Feeling the music - the best story I've written

By Huong Le
Staff Writer of The Daily Athenaeum
MORGANTOWN – Sitting inside one of the tuning rooms at the Creative Arts Center, pianist Yew Choong Cheong started his normal daily routine.

He pressed one high-pitched note hard and said: “Do you hear the wavelength? I just listen for the vibration of the note.”

He then turned his attention to the graph shown on his laptop, which was placed on the piano’s right side. Computer software draws the graph, which then tells him if the string needs to be loosened or tightened.

That’s how the 28-year-old doctorate piano student has been tuning pianos for the past three years despite losing much of his hearing.

Cheong can’t hear extreme high notes.

When he plays complicated pieces, especially those of master composers like Tchaikovsky or Liszt, these high notes fall apart.

In three weeks, the West Virginia University student will have the honor of playing at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. As one of the four award recipients from around the world, Cheong will also receive a $5,000 scholarship from VSA arts. The organization was formed in 1974 to promote the learning and performing of arts among people with disabilities.

“I’m very surprised. I’m honored. It’s the biggest achievement in my life,” Cheong said with a smile.

Classical piano has never come easy for Cheong, who now has only about 30 percent of his hearing.

When he was nine years old, Cheong did not respond normally when his mother or sister called. The family took him to the hospital in his hometown, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and found out that a viral infection had damaged his left ear.

He has been wearing a hearing aid ever since. That little piece of equipment attached to the left ear used to make the young Cheong feel embarrassed in front of other children.

“I used to be very quiet and shy. When I was a child, everyone said ‘what’s that?’ It made me feel like I was an alien. Now, I’m already ‘immune’ to people’s curiosity about my hearing aid, let alone my hearing problem,” he said.

Five years ago, through acupuncture therapy, Cheong thought he had recovered from hearing loss.

But things became worse.

“I don’t know how it happened. One day, when I woke up, the sound just got softer, softer and softer,” he said. “By the afternoon, everything was off.”

The doctors said it was a nerve condition. They discouraged him from pursuing a music career.

“Why I don’t change to other majors? Music is too deep in my blood. I simply cannot imagine living without playing music,” Cheong said.

In 2003, Cheong was selected to perform in WVU’s annual Young Artists Auditions, and played Tchaikovsky’s “Concerto No. 1” with the WVU Symphony Orchestra.

Over the years, the young pianist has collected more than 2,500 music recordings, because he wants to improve by listening to other pianists.

With the hearing aid, Cheong can still hear most of what he plays.

Cheong’s music professor, Peter Amstutz, said all musicians struggle to find the balance between the inner sound – what the artist wants to hear – and the outer sound – what actually comes out of the instrument.

“We strive constantly to adjust the way we produce the outer sound so that it is ‘in tune with’ the ideal imagine of our inner sound,” Amstutz said. “Yew Choong has learned to do that very sensitively in the ranges of instrument that he can hear physically. And he is able to apply those feelings and the physical techniques to all registers of the piano.”

There are moments of overwhelming frustration for Cheong: not being able to call someone on the phone; not hearing music clearly in concerts; not being able to follow other students in group discussions or being lost in music lectures.

For daily conversation, he tries hard to listen to others by reading their lips -- a technique Cheong considers to be “self-taught.” Still, distinguishing between “c,” “s” and “z” sounds remain difficult. “When you have a disability, you just have to work around it,” he said.

Back at the Creative Arts Center, Cheong is now practicing between two and three hours a day for his upcoming performance in Washington, D.C., where he will perform “Piano Variations” by Aaron Copland and “Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6” by Franz Liszt.

“When I play in the concert, I simply think of no words, as taught by my professor, but just music,” he said. “I always ‘hear’ music in my mind ‘in advance’ before I play the notes.”