By: Rob Hiaasen


photo by Joe Rubino


He always wanted to work with his hands.

In 2003 at the University of Cincinnati, a young man—a boy, really—waited backstage to be introduced. His hair was short, not the curled mane that would later give drama and sex appeal to his face. The boy was a bit chubby, and his tuxedo looked too big. He would grow into it soon enough.

“He can conduct all the Beethoven symphonies by memory,” music professor Rodney Winther told the crowd. “He’s really quite the prodigy.”

After the affectionate, immodest introduction, 9-year-old Ilyich Rivas conducted the university’s Wind Symphony in “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Video of the performance, however, only revealed Ilyich’s back. A camera had failed, so Ilyich’s expressions and double-barreled eyes couldn’t be seen as he handled Sousa’s national march.

Seven years later, his hands are moving again, as Ilyich sits in the back row during a conductors’ seminar at the Peabody Institute. Gustav Meier, the program’s director, points to Ilyich. It’s his turn to face the orchestra and conduct a share of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7.

“I’m Ilyich Rivas. How’s everyone?” he says, politely, confidently. “I’m happy to be here.” Then, an audible inhalation (a snort?) and a transfer of power from his balled fist tucked into his gut then outward across the orchestra. Big sound. His hands, dipping and floating. Then, a jerk of the head, knocking his big hair for a loop. His dark brow knitting, the briefest of smiles (look quickly), and a nod to the woodwinds for a particular line. Meier stops the young conductor. Stops him again. He wants more power—“unbelievable power!” Ilyich reaches down again into his pit and summons that powerful thing.


A life in music: At 16, Ilyich Rivas has been learning how to conduct for ten years. This year, he’ll get the opportunity to lead the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on occasion. | photo by Joe Rubino


It is not a great moment in music. It is a good rehearsal. Yet, it’s what Meier saw on that audition DVD. “I’ve never quite seen a person so mature at that age. There’s not an ounce of distraction,” Meier says. “He feels the emotions of the music and is able to pass it along to the audience and the orchestra.”

Two years ago, Marin Alsop, the music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, also saw Ilyich’s audition tape, which includes performances given when he was 11, 12, and 14. What she witnessed was charisma, sincerity, and outstanding musicianship. “He’s unbelievable,” says Alsop, who also knows a thing or two about setting tempo and perspective. “Ilyich is still young and growing into his talent.”

She is understandably proud and protective of Ilyich. Based on his audition conducting the BSO this year (“It was like driving a Ferrari,” says Ilyich, who does not yet have a driver’s license), he was awarded a BSO-Peabody Conducting Fellowship. Designed to develop young conductors, the full-ride grant allows Ilyich to spend two years at Peabody, working with Alsop and Meier and, in time, conducting the BSO on occasion.

For the teenager who left high school in Denver to pursue a professional career in conducting, the fellowship in Baltimore will be Ilyich’s higher education. At the risk of undermining his social life. Ilyich Rivas is 16.

“I haven’t told my classmates,” he says. Specifically, “I haven’t told the girls.” He is, as Alsop says, flying under the radar, which is a change given his stellar career. Ilyich doesn’t need more pressure. (Alsop, by the way, entered Yale University at 16. “Not everyone knew it, but I knew it.”) Like many 16-year-olds, Ilyich has a touch of acne, an appetite for Chipotle burritos, and a dedicated interest in dating. Unlike most teenagers, he has an agent, a prestigious fellowship, and one whopper of a homework assignment.

At his family’s home in Pikesville one afternoon in the fall, Ilyich had his father’s sheet music open so he could memorize Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. Both men, both conductors, stood before the music.

“It’s magnificent,” says Alejandro Rivas.

“It is touched by the universe,” says his son.

Oh, to be young with great hair and to touch what has been touched by the universe. Or to be young and wear pink-and-yellow sneakers while knocking off Russian tennis players at the U.S. Open this year, as then-17-year-old Melanie Oudin accomplished before bowing out in the quarterfinals. To be, well, not 17 and witness such determination and skill is great sport and a vicarious thrill.

We root for youth. We watch in disbelief. We know their stories. Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps started swimming at 7; by 10, he held a national record for his age group, and at 15 he was the youngest member of the U.S. swim team in the 2000 Olympics (and the youngest American swimmer to qualify in sixty-eight years). Another sports phenom, Tiger Woods, once shot an embarrassing 48 over nine holes on a California golf course; in his defense, he was 3. This is not normal. These people don’t have regular brains, as Thomas Mann wrote in his short story “The Infant Prodigy.” These people have been touched by some kind of universe.

Or they just work really, really hard.



The etymology alone is daunting. “Prodigy” is from the Latin prodigium, which means omen or monster. What kid wants to consider himself some kind of monster when he’s just trying to get through middle school?

Nevertheless, a child prodigy is generally defined as someone having extraordinary ability before the age of 15. These high-performing children create on the level of skilled adults, typically in such fields as math and music. Mozart was a classic prodigy, having composed symphonies by the age of 9. Artist Pablo Picasso and chess champion Bobby Fischer were considered child prodigies. Michael Jackson joined the Jackson 5 at age 5. Stevie Wonder signed with Motown when he was 11. Baltimore-born jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut enrolled at Peabody at 9. Singer-songwriter Tori Amos won a scholarship there when she was 5—although she would later leave Peabody because of her distaste for sight reading coupled with a fondness for playing John Lennon songs by ear. Violinist Itzhak Perlman performed a Mendelssohn concerto on The Ed Sullivan Show when he was 13. He did not, however, consider himself a child prodigy. “It sounded like a talented 13-year-old with a lot of promise. But it did not sound like a finished product,” Perlman told the New York Times in 1996. Because of the difficulty of defining giftedness, educators, researchers, and even the gifted themselves hesitate to use such labels as “prodigy” or “genius.”

“I’m not sure I know exactly what ‘prodigy’ means,” says Dr. Linda Brody, an educational advisor and director of Johns Hopkins University’s Study of Exceptional Talent (SET). “The exact level of achievement needed to garner that label is undefined.” More than 250 children, having scored at least 700 on either the math or reading section of the SAT before age 13, are identified for the program each year; about 4,000 kids have gone through the program since it started in 1980. Although problematic, many terms are used to describe students with advanced abilities. “Highly able? Gifted? Talented? But what does that mean? The top 2 percent or 5 percent? Exceptional in one area or many? There’s really no term that works,” Brody says.

Also, labeling a child a prodigy or genius can further alienate young people who might already be prone to isolation given their exceptional skills. The SET program is designed to develop talents in gifted children, help them ward off boredom and achieve their lofty potential via intellectual stimulation and advanced opportunities. Maybe they just need to be with peers who share their interests and abilities, so they don’t feel like outcasts, Brody says. “We need to balance helping students develop exceptional talents with also addressing their social, emotional, and broad academic needs.”


Duets: Ilyich often plays music with his father, Alejandro, who was a conductor in his native Venezuela. | photo by Joe Rubino


There is life outside math, chess, golf, swimming, and conducting. There is growing up.

“There’s a learning and maturity process, and you can’t bypass it,” Alsop says. “I want Ilyich to have a great life, and a great life doesn’t mean getting on an airplane every week but also having an ability to step back and assess what kind of citizen of the world he can be.”

Until then, Ilyich still needs his father to give him a ride to campus, where he studies seven hours a day, three days a week. At home, he practices and studies daily. Labeling him a prodigy might be a disservice, as if his skills were genetically grandfathered in. Ilyich was born into a family of conductors; environment and innate ability are certainly factors. It also might help to come from a country such as Venezuela, which instituted a massive federally funded social program devoted to childhood music education. That system has produced, among other extraordinary musicians, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s new music director, 28-year-old Gustavo Dudamel. But beyond creative genes and institutionalized music programs, something else is at work here, something so astonishingly elemental it can be overlooked and underestimated. At Florida State University in Tallahassee, researchers studying elite musicians discovered what appears to primarily account for differences in skill levels: practice.

Not mindless drills or playful scrimmages with your football or chess buddies—but solitary, deliberate practice where there’s little threat of enjoyment. By age 20, most accomplished musicians have spent more than 10,000 hours honing their skills with their instrument—about 8,000 hours more than amateurs of the same age, according to the university’s High Ability Study. Only this kind of relentless practice can consistently produce expert performance levels. Gifted artists, fueled by a consuming interest, push themselves to practice longer and harder, and they can be duly rewarded.

“They are motivated by practice because they see it is the most effective way to improve,” says K. Anders Ericsson, a psychology professor and co-author of the study. “If practice time decreases over time, they see their performances not improving, and that leads to people dropping out.”

The findings underscore how preparation and training are central to success. Even the most talented among us may need ten years or more of intense involvement to consistently perform at high levels. It took Bobby Fischer nine years to achieve Grand Master status in chess. With exceptions, scientists and authors might publish their first work at 25, but it might take another ten years to produce their best work. Again, practice makes perfect, or close to it. It might be impossible to calculate how many hours Phelps has spent training in a pool or how many golf shots Tiger hits after a round of competitive golf.

“You really don’t need a special explanation for these individuals,” says Ericsson, who speaks to children and parents at international conferences focusing on giftedness. “Whether they are gifted or not we can argue, but they all agree if the gifted child stops trying to improve, they are going to get stuck and arrest their development. They risk turning into some misunderstood genius.”

In his research, Ericsson came to another conclusion, which also might not be surprising. Parents play a crucial role in the development of gifted children, who need interaction and a stimulating environment to flourish. As Ericsson says, “The child is not a flower who can evolve alone in a desert as long as it gets water.”

Sometimes the child needs a good stereo.


Balancing act: As Ilyich Rivas transitions from gifted child to young adult artist, he will need to develop interests outside of  music. “I want Ilyich to have a great life, and a great life doesn’t mean getting on an airplane every week,” says BSO music director Marin Alsop. | photo by Joe Rubino


Since he was 6, Ilyich wanted to “move his hands around.” Although he would also become an accomplished pianist (conductors often play a musical instrument), his first love was conducting. As a child, he often watched his father conduct, and the sounds of pianos, cellos, and singing filled their home. Everywhere, music.

“I couldn’t escape from it,” he says.

Did he want to?

“No.”

“He was,” says his father, scratching for a good word in English, “overjoyed with music.”

“I succumbed to it,” Ilyich offers.

Now, if one must point fingers at Ilyich’s other musical influences, then John Williams shouldn’t be spared. The renowned film composer had no idea what he helped create by writing the theme to Star Wars. A young Ilyich would pester his parents to play the soundtrack so he could conduct along with it. He soon discovered the Beatles, and he might be the only person younger than 50 who owns the soundtrack to The Graduate.

The Rivas family left Venezuela in 1994 and lived in Cincinnati and Denver before starting over in Baltimore. It’s a life of promise, opportunity, and sacrifice. But Alejandro Rivas, a youthful 41 (youthfulness and musicianship run rampant in this family), deflects the notion of sacrifice. You do whatever you can for your child. And if that meant Alejandro and his wife, Marjorie, quitting their orchestra and university jobs in Denver so their son could study at Peabody, that’s what they would do. Alejandro is an unemployed conductor in a tough job market for any profession, but he’s committed to being his son’s mentor, his soccer partner, and his ride.

Friday is Ilyich’s day off from school and a day off for his father’s taxi service to Peabody. In the decorous living room of their townhouse, a baby grand is center stage. Here, father and son team up to sing and sight-read; Ilyich mans the piano, while his father is on lead vocals or cello. Their shared interests venture beyond music, though. Every day the two of them break for an hour of soccer, setting up cones in a nearby field for drills. For recreation, they also play flight simulator video games (the Rivas men are airplane buffs). But then it’s back to practice.

“At my age, I have to be twice the perfectionist to earn the respect of musicians,” Ilyich says. With each performance or practice, he’s also trying to impress himself. Psychologists call this “the rage to master,” the almost obsessive need to improve on a skill that gifted youth typically display:  “Maybe this time, I’ll do it perfectly from
the beginning.”

Ilyich made his auspicious American debut in August when he conducted the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (the orchestra’s director of artistic planning had also seen Ilyich’s audition DVD). Those first minutes on the podium, Ilyich was terrified. He imagined what the musicians might have been thinking. This kid! What could he possibly do? But he quickly settled down and went to work with his hands and eyes, always the eyes. Oh, and the tux fit fine.

There is, of course, a downside to passionately pursuing one object.

Ilyich is not a gifted dancer.

Or dart thrower.

And soccer, well, he’s a work in progress. “He tries to be impressive,” his father jokes, “but oh, you poor thing.”

The young man can eat, though.

“When I’m done with breakfast, I’m already thinking about lunch. When I’m done with lunch, I’m thinking of dinner.” And he thinks about girls. “Going to movies with girls is tied with music as my favorite things.” And is that not one definition of a balanced life?

Books are another interest. When he’s not plowing through required reading on the entire history of music, Ilyich might duck back into Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle or Ellison’s Invisible Man. Not surprising, this taste in good books: His mother was a professor of Latin American literature when the family was in Denver (her specialty: Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano). In that previous life (like, high school), Ilyich says he was known not as the class nerd but rather as the obsessed-music guy. Friends told him he was lucky that he already knew what he wanted to be in life.

Remember, he’s just 16. As Ilyich continues to grow into his talent, he has more than enough time to study philosophy and enjoy literature, improve his soccer and dancing skills, and see many more movies with girls. He can earn the highest honor in American driving—a Maryland driver’s license—and still have time left over to become a citizen of the world.

No pressure.

—Rob Hiaasen is a former staff writer for the Baltimore Sun. This is his first story for Urbanite.


  On the air: More from Ilyich Rivas on The Marc Steiner Show, WEAA 88.9 FM, on November 25.




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