Nearly Blind Pianist to Play in Honor Bands Concert

Being chosen to play in California’s all-state bands is always an honor,but for Hueneme High School student senior Lucia Simekova it means much more.

Seventeen-year-old Lucia (pronounced LOOT-see-uh) is so myopic she is nearly blind, said Hueneme band director Michael Doty. Yet, with the aid of thick glasses, Lucia is able to decipher musical notes on paper and then memorize them.

She is such an accomplished pianist that the foreign-exchange student has been selected to be among the nine high school students who will represent Ventura County at a Sunday concert put on by the all-state honor bands.

Lucia, who likes to be called Lucy, said she is thrilled to take part in the concert.

“It sounds like it will be fun,” she said Thursday from the band room at Hueneme High. “I’m not nervous yet, but ask me on Sunday.”

Student musicians for the two honor bands were chosen from all over California by a panel of judges from the California Band Directors Assn., Doty said. About 700 students auditioned and 265 were selected statewide, he said.

Besides Lucia, Ventura County students from Ventura High, Rio Mesa High, Camarillo High, Thousand Oaks High and Westlake High will take part in the concert.

The students will converge on Oxnard beginning today and are scheduled to perform the free concert at 1:30 p.m. Sunday at the Oxnard Auditorium on Hobson Way. Rehearsals for the concert will take place today and Saturday and the public is invited to watch, Doty said.

A symphonic band will be led by W. Francis McBeth, an Arkansas-based music professor whose former students include President Clinton on tenor saxophone, Doty said. Mallory Thompson, band director at the University of South Florida, will conduct a second concert band.

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For Lucia, the concert will be an experience that she will take back to her home in Bratislava, Slovakia. She arrived in Oxnard last August to spend her senior year at Hueneme High.

She is living with Doty and his wife in their Oxnard home.

She wanted to come to the United States, Lucia said, to work on her English and to make new friends. While her grammar is not yet perfect, Lucia performs nearly flawlessly when she sits down at the piano.

On Thursday, she played Mozart’s Sonata in A Minor, Opus 310, entirely from memory for 25 students in a choir class.

“Well, you guys, I’m going to play some fast stuff,” Lucia said before starting the piece. “So please don’t kill me if I make a mistake.”

When the students clapped after the first movement, Lucia gently scolded them: “You guys, you’re not supposed to clap between movements. But that’s OK. It’s only choir class.”

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When Lucia finished the composition, one student jumped to her feet and went to hug the pianist. “I just had to touch you,” said Patricia McNary, 15, a freshman at the school.

Patricia said Lucia has been giving her private piano lessons after school for $3 an hour. Although Patricia said she hopes to become a singer, she is impressed by Lucia’s talent.

“I think she’ll make something of it,” Patricia said. “Besides, she’s nice.”

Lucia hopes to become a solo concert pianist. She has played piano since age 5 and attends a school for musically gifted students in Bratislava. She hopes one day to return to America for a more extended visit, Lucia said.

“I like this country. It rules,” said Lucia, adopting local slang.

She is most impressed with the extent of high technology found throughout the country, Lucia said. She is less enthusiastic about the rules placed on minor children.

“When you are 21, you can live it up here,” she said. “But I do not think I would like to be raised a teen-ager here.”