of his family's arrival to Cornwall were challenging due to the timing of the storm but they have settled in nicely since.
Eric started playing piano at 2 years and 9 months and after 3 months he decided he doesn’t want to continue with the Suzuki method of playing piano. At age 4 Eric insisted he wanted to play violin. His parents would not buy him one for 2 months and just took violin lessons to see how determined and serious Eric was to decide if he would continue with violin. After 2 months of lessons he got his first 1/8 size violin. After more than 2 years of practice and violin lessons Eric has grown into a bigger half-size violin that he practices every day.
Eric enjoys music and has a photographic and audio-graphic memory in addition to perfect pitch that he was seemingly born with. Once he sees the notes he’ll remember them, once he hears the music it is remembered. These aptitudes have been of key importance throughout his musical studies.
Besides violin Eric enjoys skiing, swimming and chess.
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