GILES COMMUNICATION Mei-Ting Sun has used the competition route to his advantage to become a world-class classical pianist.

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Honesty is piano
prodigy’s policy

IF CREATING good art is about suffering, then pianist Mei-Ting Sun can expect to have a storied career.

Born entertainer Classical Pianist Mei-Ting Sun Where: The Doris Duke Theatre, Honolulu Academy of Arts When: 7:30 p.m. Friday Tickets: $15 general and $10 Academy members, seniors, students and military Call: 532-8700

The 24-year-old classical sensation, who in March was the first prize winner of the Seventh National Chopin Piano Competition, seems to revel in telling the immense sacrifices he and his parents made in their native China so he could become a classical pianist.

"I started playing at 3 and, even at that age, practiced three hours a day," said Sun, who will perform an all-Chopin program at the Honolulu Academy of Arts' theater Friday night. "My parents spent their life savings twice, first to purchase a piano, then to send me to the United States to study."

The National Chopin Piano Competition, considered one of the most important competitions in the world, is held once every five years. This year it was in Miami.

One thing that separates Sun from other prodigies is how he passionately explains the suffering he went through to forge a career that includes a "lost childhood," and his subsequent desire not to subject any offspring to such a life.

"But maybe not why you think," he says. "Parents always want for their kids what they can't have. So there's no reason for a kid to have to go through what I did now. I simply was a product of my times and surroundings.

"When or if I have children, I want them to have a childhood."

In September, Sun will travel to Warsaw, Poland, to represent the United States in the International Chopin Competition. His first prize from the National Chopin Competition included $20,000 in cash, a June 13 performance at the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and a 20-city U.S. tour (which includes Honolulu), and a recital at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

Sun describes competitions as a way for artists to gain publicity and money, but not necessarily as the best gauge of talent.

"It's not all about good music anymore. If it was about good music, a lot of good musicians who are not famous would be famous, and a lot of not-so-good musicians would not be famous," he says by phone from Seattle, where he had just performed. "Honestly, I don't take competition very seriously."

IF HIS HONESTY seems a bit brash for an up-and-comer, Sun makes no excuses.

"I have always been a very honest person and not afraid to say what I think," he says, and that includes describing the reality of his early life in China and later childhood in New York, where he moved at age 9 to study at the Mannes College of Music.

"When I was 3, my family was not doing well financially," he said. "My father had friends whose kids were studying piano, so my parents thought that would be good for me."

The problem was Sun was at least a year younger than the other kids, and very short, and the piano teachers told his parents maybe they should wait a year.

"I could barely walk," Sun said. "I was 3 years and 2 months old and it was May 1984; how well I remember."

But he ended up practicing three hours a day, doing "something that came to me naturally."

"I enjoyed sitting in front of the piano, even doing those mindless, droning exercises, and I never thought it boring," he said.

His father, Hong-Tao Sun, accompanied him to the United States, but his mother, Qiwen Zhuang, was not granted a visa and remained behind. The pain of that long separation remains fresh.

"I didn't see her from age 9 to 15," he said. "It was terrible after I left China. For the first six months, I would cry every night in the shower."

When he finally returned to China to visit, mother and son didn't recognize one another.

"It was shocking," he said. "The only way she knew who I was is because I was standing next to my father. She never saw the process of me growing. In her mind, I was still 9."

But the personal sacrifices paid off, at least musically. At 14, Sun's performance of Ravel's Concerto in G at Alice Tully Hall was praised by the New York Times as a "stunningly fluid reading." In 1996, he was named one of the "Musicians of the Year" by the Village Voice for his performance of the Op. 10 Etudes of Chopin.

SUN READILY admits he spent much of his childhood feeling sorry for himself and thought many times about choosing another line of work.

"I knew music, especially classical music, is such a tough profession to be in," he said. "I considered astronomy at 12, then physics at 14, particle physics at 16, finally computer science at 17.

"I decided if I didn't go into music, it would have been waste of all that time I had studied music."

NOW, HE SAYS, life is all good.

"I've loving every minute of performing, and even the travel, because I'm reuniting with friends," he said. "I've always said it doesn't matter whether I play well or poorly, you guys are going to be entertained."

Now a doctoral fellow at the Juilliard School in New York, he was well received as a substitute at the 2002 Newport Music Festival. Last year, he won the biennial International Piano-e-Competition in Minneapolis. He has concerts lined up for the next few years.

Sun's newest project at www.whitekeys.com is an outreach program designed to promote classical piano music among teenagers by making quality recordings available online for no charge.

"I want to expose and educate people about classical music," says Sun, whose target audience is 12 to 27 years of age. "I will be accepting amateur recordings from some people, put their pictures and bios on the Web site and hoping that means their friends will come and look and maybe get interested.

"I'm still young, so this is a long-term project."