A baby’s first word can be “mama” or “papa”, but not for Hailey, who had been hospitalized since one and a half months old and had never made any sound. “One day after she was discharged from hospital, she was sitting on the sofa, humming a tune. It was Twinkle Twinkle Little Star! That was the first time for me to hear her make a sound!” recalls Hailey’s mother Casy Chan. “She hummed the whole song! But I was a bit disappointed that her first word was not ‘mama’.”
Little Hailey turned out to be a child prodigy. “After humming for a while, she started to sing, so we bought her a toy grand piano. She taught herself to play the toy piano with two fingers. Then she began to sing while playing the toy piano,” Chan explains.
“So we thought maybe we should sign her up for piano lessons with a visually impaired teacher. After the first class, the teacher told me that Hailey has perfect pitch,” says Chan, who discovered that her daughter indeed has an ear for music.
Now a DSE student, Hailey Fong learns about Mozart’s original variations on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. At the “Charity Piano Marathon”, she will be performing “Those Bygone Years”, a song full of youth and sweat and summer as graduating teenagers looking back on their childhood. “Music is an important channel to express my emotions and happiness,” she sums up.
Another visually impaired pianist, Jimmy Chor, loved listening to music at an early age. “It was hard when I first learned to play the piano. I couldn’t see the music score and had to remember the position of the keys and spent more time practicing than other students,” says Chor, whose piano teacher was also visually impaired.
Now a pianist of a pop band, he learnt a lot in music and interacting with others. Joining a pop band is one of the new things he enjoys, in addition to playing solo and in small groups.
Chor has a mission with his music. “Some people told me that they were unhappy but after listening to my performance, they were filled with happiness. This is a great achievement to me,” he emphasizes. “Through my music, I hope to heal, help and bring happiness to others. This is my mission.”
As a professional musician, he is looking for performance opportunities especially to collaborate with different musicians and singers to sharpen his skills and techniques.
For the “Charity Piano Marathon”, he will be performing Leon Lai’s “Summer of Love”. He fell in love with this song since he first listened to it 30 years ago. Impressed by other versions arranged by various singers, he looks forward to bringing a fresh feeling of summer with his performance.
“Charity Piano Marathon”, part of a series of events to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the initial public offering of Link REIT and Moomin’s 80th birthday, will be held on 2 August at Lok Fu Place for eight hours starting from 11 am. It features 20 professional pianists and 80 student musicians playing summer-themed pieces with renowned artists including Cedric Chan, Kolin Chan, Nicole Yim, visually impaired pianists Luke Wong and Lam Jak-Yiu, and Shelley Ng. Proceeds will benefit the Children’s Cancer Foundation.
