A 13-year-old pianist is about to tickle his way from Northeast Ohio to New York City, making his Carnegie Hall debut on Thursday night.
Mikey Klein looks like your average Lakewood Catholic Academy 8th grader. He enjoys hanging out with friends, watching movies and playing video games. But he has an ear for music.
“My favorite is classical music,” he said. “My favorite composer is Frédéric Chopin. I also really like classic rock. Billy Joel is my favorite.”
In the cozy music room at the family home and seated at his baby grand, Klein effortlessly pivots from “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” to Chopin’s “Military Polonaise,” the piece he’s performing at Carnegie Hall. It’s part of the Golden Classical Music Awards, where he placed first. The competition is open to a variety of instrumentalists and hosts annual recitals in Los Angeles, Tokyo and New York, where Klein is performing on Thursday. He’s come a long way in just three years, from the time he was a fifth-grade trombonist who discovered a toy piano in his basement.
"All my trombone pieces were in B-flat,” he said. “The notes on the Fisher-Price piano were labeled. So, I read the music from my trombone music and played it on the piano. I really liked the idea of just clicking the keys instead of, on the trombone, you have to like blow air into it. That's a little bit annoying.”
Klein sometimes jams with his father, who plays guitar. His siblings also play instruments. His mother, Donna Clifford Klein, said Mikey was calmed by music as a baby, but she never expected that he’d become a musician.
“I was in the kitchen, and I heard Billy Joel's ‘Piano Man,’” she said. “I was like, ‘I don't think I turned the music on.’ So, I'm trying to figure out where the music's coming from. It never dawned on me that he was playing on the keyboard. That's when we kind of were like, ‘Whoa, I guess you should get some lessons.’”
Billy Joel also grew up influenced by classical before turning on to rock in the 1960s – the same path taken by Lyndhurst native Eric Carmen. Last month, Klein performed at a memorial concert for the singer-songwriter.
“I learned all the songs by ear,” he said. “That was really good for helping me learn songs by ear. It took like a month or so. There was a lot of people in the audience.”
Between that show and participating in competitions as far away as England, Klein is conquering his nerves. As he looks towards high school, hopefully at St. Edward’s, he wants to study filmmaking, play in the school orchestra or start a band and create his own compositions.
