Jason Afovi, a young pianist and student, performed at Carnegie Hall for the first time at just 11 years old.<\/p>\n
Afovi told News 12 his love for playing the piano started when he was around 5 years old. He shared that around that age he saw a TV show where one of the characters played the piano. From there, he said his father noticed his fascination with playing the instrument.<\/p>\n
“My dad decided to bring me into piano class and help me achieve my dream of becoming a well-known pianist,” said Afovi.<\/p>\n
Afovi played two pieces on Oct. 24, one of them alongside the acclaimed concert pianist Richard Atkins at the Music Hall.<\/p>\n
“Debussy’s ‘Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum’ and then, with the help of another pianist called Richard Atkins, I played Shostakovich ‘Waltz No.2,'” shared Afovi.<\/p>\n
The performance was during a benefit called “Pianistically Speaking<\/a>,” an event to raise money for the organization Education Through Music<\/a>, which supports music education in under-resourced schools in the city.<\/p>\n Marlon Williams, the principal of Afovi’s school, M.S 180, spoke about having one of their very own perform at the music hall for the great cause<\/p>\n “It’s so exciting. You know we are a school of the arts and so we get super talented kids, but this has to be the first time we’ve had this,” Williams expressed.<\/p>\n Afovi hopes his performance and his story will encourage other kids to continue to dream big.<\/p>\n “I actually want to become a piano composer and make my own music. Like when it’s to that point where I’m, like, actually really good at piano. And then if I can, I can, like, make music for myself and maybe for some other people too. I just want to encourage people that music is for everybody,” said Afovi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jason Afovi, a young pianist and student, performed at Carnegie Hall for the first time at just 11…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-391945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}