Young Artists Make a Practice of Mastery

Mastering classical music within the Hsieh family means practice--and lots of it.

The two Hsieh children--Tiffany, 14, and Timothy, 10--spend hours every day practicing, just as each has done since before their fifth birthdays.

But they have a lot further to go to catch up with their mother, Shirley Hsieh, who studied piano with top-ranking teachers for 25 years and is now a teacher herself.

All that devotion to practice has earned numerous awards for the children, who will appear this week as the first brother and sister to perform as Discovery Artists with the New West Symphony.

Held just once a year, the concerts allow eight accomplished young artists to solo on the same stage as New West’s adult professionals.

The youngest of the Discovery Artists, violinist Timothy Hsieh, will kick off the concert with a movement from a piece by Mozart. Pianist Tiffany Hsieh will play the first movement of a Prokofiev concerto.

The Thousand Oaks High School Concert Choir and the New West Youth Symphony All Stars also will perform. The concerts are at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza and Saturday at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center. Jazz festivals precede the concerts at 6:15, with mariachi music following.

Another youngster performing in concert will be 11-year-old Jean Yeh of Westlake Village. A Discovery Artist alumna, Jean returns this year not on violin, but on piano.

“I like the violin because I feel like I have more control, because basically it’s yourself making the sound,” she said.

Accomplished on both instruments, Jean has no plans to take up any more.

“I think two is enough,” she said.

Jean, an eighth-grader at Lindero Canyon Middle School in Agoura Hills, began studying music at age 3 at a conservatory in New York before moving to California.

“I think it was a good age, because when you’re older it’s harder to learn new things. But when you’re young, you’re still learning,” she said.

New West music director Boris Brott said the concerts give the young musicians a chance to experience the professional music world. “It’s an opportunity to see what it’s like to play with a professional orchestra,” Brott said. “It’s an opportunity to be heard by an audience in a significant auditorium. It’s an opportunity to give you a taste of what it’s like to be out there.”

For New West, the program is also a way to cultivate new musicians for the professional ranks and build an audience for classical music.

“We live in a world where classical music is to young people often not a normal pursuit,” Brott said. “It doesn’t run in the everyday mainstream of what one does. We certainly have found that just a little exposure will pique an interest that will pay tremendous dividends.”

One of the greatest dividends, he said, is that masters of classical music are also often high achievers.

“When you go to study classical music, you develop almost by osmosis a process of learning,” Brott said. “A young person who tends to develop skills as a musician tends also to have discipline. . . . They usually are at the top of their classes.”

The Hsieh children are perfect examples. Both are straight-A students with a long list of accomplishments for their tender years.

A high school junior at Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences in Santa Monica, Tiffany skipped second and third grades. At age 10, she scored 710 on her math SAT (along with a not-too-shabby 530 verbal). That same year, she passed the early entrance exam for Cal State Los Angeles.

But the 10-year-old wasn’t quite ready for college. “I didn’t want to rush it any more than I already had,” Tiffany said. “Besides, we didn’t want her to miss her childhood,” her mother added.

Tiffany’s musical talents have won her many awards and scholarships, including her current status as a semifinalist in the Music Center Spotlight Awards Competition.

But after achieving perfect scores in college-level chemistry and calculus courses, she also is leaning toward the field of medicine. She worked for the past two summers as a research intern at UCLA Medical Center.

Timothy, too, has awards and scholarships for his violin performances. “I don’t think anybody likes practicing,” he said, “but performing is fun.”

A fifth-grade student at Wilbur Avenue School in Tarzana, Timothy also pursues other interests, including video games, Lego building and all things scientific. He noted that playing the violin improves his hand-eye coordination, and that’s important for a 4-foot-5-inch basketball player.

“After I played violin, it’s very easy to concentrate, because your mind is ready to think and you can do many problems and stuff.”

How great a role does their mother play in developing their musical talents? Almost none, Shirley Hsieh said. Both have highly rated teachers outside the family.

“It’s really difficult to teach your own kids,” she said. “You know how kids are. ‘You’re the mother,’ they say, ‘not my teacher.’ ”

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Ritsch is a Times correspondent; Willman is a Times staff writer.