Recent LaSalle grad will head to Julliard in the fall
The average American teenager spends more than 30 hours per week online. But Ryan Reilly spends even more behind the keyboard in his Delmar homethe 18-year-old spends an average of six hours every day practicing the piano.
That tenacity has paid off for the recent LaSalle Institute grad. In the fall, he’ll be heading to New York City to study at the enormously exclusive Julliard School, which generally accepts less than 200 students per year.
And in a few weeks, he’ll be sitting down at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music to compete against other exceptional young pianists in the Eastman Young Artists International Piano Competition. There, he’ll face off against 22 other young pianists hailing from the U.S., China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan.
Taking on the cream of the crop doesn’t worry Reilly, though. He’s been entering competitions since middle school, after all.
With competitions you never really know what will happen,` he said. `I’m just going to give it my best.`’
Reilly’s journey started long before his recent achievements. He sat down to his first piano lesson at the age of four, at the Music Studio in Clifton Park. He stayed with his first teacher, Aniko Szokody, until his junior year of high school.
Szokody recognized Reilly’s skill around the time he entered elementary school and began giving him additional assignments, then individual lessons, said Kendall Reilly, Ryan’s mother.
`She took great care of him,` she said. `I may be his birth mother, but she was his musical mother.`
`We’re incredibly proud, his dedication is absolutely astounding,` she continued. `He’s worked incredibly hard for a very long time…he set a goal for himself when he was in sixth grade, and he achieved it.`
Reilly is a great deal more modest about his accolades, which include study in Julliard’s pre-college program. He’s traveled to the city every Saturday for the past two years to practice with a private teacher and study music courses.
`It’s really awesome to be around incredibly talented musicians,` he said of the program.
At Julliard, Reilly will study under classical pianist Seymour Lipkin.
`I had heard a lot about him, and one of my teachers had told me she thought it would be a really good fit,` he said. `I’m really excited.`
Reilly said he enjoys playing classical pieces more than any other, and for the Eastman competition he’s prepared numbers by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and other greats. He’ll also be dipping into a more modern arrangement by Aaron Copland.
`The stuff that I play is what I choose to practice,` he said. `There’s something that you can gain from playing any piece…there’s always something you can learn and add.`
Each competitor will give two half-hour performances in the preliminary rounds. The five who are chosen to advance will present a movement of a piano concert, accompanied by the Rochester’s Philharmonic Orchestra.
While it will be one of Reilly’s few major competition appearances, he’s had experience soloing with larger groups like the Schenectady Symphony Orchestra and the Empire State Youth Orchestra.
`It’s really nice when both the piano and the orchestral are really involved,` he said. `It’s just really a different experience playing with other people.`
The Reillys reside in Delmar, where Kendall and her husband, Chris, are raising Ryan and his younger brothers, Kyle and Conner.
For Kendall Reilly, perhaps the most jarring part of sending her first child to college in the fall will be the loss of a classical soundtrack her home.
`It’s going to be very, very quiet,` she said.
For more on the Eastman competition, visit www.esm.rochester.edu/pianocomp.“
