Word: mias
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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DURING HER YEARS at Harvard, Mia has devoted many grueling hours to practice, sometimes as many as eight hours a day. Still, Mia claims her social life has not taken a beating. "I probably don't socialize as much as other people do, but I think enough to keep me going so there is a balance of work and relaxation...
...roommate of three years, Tracy Valezquez '86, agrees. Mia, she says, is very dedicated to her piano-playing but "when she is out of the practice room, she becomes just one of the girls." She emphasizes that there's more to Mia than playing the piano. Mia seems to do "more in addition to her practice than most of us without such a commitment...
...Still, Mia herself admits that she sometimes thought about giving up all the lonely hours of practicing--but only until she was 10. "By the age of 10, I started to slack off and I wasn't practicing very much and my teacher always told me to practice more. But I was always dumping my books after school and going out to play," she says...
...Mia's piano playing days then almost came to a halt, but an inspirational experience pushed Mia back to tinkling the ivories, this time for good. "One night I saw this 10-year-old performing a concerto with the Boston Pops: She was my age. That really struck home, and I was thinking, 'Boy, she is incredible.' She played a Haydn concerto, I remember distinctly. I was so impressed that right after that concert I started to practice and I said if someone at that age can be that good I really want to know how far I can push...
HAVING CHOSEN her career at the age of 11, Mia began giving classical concerts at 12. By the time she arrived at Harvard, she had already won several national competitions, such as the Baltimore and National Symphony Orchestras' Young Soloists Competitions, the Beethoven Competition for Young Soloists and the Johann Sebastian Bach International Piano Competition (Prepatory Division...