“I thought there’s no way he’s going to have the patience to do this. The instructor suggested James, only 3, join the group to make piano lessons a family project. Matthew and Noriko had both played piano and signed their three older children up for lessons in Tokyo, where Matthew was serving as an associate dean and general counsel for Temple University’s Japan campus in the early 2000s. He was born in Orlando, Florida, but the family also has lived in Tokyo, Wyoming, Missouri, and Ohio, due to Matthew’s jobs in higher education that include serving as president of Missouri Western State University and the University of Akron. James Wilson is the youngest of four children to Matthew and Noriko Wilson. Since his illness, he has performed three more times at Carnegie Hall, and in Italy and the Netherlands.īut he says the hospital in Akron is the concert venue that has had the greatest impact on his life. ![]() Now cancer free, Wilson is a piano performance major at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music. And doctors performed surgery to remove the tumor. The strength in his ankles eventually returned. The therapy helped Wilson recover the use of his fingers. “It was like having our own Symphony Hall channel in the oncology department every day,” says Laurie Schueler, a communications specialist at Akron Children’s Hospital. ![]() From his bed, the teenager performed everything from Mozart to Taylor Swift, entertaining other children and hospital staff. A music therapist brought a keyboard to Wilson’s hospital room so he could strengthen his fingers by playing. His music career-and his life-were in jeopardy.īut through the piano came healing. ![]() Weeks of treatment left him with numbness in his fingers and weakness in his ankles, common side effects of chemotherapy. He was a finalist in an international competition in Paris.īut at 13, Wilson was playing at an unscheduled venue: Akron Children’s Hospital in Akron, Ohio, where he was battling a rare cancer called Ewing sarcoma. Stricken with cancer as a teenager, the prodigy used music to heal himself and others.īy age 12, pianist James Wilson ’23E had performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and Carnegie Hall in New York City.
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