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.
Zee Zee does not come from a musical family, but she started the piano young. She had her first taste of classical music as a child in Berlin where, she recalls, taxi drivers listened to Beethoven and almost every cafe played Wagner.
As a woman, after you give birth, at least psychologically I feel more fearless. Brave, more brave on stage.
“We were living in Charlottenburg, a 10-minute walk from the Berlin Philharmonic. Back then, I didn’t have [the] internet at first, and I didn’t speak German. I didn’t have any friends. So the piano became my only friend and my entertainment,” she says.
Before Zee Zee returned to China at the age of seven, she was good enough to take part in a piano competition. “Unfortunately, I won a prize. So my parents thought, ‘Oh my god, my kid has talent!’” she says.
‘My life in Hong Kong informs how I play’: classical pianist returns for concerts
Zee Zee thrived in the school’s highly competitive environment. She went on to win major international piano competitions, including the coveted Petschek Piano Award at the Juilliard and the 2013 Queen Elizabeth Competition in Belgium.
And now, for the first time since giving birth, she is on the road again. Next month, she will be in Hong Kong to perform Liszt‘s Piano Concerto No 1 with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Christoph Koncz at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre on May 5, and give a solo recital on May 17 – a programme that features works by Liszt, Wagner, Schönberg and Ravel.
In the year she has been stuck in China because of the coronavirus, Zee Zee has held outreach concerts to expose young children to classical music, drawing inspiration from Chinese-American cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s appearances on children’s TV show Sesame Street.
Her outreach was encouraged by her becoming a mother. She hopes to inspire children to listen to classical music, although she worries that her daughter will be sick of it because of her constant exposure to it before and since her birth.
Looking back, Zee Zee feels she sacrificed other parts of life to become a professional classical musician.
“I had such a professional training and was very focused on piano from a very early [age],” she said. “But what I missed was an opportunity to discover more in the humanities or study math or learn another language or go to more movie theatres, have fun with kids.”
Growing older and becoming a more mature musician has added nuances and layers to her music. Becoming a mother, she says, also changed her performance.
“As a woman, after you give birth,” she says, “at least psychologically I feel more fearless. Brave, more brave on stage.”
