Music Prodigies Bloom in Irvine : Yamaha Center Gives Boost to Bright Young Performers-Composers

Tamir Hendelman has the experts spinning. Joel Kabakov, a Harvard-educated composer who has coached him in keyboard harmony, says he’s “a young Chick Corea.” Phillip Keveren, a jazz teacher and studio musician who has played his compositions, calls him “an early Miles Davis.”

Both agree that Hendelman, 16, has the sort of musical talent that sets him apart from the run-of-the-mill prodigies that seem to proliferate with every passing piano competition.

Which is why a camera crew from the nationally syndicated TV series “Young Universe” recently made an all-day fuss over him at the Yamaha Music Education Center in Irvine, for a show scheduled for broadcast in the fall on KCBS-TV, Channel 2.

Hendelman, in scruffy jeans and a faded work shirt, sat at a glossy grand piano under the glare of the camera lights. Counting off an upbeat tempo for his jazz quintet, he leaned into the keys and a dense cascade of chords surged beneath his fingers.

The title of the piece, “Cloud Nine,” might also have described the bliss on Hendelman’s grinning, dark-eyed face. As the rich harmonies unfolded in rippling layers of sound, his slender shoulders relaxed, and he seemed to soar with graceful ardor on the wings of this, his latest supercharged composition.

Just four years ago, the Israeli-born Hendelman was strictly an organist with Bach to Bacharach tastes, a fledgling interest in jazz, some tentative ideas for his own tunes and no experience as an arranger. Then he encountered Junior Original Concerts, the Buena Park-based Yamaha Music Corp.’s program for budding performer-composers.

During a break in the filming, Hendelman, who has lived in Sherman Oaks since August, 1984, recalled going to a JOC festival at USC: “It was pretty incredible stuff. I heard little kids playing their own concertos. I couldn’t believe what they were doing. So I took a chance and asked a guy involved with the program if he could help me get in.”

The odds were in his favor. Yamaha tends to recruit JOC candidates from the ranks of the most accomplished students in its varied after-school programs, and Hendelman had already distinguished himself at a Yamaha Electone Festival in La Mirada by being one of three national finalists in an organ competition for performers up to age 13.

Still, Hendelman was so intensely serious when he first auditioned for JOC that Kabakov, heading the program at the time, wondered whether he would ever loosen up. “Obviously, he has,” said the Yamaha executive, taking note of his student’s swinging on-camera performance.

Unusual as it may seem, Hendelman’s switch from performing the works of others to writing and arranging his own pieces is simply a byproduct of his theory-composition studies at JOC. “The whole program encourages you to express your musical ideas,” he said, adding that his interest in jazz was deepened by Villa Maramba, a private teacher in El Monte.

Keveren, one of Hendelman’s JOC tutors, stepped off the bandstand, where he had been playing bass along with two other Yamaha teachers--Gary Matsuura on tenor saxophone, M.B. Gordy on drums and Linda Martinez, 12, a JOC student from Whittier, on keyboard synthesizer.

“Tamir is something else, a real standout,” Keveren offered. “A lot of kids in the program have small, fragmented ideas that must be developed. His ideas are big, and they’re fully processed.”

Indeed, since enrolling as a JOC student two years ago, Hendelman has penned more than half a dozen jazz pieces with such large-sounding titles as “Outburst,” “City” and “A Night of Enchantment.” Some are intended for solo instruments, others for small bands.

“One of the things I like about JOC is the ensemble work,” he said. “You get to play music by the other kids in the program and they play yours. You learn how to listen. It doesn’t just happen in your fingers.”

Only about a dozen students a year are admitted to the JOC program here. Begun in Japan in 1972, JOC was expanded six years later to the United States--principally in Orange and Los Angeles counties because of Yamaha’s corporate presence in Buena Park. Of the program’s 100 or so U.S. graduates, some have gone on to leading conservatories, such as the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and the Yale University School of Music. Others have enrolled as music majors at USC and Harvard.

According to Yamaha corporate spokesman William Nye, the idea behind the company’s music education programs took root shortly after World War II, when Chairman Gemichi Kawakami “noticed everybody riding Yamaha motorcycles, but he never saw anybody playing the pianos or the home organs.” The story goes that Kawakami ordered the opening of a storefront music school in the heart of downtown Tokyo.

Today, Yamaha instrument dealers provide music education classes in at least 30 countries. And the nonprofit Yamaha Music Foundation, a philanthropic arm of the corporation, spares no expense on top students. After Hendelman won first prize among organ players, ages 14-18, at a 1986 Electone festival, he was flown to Washington for a concert with other winners. Last summer Yamaha flew him to Japan.

For its contribution to arts education in the county, the Yamaha Music Corp., USA, will receive the Golden Baton award from the Orange County Philharmonic Society on April 29.

“We feel they should be recognized for their efforts,” said Erich Vollmer, executive director of the society. “With their two education centers here in the county, they offer an innovative curriculum as well as the standard music courses.”

At the Music Education Center in Irvine, about 700 students attend classes--from preschoolers learning the rudiments of ear training to high schoolers rehearsing for festival performances. Another 120 students are in Westminster at a satellite of the Music Education Center in La Mirada.

Some exceptional youngsters spend almost as much time in Yamaha classes as they do at regular school. Martinez said she attends the La Mirada center for four hours a day, five days a week, practicing piano and synthesizer, learning the drums and studying music theory, composition and improvisation.

“Sometimes I have to force myself to practice, like every kid does,” said Martinez, a seventh-grader who has written her own compositions. “But once I’m on the piano, I have a hard time stopping. If I’m playing the melody of a concerto, and I like the way it sounds, I’ll just start improvising from it.”

Hendelman, for his part, tries to put in a minimum of two hours a day at the keyboard. “I’m always in a race against time,” he said, noting his “tough schedule” of advanced-placement courses at Grant High School in Van Nuys.

“But I don’t mind,” he added. “It’s a challenge.”

What’s more, Hendelman expects to be even busier once he graduates. “I might have to go to two colleges,” he said. “One for jazz and one for classical.”

In the meantime, Kabakov said he believes that critics ought to start polishing up their shiniest adjectives and preparing for the best.

“There’s no telling how far this kid can go,” he said. “If the distance he’s come over the last few years is any measure, his potential is unlimited.”