#Blind piano prodigy series#

The first time Barbara Merrill heard Kuhao Case play, she was cleaning a church. You can watch the entire “60 Minutes” segment on Whitaker right here. Cases musical dream: Blind piano prodigy comes to Clarkston. It seems like his brain is taking that part of the tissue that’s not being stimulated by sight and using it or maybe helping him to perceive music with it.”Īs he explained, Whitaker’s brain is “sort of borrowing that part of the brain and rewiring it to help him hear music.” His visual cortex is activated throughout. What Limb discovered is that Whitaker’s “entire brain is stimulated by music. These limitations have not held Avett Ray back, however.

RELATED: Billy Joel Brings Blind 14-Year-Old Piano Player On Stage To Perform At Madison Square Garden The young piano prodigy from Dayton, Ohio, who was born with optic nerve fibroplasia, is completely blind in one eye and has very limited sight in the other. “Then we switched the soundtrack for him and we put on a band that he knows quite well… This is what changes in his brain.” And we didn’t see any significant activity there at all,” Limb explained of Whitaker’s brain activity while listening to a “boring” lecture. “Because he is blind we looked at his visual cortex. “So it was, you know, just very scary.”Īs Limb explained, he’s been using MRI scans to shed light on what’s going on inside Whitaker’s brain. “I think at the time, I didn’t think he was gonna make it,” she admitted. His mother May Whitaker was informed he had a 50-50 chance of survival.

“Except rather than just wondering, I’m actually trying to answer the question.”īorn prematurely at 24 weeks, Whitaker weighed less than two pounds at birth and was beset by a series of health maladies. “I think anytime somebody watches Matthew play piano the first thing that you think is, How does he do that?” Limb told “60 Minutes”. RELATED: Katy Perry Says She’d Be Down To Babysit 7-Year-Old Piano Prodigy After He Asked For Her Number (Exclusive) Charles Limb discussing why the 18-year-old pianist is the ideal subject to help answer this question. Whitaker was featured on Sunday’s edition of “60 Minutes”, with Dr. An illegal immigrant from Chile, he will return to his native country to preserve the chance of a future student visa. In 1998, at age ten, he debuted with the Century Orchestra, Osaka. Yerko DiFonis, partially deaf and legally blind, is a piano prodigy. In 1995, at age seven, Tsujii won the first prize at the All Japan Music of Blind Students by the Tokyo Helen Keller Association. Matthew Whitaker is a blind piano prodigy who’s been entertaining audiences since he was 11 - and scientists want to learn what makes him so good.Īs “60 Minutes” reported, Whitaker is at the centre of a medical study exploring an intriguing question: How do the brains of exceptionally talented musicians work, and do they differ from those of average people? He began formal piano study at the age of four.

#Blind piano prodigy series#