Rhapsody in Youth
A brush with Mozart and a stay in Salzburg have Member Aadi Kazu Duarah setting sights on a career in music.
When Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was 4 years old, it was clear that he was destined for musical greatness.
His father, Leopold, took the young Wolferl under his wing and taught him to play violin. He was soon performing with others and, at age 7, composed the first of his famous violin sonatas.
Aadi Kazu Duarah aspires to follow in his footsteps. The 11-year-old even had a brush with history when he played one of Mozart’s childhood violins at Ginza’s Daiichi Seimei Hall last Golden Week.
“I was so scared I would drop it,” he says of the historic instrument brought to Japan by Daiichi Life Insurance Company and the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation.
The momentous event highlighted the progress the young Club Member has made. He first picked up the violin at age 5. While waiting for his older brother to finish a robotics class, Aadi went with his mother to an instrument shop. The clerk showed him a violin. “I tried it out and I was like, ‘I want to do it,’” he recalls.
The shop paired Aadi with a teacher. After a couple of years, the teacher suggested that he enter a competition.
“The first time, I didn’t make it to the finals. I was sad, so I practiced more,” Aadi says.
Since 2021, he has won five major competitions in Italy and Japan. As the first prize and Cecilia International Music Award winner at the 23rd Osaka International Music Competition, Aadi will travel to New York City in May to perform at Carnegie Hall.
“It’s a big thing, but still a small thing,” he says of the grand opportunity. “I want to improve, do some difficult international competitions and grow up to play as a soloist with orchestras.”
Last year, Aadi spent a month at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, where he studied with Paul Roczek, one of the world’s most acclaimed teachers of young violinists. In the long term, he has his eyes set on Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music. The renowned conservatory, founded in 1924, has an acceptance rate of just four percent. “It’s really hard to get in, and you can’t if you just do violin,” he explains.
During the daytime at the British School in Tokyo, Aadi supplements violin with music theory. After school, he practices at home two and half hours each day, making sure to wrap up by 8pm to avoid disturbing neighbors. On weekends, he stretches those sessions to four hours.
He often records his practice and shares the clips on Instagram (@kazu_violin), where he has amassed a following of more than 25,000. Many of those are violin teachers from India, the Middle East and South America who are interested in how kids in Japan practice and perform.
As Aadi prepares for Carnegie Hall and takes aim at grander goals, he has some simple advice for others picking up an instrument for the first time. “When you start, find a good teacher, someone who suits you,” he says. “Some people are really good at music but end up not liking it, because their teacher pressures them too much.”
Words: C Bryan Jones
Image: Aadi Kazu Duarah playing Mozart’s childhood violin at Daiichi Seimei Hall
