Pianist Zee Zee on how becoming a mum changes her playing, and the things she sacrificed growing up a prodigy
- The China-born virtuoso, who will give two concerts in Hong Kong in May, says she feels more brave on stage having given birth to her first child
- She looks back at her childhood, spent partly in Berlin where she now lives, and at what she missed out on by being devoted to the piano from an early age
Zee Zee was supposed to spend six weeks in China recovering after giving birth to her first child in Hong Kong early last year and return immediately to touring with the Philharmonia Orchestra in Britain. But the piano virtuoso’s plans were upset when Covid-19 started to spread widely at the beginning of 2020. She has been stuck in her home country ever since.
The 32-year-old was born in Shenzhen, southern China, and moved to Germany at the age of five when her father took a job there. She returned to China two years later but left again after finishing school to continue her piano studies at the prestigious Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and later at The Juilliard School. She is now based in Berlin.
Zee Zee, who also goes by Zhang Zuo, her Chinese name, has spent a little over a year now in China, her longest period there since leaving for the United States as a student. She has never before performed with so many Chinese musicians and orchestras.
She has been there so long she has started stumbling over English words, she says.
“It’s really sad. Like, my friends called me the other day, and they said, ‘oh my god, Zee Zee, you’ve stayed in China for too long, even your accent changed’,” she laughs.