The ability to play music has been a valued talent since the dawn of history. And over the years humans have created many complex instruments to produce expressive sounds. Perhaps the apex of instrumental endeavor is the piano. It’s a complex instrument and successfully “tickling the ivories” takes no small amount of patience not to mention years of practice. Most important is the biggest requirement the instrument requires: innate talent. Freshman Brendan Weinbaum is one who has all three and he’s hard at work taking his piano playing to the next level.

He started playing the instrument in the sixth grade, when he begged his

dad to get him a piano. Weinbaum’s level of play today is stratospheric but it’s noteworthy that the original motivation to play was for something almost pedestrian in nature: He wanted to play the songs he heard in the background of video games he was playing. It was love at first touch. He took to the instrument immediately.

From there, his next step was to move to far-more-complex classical music and before long he was composing his own pieces and had worked up to his current three-hour-day day practice regimen. “There was no steady progression to me learning it,” said Weinbaum. “It was easy to amazingly difficult and then I just started on amazingly difficult and improved over time.”

To date, one of his greatest achievements was being named a finalist for the National Young Composers Challenge this year with his piece, titled “Harmony of Emotions,” before a full orchestra.

Another piece, titled “The Long Road Behind Us,” he performed for a piano solo in New Hampshire and back in September for the North Atlanta “North Star” Talent Show. “It probably is my favorite piece that I’ve written,” said Weinbaum.

He plans to continue his composing throughout high school and his goal is to get a music scholarship to take his composing career that much further. As of now, he has written several pieces and has played with the City Orchestra — the Metropolitan Youth Symphony Orchestra — which will be performing in Carnegie Hall in New York City in summer 2018.

Weinbaum said his love for the piano stems from the expressiveness the instrument allows. “It’s really the creativity in it,” he said. “It’s like all art in that things have their own moments where it all is worth it.”

And those who’ve heard Weinbaum play and who have witnessed his bravura performances, they can hear that all his work is now richly paying off.