Blind Pianist Breaks Barriers

A young man hopes to become the first blind Chinese pianist to play in international concerts.

Photo of Sun Yan - Blind chinese pianistChina, which is home to celebrated pianists Lang Lang and Li Yundi, is making way for new talent. Sun Yan, 23, is following in their footsteps, overcoming his handicap with hopes of becoming the first blind pianist from China to play at the world’s most prestigious concert halls.

As a junior in Central Conservatory of Music, China’s Julliard, he is the nation’s first ever blind undergraduate student at a music conservatory. Born with cataracts, he lost his eyesight after a failed operation at the age of three. Being blind he had to overcome many difficulties that others did not have to face but fortunately his parents soon discovered his passion for music and bought him a piano. Music lessons were not cheap and Sun’s parents who were ordinary factory workers in Jiling province had to find a way for him to continue his education. His father set up his own business with hopes of earning more money as Sun’s mother moved with the budding musician to Beijing to look after him as he learned from the best teachers. His skills soon won him scholarships.

As a member of China’s Art Group of Disabled, Sun has traveled and performed in dozens of countries including Singapore, Malaysia, Japan and the United States.

Thanks to the hard work and help from his mentor, Professor Yang Jun, he was he was admitted to Central Conservatory of Music of China as its first blind student. He has since gone on to win first prize in a piano contest for disabled people held in Japan in 2004. In his career as a pianist, Sun says his most cherished experience is when he played a Liszt rhapsody at Carnegie Hall in 2000 during a performance with other disabled musicians from China. He hopes someday soon he will be able to have his own recital there. ‘’Up to now, I still find it difficult to practise the piano, there are different difficulties in different stages. At the very beginning, I couldn’t see and didn’t get sheet music (for the blind). So the teacher read the music to me note by note and I played them note for note on the piano. I first practised one hand at a time and then practised with both of my hands. I learned little by little at each lesson and it took me a couple of months to learn a new tune, a very simple one.’

‘After all, the piano is a western music instrument. I will be very glad if I can go abroad for further study. In recent classes, Professor Yang has always been talking about how he hopes I will be granted opportunities by foreign professors. I will be glad to go abroad since I will be able to feel how people in the west understand this (piano) art which has its roots there.’ SOUNDBITE Yang Jun,

Piano Professor with Central Conservatory of Music of China, saying (Mandarin): ‘From both my and Sun’s points of view, he should enter graduate school for further study. I think he should not only be the first blind undergraduate student but also the first blind graduate student majoring in piano. I think he is qualified enough.’

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