Word: paravicini
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Since then, Paravicini has mastered everything from classical to pop to avant-garde, but he always comes back to jazz. His conversation is still limited; in an interview over tea at Ockelford's London home, he mostly just repeats what's said to him, albeit with the confidence of a man who thought of it himself. Talk to him about music, though, and he opens up, asking: "What would you like me to play?" and "Did you enjoy that piece?" Music is the only language he's fluent in, and jazz, with the freedom it gives him to improvise, helps...
...What Paravicini can't tell you is his story, so Ockelford has told it for him. In his book, In the Key of Genius, published May 3, Ockelford recounts the extraordinary story of Paravicini's bizarre early lessons, his TV appearances and his concerts for charity (one at Buckingham Palace, another with the Royal Philharmonic Pops Orchestra) and ends with him playing Scott Joplin's The Entertainer to 12,000 people in Las Vegas last year. Paravicini, who is related through marriage to Prince Charles' wife Camilla Parker-Bowles, was only 5 years old when he and Ockelford first...
Even as a child, Paravicini's ear for music was remarkably advanced. But his technique "was very eccentric - mainly karate chops, thumbs and knuckles, elbows," says Ockelford. "But all on the right notes." It took 10 years to teach Paravicini how to play using the more conventional method. Now he can reproduce the sound of a 50-piece orchestra, hitting as many notes as his 10 fingers can reach together and then filling in the rest with arpeggios and scales. He can shift to a different key midway through a tune, without stopping. He can dip into his mental library...
...Nobody knows exactly how Paravicini does what he does. One theory is that his talent developed because of his limitations, not despite them. "People with learning disabilities like Derek's have a strong drive to systemize, to look for patterns," says Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmental psychopathology at Cambridge University. "Music is a system, the intervals between notes and the relationship between keys are quantitative. Even when you improvise you are, in a sense, following the rules. And because he's blind, a lot more of his brain may be allocated to auditory information...
...Paravicini what his secret is and the answer is simple: "I just listen. And relax." As for what's next, nobody's sure. A documentary filmmaker has been following him around for months, and a movie studio has floated the idea of making a biopic. But as Paravicini starts in on Fats Waller's Ain't Misbehavin', he's oblivious to anything beyond the joy of this moment. Rocking back and forth, a sideways smile on his face, he throws in a cascading scale here, a sneaky chord there, taking the tune as far out as he can before pulling...