ant onsite music
Let's sit down and sing no more Let's sit down and sing no more
Let's sit down and sing no more.
In the dark يا・・
Let's fighting up!
To the Sky artificial
Let's sit down and sing no more These are the rocks
La sa지는
Welcome back to another episode of The PianoPod.
I'm your host Yukimi-san.
And today's episode is a heartwarming, emotionally moving, and inspiring one.
So I suggest you to have facial tissue or handkerchief handy.
So for anyone listening or watching The PianoPod for the first time, welcome.
I'm a classical pianist and educator from New York City.
And this podcast is for anyone who plays the piano, loves listening to piano music, or
for someone who is currently pursuing a career in piano or works in the music industry professionally.
In each episode, we interview a guest speaker who has been breaking exciting new ground
in the music industry.
Before getting started, I want to thank amazing TPP fans and listeners for tuning in.
Please rate the show and review it on Apple Podcasts because every rating review will
help people find the show.
So let me reveal the name of the guest.
It's Dr. Jihoon Kerska, the founder of Keys to Success, MIT graduate, electronic engineer,
and pianist.
Since the launch of The PianoPod, I wanted to interview her so badly because I have been
following Dr. Kerska and her work for Keys to Success on social media.
And even from what I saw on social, what she's been doing through this nonprofit organization
is outstanding.
So what exactly is Keys to Success?
Well, you're about to find more about this amazing organization directly from the founder,
Jihoon.
But let me share what it says on its website.
Keys to Success was founded by Jihoon Kerska, a Julia-trained classical musician with a
doctorate in electrical engineering from MIT, who wanted to provide the young children
of new work, the cultural enrichment.
So I just finished interviewing her a few minutes ago and wow, Jihoon is an incredible
person, strong, kind, generous, plus a great storyteller.
So please stick with me till the end of the episode because you get to hear how she overcame
her own challenges in her youth and became who she is today.
So off we go.
Please enjoy the show.
You are listening to The PianoPod, where we talk to the brightest minds in the industry
about how they are bringing the piano into the 21st century.
I am delighted and honored to welcome Dr. Jihoon Kerska, the founder of Keys to Success,
electrical engineer, and pianist.
Keys to Success is a program she founded in 2016 to improve the lives of children growing
up in the most underserved areas in Newark, New Jersey through music education.
Dr. Kerska studied piano in the Juliette Pre-College program and has an extensive performance career
playing at prestigious concert venues such as Boston Symphony Hall and Lincoln Center.
She also has had the opportunity to perform with the world-renowned cellist, Mr. Yo-Yo
Ma, while enjoying her musical path, she decided to pursue academics and engineering
at MIT and achieve the highest degree, Ph.D., in electrical engineering and computer science.
She continued her engineering career in the semiconductor industry for the following 20
years.
During that time, Dr. Kerska was actively involved in the Newark community and a series
of projects for its youth.
Through this experience, she so firsthand the effects of generational economic disparity.
As a result, she developed a passion for investing in youth lives, ultimately leading to her
decision to withdraw from her engineering career and work full-time with the children
of Newark by founding Keys to Success.
So Jihoon, welcome, and thank you for being on my show.
Yay.
Great.
It's my pleasure.
Finally here, I've been wanting to interview you since the launch of this show and whether
someone recommended to be in touch with you or somehow we were connected on Instagram.
So I've been following you on social and love your work at Keys to Success.
And before getting into your incredible life, once a Juliette Pre-College student turned
to become the engineer with a Ph.D. from MIT with a full-right scholarship, oh my gosh.
So I think everybody wants to know what is Keys to Success?
I mean, dropping all this amazing career and then you found this wonderful organization.
So let's start with that.
We'll talk more detail later, but briefly, what is Keys to Success?
Well, Keys to Success, we bring classical music training, particularly focusing on the
piano, to students in Newark.
The main difference of what we do is that we go to the students.
We go into the neighborhoods and deliver the piano lessons there, rather than having the
students come to a central location.
And the other thing that we do slightly differently is that the program is 100% free for everyone
who is involved.
So we don't charge the families and we also don't charge the whole institution.
And the reason we do that is for the sake of equity.
Wonderful.
And then currently, how many students are involved?
We have 150 students slightly over right now involved in Keys to Success.
And the age range is very large.
We start as young as pre-K and we go all the way through high school.
And our goal is always that we try to stay with the students as long as we're able to.
Before being an engineer and before being this nonprofit founder, you started as a musician.
Music is a big part of your life.
So let's start with that.
What's the relationship to music?
How did you discover the love for music?
I'm a Malaysian.
I was born in Malaysia and Chinese Malaysian, actually.
And if you know anything about that culture, pretty much every little Chinese girl in Malaysia
grows up playing the piano, at least during my era.
And so it wasn't anything unusual that I played the piano.
But what was unusual was my mother.
My mother was particularly ambitious for her kids.
And she was determined that we weren't just going to play the piano like everybody else,
but that we were going to be the best in the whole country.
So yeah, it's Taige mom to the nth degree.
So my mom, she knew how to help us practice.
That was the main thing.
So ever since we started piano at the age of six, we practice a lot.
And in Malaysia, they go through the basically a British system, Royal Conservatory, right?
So we would take those exams every year.
And actually, I guess, you know, when you practice that much, you end up being pretty
good.
So my sister and I, I have a twin sister.
My sister and I would consistently get, you know, the highest marks in the whole country
and things like that.
So fast forward, we come to America when I was 11 years old, our entire family immigrated
to America and primarily for our sake to give us opportunities.
And my mom, you know, she decides, hey, you know, I heard Julia is a really good school.
Why don't we just see if we can get in?
So she calls up Julia pre-college and it just so happened.
She was able to get through to Olenia Fuski, who was the director of the pre-college program
in the 80s.
Fuski listened to us and she knew that we weren't actually quite at the Juliet level,
but she wanted to invest in us.
So Fuski took us under her wing.
And literally for a year and a half, I was back down doing five finger scales and completely
redoing my whole technique.
And of course, later when she entered us into the audition, we got in.
Wow.
Yeah.
Ms. Fuski, actually, she's really quite an unusual person.
She's still alive and I actually just saw her recently at the pre-college reunion.
Oh, wow, really?
Yeah.
Wow.
It was really emotional for all of us to get together again.
I bet.
And then I know I read your articles and everything and you mentioned that your mom would, you
would sacrifice her time and effort in your education and would have a round trip to taking
subway and buses to just for you to get into Juliet pre-college.
Fuski lives up in the Bronx area.
So we went all the way from Queens taking subway and then the bus and then walking a
little bit and yeah, it was quite the trip.
I actually watched your performance.
This is like totally pretty recent, so that's like turned the clock forward and 2020, I
think it's during pandemic 2020 or 2021.
We were performing variations on a theme of Corelli by Rachmaninoff and yeah, marvelous.
You know, Miss Fuski's teaching style was that she actually really pushed us hard by
entering us into competitions.
So we were constantly in competitions and constantly performing.
For me, you know, it was actually so important to have that because as my mother actually
couple of years after arriving in America got cancer.
It was cancer of the breast and back in the 80s, there really was not a lot of good treatment
for that.
So it was very traumatic for her and as a result for my sister and I as well.
But even as her treatment when up and down through all kinds of changes, I could focus
on music.
I could focus on just learning a piece and getting ready for the competition and having
a goal to keep me going.
For me, you know, that is stabilized me and it helped me feel like I had a place in this
new country, even though things in my life was very tumultuous.
My sister and I in particular performed a lot because you know, twins.
So Miss Fuski actually had to work on the two piano repertoire, two piano contratos
as well as two piano, just two piano music.
And we actually played with several orchestras because of that.
Actually probably the most significant one I would say was in my junior year, which was
1985.
Miss Fuski arranged for my sister and I to perform with the orchestra in every Fisher
Hall, Lincoln Center.
And we were playing Carnival of the Animals.
At that time, my mom was actually really sick because the cancer went from breast into her
liver.
It just went over the body.
So she had not been able to come out of bed for a while by then.
But on the day of the concert, she just decided this is important.
This is why we came to America.
This is why I worked my whole life in Sacrifice Corps family, right?
And she willed herself out of bed.
She got dressed, put on makeup, and she actually looked really good.
I remember seeing her in the audience, right?
I remember seeing her, even though she was already very shrunken.
I could see the pride in her face.
I could see that she was happy.
That turned out to be really one of the biggest performances my sister and I did in high school.
But it was also the last one that my mom saw.
She passed away a couple of weeks after that.
So she just pulled herself together to see this amazing concert, one of the best concerts
you ever gave.
She must know something at that time.
Yeah, definitely.
Wow.
And that's so devastating.
What sort of trauma you had to go through, even just to taking care of your mother in
such a young age.
But still, you have to focus on your academics.
And then also, plus, what's amazing is, as you're going through this hard times, but
you have these amazing opportunities to be able to perform.
Yeah, yeah, that's incredible.
And what struck me about that phase of your life, you wrote a little note to your mom
after she passed away.
And it's like a poem.
And let me just read it for my audience.
My house falls down every day.
Jump to break the ceiling, but it is too high.
Try to leap out window, but the crowds cheer me.
It's different there next door.
The house will never fall.
I can get there if I knock hard enough.
That is a beautiful poem, but tells me how desperate you were.
And I'm sure there is a sense of isolation and loneliness, not only from the loss of
your mother.
So, but how were you able to survive that phase?
Looking back, I know that I'm a child of charity, really.
For sure, my piano teacher played a huge role, because she didn't stop entering us into competitions
and after my mom died, she actually stepped up in her role in taking care of my sister
and I.
But also, the extended family helped.
My dad was always there.
My dad, I don't talk about him much, because he was more in the background compared to
my mom.
But after my mom passed away, he definitely stepped more into my life.
And he is a different kind of, he's a gentle parent.
He's not that Taiga mom.
So, we also had a church, the minister, and even the congregation, they continued to stay
in my life, really.
One of them actually ended up coming to my wedding.
This was like 20 years later.
It was like a long time later, right?
We certainly didn't make it in this country, because of pulling ourselves up by our own
bootstraps.
We had a lot of people helping us, right?
I have a very distant, somewhat distant cousin who grew up in America.
He was a professor at NYU.
And he and his wife at the time took my sister and I around to visit different colleges and
introduced us to MIT.
So we're definitely, and then not to mention so many relatives who sent money and just
kind of made sure we were okay.
I won't say it's easy, but I also know now that I'm older, my experience is also not
unique.
You know, especially with the kids and the families that I work with these days, I find
so much resonance in that, you know, this is not a unique story.
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Let's continue with the episode.
So then, you know, after really pre-college, you decided to pursue your career in engineering,
so you went, you were accepted by MIT of all places.
And then did you go from undergraduate until?
Yeah.
So I went to MIT because my mom told me before she died that, you know, I'm not to become
a musician.
Frankly, I'm back to music.
So I applied to MIT.
I didn't even apply to any kind of conservatory.
So I knew that I was going to become an engineer because my mom told me I was going to become
an engineer.
Okay.
That's what my dad was also, actually.
My dad also was an engineer.
And I applied to MIT, but I love piano a lot.
So I continued playing the piano, had a private lessons with David DuVaux.
Really?
Wow.
Yes.
And so MIT has a musical department or?
It's actually pretty good.
I mean, the music department, the professors are amazing.
It's very small, of course, as you can imagine, but the quality is amazing.
Yeah, I continue to perform and continue to improve on piano.
And you got to perform with Mr. Yo-Yo Ma.
Tell me a little bit of the experience.
So as you may know, John Harbison is a composer, and he's a professor at MIT.
So at the time, yeah, he was coaching my chamber music group, and he had written a, he was
commissioned to write a piece for Yo-Yo Ma to perform with the Boston Symphony, I believe.
So John Harbison wanted to make opportunities for his students.
So he created this opportunity for us to be the accompanying pianist.
So that was an amazing experience for us.
And your career is in a semiconductor industry.
And I first thought it was a musical terminology conductor, but it wasn't.
And you were working in that industry for like two decades or something after graduating.
So what is semiconductor industry?
So it just refers to the material that's used to make the computer chips.
So every cell phone, every computer has these little chips in there, which is like the brains
of the computer or phone.
So it's like, you know, I worked on all the way from just looking at how long that chip
is going to last to helping to be part of the team to design the new chips.
So I did all kinds of work in there.
Yeah, I'm really thankful for all the opportunities that I had when I was in semiconductors.
I was sure I developed a lot of the skills that I needed to start pieces of this.
Because as I said, I was in many different roles.
I manage people, I manage projects.
I was in the strategy organizations.
So I understood how to build business cases and, you know, how to do projections and all
those things that you need to run your own organization.
What do you think about your musical career?
Did it help to be a good engineer or a good student at MIT and eventually to be the founder
of organization?
Let me tell you a little bit more about my musical career.
And I, you know, I just kind of played music.
I never thought about what it meant for many, many years, right?
And actually in 2001, I stopped playing the piano.
So 2001, my son was born.
And I thought, oh, I got to focus on my career and raising my son.
So something has to give.
So I gave up piano, I lately stopped playing it.
I wasn't playing chamber music, wasn't doing anything with it.
This went on for more than a decade.
And then out of the blue, my piano teacher from MIT, you know, who consultizes quite
a bit with the Boston area, he writes me a handwritten letter, which who does that anymore?
But he did and he said, hey, listen, I've been invited to be a soloist with the Boston
Pops.
And I thought it would be fun if the two of us played the Mozart two-piano concerto.
He had no idea that has stopped playing piano because I didn't keep in touch with him,
right?
So I said, oh, yeah, of course.
I took a bunch of time off work, actually, to just like brush up on piano again and then
record, which was amazing.
But what that made me realize was that, you know, playing the piano, of course, is good
for your brain.
It's good for your emotional development and everything.
You know, everybody knows that.
But it made me special.
It gave me opportunities that I would never have otherwise, right?
Because I love being an engineer, but, you know, I was just one of many engineers, right?
But playing the piano gave me gave my life some a different dimension that I wouldn't
have had if it wasn't music.
So actually, it was that realization that made me stop and think, oh, I wonder if that's
something I can do in Newark.
So during my whole career in engineering, my family and I, we have been involved in
Newark volunteering, you know, so we were involved in a youth program where my kids
were, you know, participating in it, along with kids who lived in public housing in different
places in Newark and they're just growing up alongside them.
I could see that developmentally, my kids had an advantage because they had access to
lots of extracurriculars, right?
That kids in Newark at the time, because there was no music or any kind of art in the school
at the time, had no access to.
But for many years, I didn't know what to do about it because I could see, you know,
lots of really dedicated teachers doing what the best already, which is great.
And I wasn't trained as a teacher.
But when this happened with the Boston Pops, I realized I could give them maybe some music,
right?
Music lessons, which could possibly open up new doors for them, who knows what's going
to happen, right?
So that's kind of the very long-winded way of answering, you know, how to starting,
you know, keys to success, right?
And what music had meant to me all these years.
Music has always given me opportunities and I didn't appreciate it until I was almost
50 years old.
So you moved to Newark with your family and then started doing community work, maybe through
local organization or maybe church or something like that.
And what did you see that maybe your children had or you had, but those that the children
of that community didn't have?
To be more precise, I live in a suburb of Newark.
So it's called New Providence is about five to 10 miles away.
It's very close.
But New Jersey is somewhat segregated.
So in our community, the public schools have excellent music programs.
Excellent.
My son actually never took private lessons, but you know, had an amazing music training
and my two daughters had access to this great school nearby, Wharton Arts, you know, they
took panel lessons there.
So I'll tell you what I saw, right?
So I got involved in Newark throughout church.
We decided to attend church in Newark.
And the kids I was working with, I started working with them in kindergarten.
And what was interesting for me anyway, even though I grew up in New York, I didn't really
see outside of my own bubble much, you know, so I came to Newark with some preconceived
notions we could not correct as it turns out.
So when I started working with kids in kindergarten, I found myself being surprised to learn that
all kids are the same.
Which kind of shows you like just prejudice or high part, you know, why should I be surprised?
That should be just true, right?
You know, they were equally capable in doing the things at the kindergarten level, right?
Whether it's puzzles or learning the ABCs or whatever it is at the kindergarten level,
right?
And they were all eager to please, eager to learn.
But actually by first grade, I started seeing differences in reading a novel and you know,
say mental math, you know, things like that, right?
That my kids were developing in.
And then by third grade, they were practically in different grades already.
It started really fast.
That was surprising to me.
The only thing I could really point to that was like truly different between what my kids
were given versus their friends were growing up in Newark with that.
My kids had, you know, like the mommy and me type music programs, right?
We signed them up for like art classes or, you know, things in the rec center, children
in lower income households spent their time helping their family at a very young age,
which is actually not a bad thing, right?
It actually creates a kind of person which sometimes is lacking in children growing up
with more athletic households, right?
Yes.
A little bit more self-sufficient, a little bit more aware of their responsibilities,
right?
So, but that was differences.
And unfortunately in our society, you know, what you get in your math and English score
and your language arts scores mean a lot, right?
Mean a lot.
And nobody's measuring how mature you are as a person, right?
Probably what inspired you to get into keys to success?
Have you started teaching piano lessons?
Actually I've always said that, oh, I will never teach piano.
I'm a terrible teacher.
I can't do that.
I can't perform, but I can't teach.
You know, you probably know when you play piano, everybody's asking you to teach their
kids, right?
And I'm like, no, no, no, I'm going to destroy your kids if I teach them.
But then, you know, like this thing happened with the Boston Pops, which made me think,
oh, maybe I want to bring piano lessons to, is a new work.
And then one of my, two of my good friends actually, they immediately spoke up and said,
yeah, you could teach our kids.
You can experiment.
You can experiment with teaching with our kids, which I am eternally grateful for because
as soon as I started teaching them, I realized I loved it.
But so I was probably because of my background in the corporate world, I approached all of
this with caution.
I would say I did some market research, a lot of market research actually.
I made appointments to meet with as many people from who are involved in music education
in Newark as possible.
I volunteered my time with music, music schools to learn what's happening on the ground.
And through that, actually, I met some champions.
So I would say one champion would be Marshal Kumohon.
She is the vice president of New Jersey Symphony Education Department, and she continues to
be a good friend to help keep the success.
So she was able to give me a lot of guidance, or she also told me something that, you know,
it's actually very hard to get into the school system, which is what I wanted to do because
that's where the kids were gathered, right?
And that, you know, really the only way to do it was if the parents advocated.
Well, I actually had some good friends, right?
You know what?
Because of all of those years I've been volunteering.
So I went to a mom who lived in Pemington Court, public housing, and I said to her, you know,
I would love to teach piano at the South Street School, which is a school near the public
housing.
And she immediately went and spoke with the principal the next day.
She was actually at a hospital at the time.
She called me and she said, hey, I got you, the principal said that she'll speak to you
tomorrow.
I went in and spoke with the principal.
And literally that week I was in that teacher.
Actually what opened the door at the very end was the community.
It was, you know, it wasn't people with titles or anything like that.
It was just a bomb.
Taking on my behalf and opening that door, right?
Right, right.
Oh, it's a powerful thing.
And then not only that group of people who helped you through the community, but also
to be accepted in that community of new work, right?
That's a different story because you don't want to go in there thinking, hey, I have this
amazing thing for you.
I don't think anybody wants to hear that.
Nobody wants that.
Yeah.
Right, because nobody wants to be sympathized.
Nobody wants to feel like, yes, how will you do this?
For me, so that's actually, that's an excellent question.
That's actually the key, the success of keys to success actually.
It's the community engaged acceptance, I would say, acceptance, right?
And it's particularly striking because I'm Asian, right?
I can, you can see, oh, that's one, that one does not belong in that picture.
So the first community, you know, the way it got opened up to us took a long time, right?
And I didn't do all that work.
It was primarily the church, the members of the church who, you know, this took like,
I would say 20 years for the relationship to build to the point where the mom would
go and open the door for me at the school, right?
Well, that was our first location.
So then the question for me two years back was, how do I replicate that in other areas
in Newark?
Newark is largest, is like Newark City, right?
I realized actually what I need is a relationship with somebody who's already embedded in the
community.
So that person or group, usually a person, would then transfer their credibility to me.
So for example, on the west side of Newark, the first location was in the east side.
The west side of Newark, I have a partner, name is Marcia Heard, and we worked together
over the pandemic.
It really wasn't a long time, you know, and then we just saw that we saw life the same
way, right?
So it's very, very similar ways.
We value the arts.
Now, the big difference is Marcia spent her entire life in Newark.
She raised her kids there.
You know, they are very successful young people, but she also knows the struggle of being in
the Newark school system, right?
So Marcia literally found a space for us to teach him, and she literally went down her
street knocking on doors to tell parents about Kisa's success and enroll them in the piano
program.
It's not really very glamorous when you think about it.
It's very human, right?
It's very human.
It comes down to a person trusting another person, telling another person about it.
That's a true grassroots.
Yeah, it's truly grassroots.
Yeah.
And I have other stories like that too.
So, you know, Kisa's success, we've never advertised, and it's all about students telling
their friends who then joined the program, who then convinced their parents to let them
do all these different things with us.
So you know, it's, you know, word of mouth.
Wow.
You know, I'm really not here to basically light certain group of people or economic
background.
That's not what I'm here for.
What I'm here is about how you created this really meaningful two-way community, right?
So I think, yeah, what you're doing is incredible.
Now, and then also we always, lately, especially after 2020 with Mr. George Floyd's unfortunate
death, and then that brought up a lot of conversation about inclusion.
And even in classical music, people started to include more piano literature by composers
of color, person of color.
It's amazing.
That's great.
But we have to be very careful about inclusion.
How you want to include, does that make sense?
Yeah, completely, completely.
Yeah, because when we think of making a program diverse, right, we think about, oh, bringing
in, so in the case of an educational program, we think about just like bringing in people
from different backgrounds and putting them together, right?
But in my experience, I learned that there's actually a cost, a very high cost for doing
that.
And there's also a very high reward if you are willing to pay that cost.
Okay.
So what do I mean by the high cost?
The cost is this, that you cannot come in contact with somebody who's so different than
you without being willing to be changed yourself.
Because when somebody is so different than you, they have something to teach you.
And it's not something that we are all excited to learn to be taught by somebody else.
But what is the reward, right?
For me, what I found is that the only way I can explain this is that my life is richer.
I'm not only living life through my own lived experience, but I have somebody else's lived
experience to, let me just give you an example.
So for example, right?
Actually, so I just came back from visiting my aunt in Malaysia.
She's getting old and her memory is fading.
I recently cleaned up her house, put a lot of things away, which I loved.
I loved seeing how clean it was.
But what was even more meaningful was when I brought her into the house to look at things
and to see her kind of go through things slowly and examine what I've done with it, right?
It's living life through another person's eyes that makes you know that you're not
alone in this world, right?
And that, you know, there's one community together, right?
So that is the richness from when I am able to see the world, right?
Through Fasiya's eyes.
That is the richness that I have experienced in my own life.
Inclusion, right?
I would say it always has to start with yourself, especially when you're dealing with kids.
Say we're just going to bring, you know, one of each kid and make them get along when
on the staff, if we don't have that diversity, we are not modeling that acceptance and learning
from one another.
Then why are we doing that with the kids, right?
Of course.
On our staff, we're very, very intentional about having diversity in their staff.
Same thing with the board, on the board level, it's the same way.
In fact, we skew more to historically underrepresented minorities because that's the
community that we're working in.
I've always wanted to talk about the true meaning of inclusion.
It's really your willingness to feel what it's like to be in the other person's shoe.
It's hard, actually.
It's really hard to do.
You think you're doing it, but you're not because you have to become vulnerable.
Wow, thank you.
You mentioned that there's no school building.
But I saw the video clips of children playing keyboard.
I don't know how many keyboards.
I don't know how you do it, but how this happened.
It seems like the piano lessons or group lessons take place every day.
Yeah, every day, different locations.
Do you bring them each time or the keyboards?
So I'll tell you how we do this.
We're supported primarily by individual donors, actually.
So 80% of our income is from individuals and from small sums.
Just to kind of...
Like myself?
Oh, yeah.
For sure, like yourself.
So I'll give you just some numbers.
So we have about 400 donors by any given year will be like 250 donors, right?
Only five of those donors donate more than $10,000 a year.
Everybody else is donating as small as sums, right?
So the average being like $100.
We don't charge the parents and we don't have a requirement for donation or volunteer time
either, but the parents voluntarily donate as well.
We have donors that give $25.
It's not...
I always say, and I mean it from the bottom of my heart, it's not the number that matters
because every donation says, I believe in you.
That is actually what counts.
So in terms of the instruments, interestingly, we haven't bought a single instrument.
So because I live in New Providence, it's a relatively well-resourced neighborhood.
So when I started, I just kind of put a word out and say, hey, we're doing piano program.
You guys have any keyboards lying around?
It just came pouring in.
And even some of those 88 keys are donated.
So that's the thing.
Part of what we try to do in Keys to Success is bring communities together, right?
So in one community, like New Providence, there's a keyboard that's sitting in the basement,
unlocked, unused, but we give it to Keys to Success and it's played on every day.
In terms of moving keyboards around.
We do a combination of things right now.
We teach online.
We teach in person.
We teach in relatively permanent spaces, like the church where you saw the concert.
They gave us a storage space.
There are other spaces that we have to bring the instruments in and set up every time.
And in the summertime, we teach outdoors.
We teach in gardens.
And we have a portable battery source and we can teach in sidewalks anywhere, in backyards.
And so that model, we're actually calling the piano bus model.
Right now, there's no bus, but we're working towards this model where we're going to have
a trailer attached to a minivan so that we can bring instruments everywhere.
And even when the weather is bad, we can teach inside the trailer.
So that's the model.
We go to the students.
We go to wherever they're at.
Amazing.
How can I and the piano parts listeners participate in your work?
So first you said, a person like me, I can donate.
Can I donate through your website?
Yes, absolutely.
It's keysnewwork.com.
Okay.
All right.
I will list that in the description as well.
What else can I do?
We love visitors, especially musicians actually.
We use volunteers all the time, but I understand your listeners are all over the place.
There's one way that lots of people can participate, whether you're near or far, and that's through
our practiceathon, which is held every spring.
And that is our spring fundraiser.
It kind of came out of the pandemic actually, because we're trying to think, what we're
going to do for fundraising.
And so the practiceathon, think of it as like a walkathon.
So you practice.
In this case, we send in a clip of you practicing or performing.
I find a lot of classical musicians would rather send in a clip of them performing than
practicing.
And then you raise money.
You tell your friends about it and you raise money for, in this case, we use the practice
athon to raise money for our song camps.
Any success story, any stories, a student's story from Keys to Success?
I want to tell this story because it illustrates that just like for my life, success was not
a straight line, right?
I went from being on top of the world in Malaysia to kind of going through lots of depths.
It's the same with our students.
One child who started with us back in 2016, her name is Anya.
Anya lives in Penitent Court, which is always so eager to play piano.
We taught at one school when we first started.
This was pre-COVID and when we could teach in schools.
And Anya would sneak out of lunch to practice extra with us.
And as a result, she got really good.
But as we started working with Anya a little bit more, we realized that she actually couldn't
read yet.
She was in second grade, but she couldn't read.
It also was puzzling because the piano, I could tell, she could read music.
Obviously, she's very intelligent, right?
So we weren't willing to accept that she couldn't read.
So one of my volunteers went out, got some books, just children's books, regular children's
books.
And every day after she would practice, we would read with her, Lo and Be Ho.
That year she learned her read.
And that year also she made principles lists, right?
She did great.
But unfortunately, the policies of the school was working against her.
So that year, unfortunately, she got transferred to another school.
And remember, at that time, we were stuck in one school.
So we couldn't follow her with her musical journey.
After that, she got transferred to another another.
By the time she was in sixth grade, she had been in four schools.
And as you can imagine, that does not help with academic.
For Anya, though, it turns out COVID was a blessing in disguise, because we were forced
to go online.
So just like everybody else, we were all afraid to teach online before the pandemic.
And then we all figured out how to do it.
So we figured out how to teach online.
And then Anya came back on just like everybody else.
But there was a gap already, right, in her education.
So she came back and at that time, again, one great thing about Zoom is all teachers
know is that you become so intimate with your whole family.
Because everybody, you can see everybody in the background.
Yes.
So we got to know her godfather, who is this wonderfully committed man who made sure she
came to lessons on time and even sometimes would buy her a dress if she needed it for
a concert or whatever.
So Zoom, we actually became closer with the pandemic and we've been able to work with
Anya even more.
So this weekend, Anya is going to be auditioning for Arts High.
Oh my goodness.
You're like my own child is auditioning.
I bet.
Yeah.
So excited.
And we're so proud, really.
She's one of our first students and she's really the first ones that have started with
us that are now getting into the high school age, right?
So for us to be able to see her this far, we're very, very thankful.
Everything that has happened along the journey.
Look what happens with the seed that your mother planted in you and then despite of
her fortunate death, but keep growing and how many lives you're changing.
And also they are changing your life as well.
Oh, this is wonderful.
Amazing.
So what's your vision for the future of keys to success?
So one of the things that I dream of is that right now we are so unique.
That's absolutely no competition for our services.
That's why we don't need to advertise because the kids just keep coming in, right?
I hope that by year 15, the stiff competition, because there's going to be lots of organizations
going out there to where the students are living to serve them there, right?
Not just with piano lessons, but with art lessons, dance lessons, any, all the art forms,
right?
So my dream is that there will be a lot of organizations that are doing what we're doing.
I know you have the event coming up April 2nd.
That's a Baroque orchestra of New Jersey is collaborating with you.
So can you tell us a little bit?
The Baroque Orchestra is led by Robert Butts.
Really a great community orchestra and also a little crazy because they're not afraid
of taking chances.
So and that for that, I'm grateful because this was actually, I think back in 2019 when
we first played on stage with the Baroque Orchestra, you know, kids were 80 bitty back
then.
And but Maestro Butts took a chance and said, yeah, let's perform together, you know?
So I love collaborating with the Baroque Orchestra because it lets the students know that an
audience who is willing to listen to a professional orchestra is willing to listen to them.
That our students are worth listening to.
It's going to be August 2nd, Sunday at the St. Elizabeth College.
Is it August or April?
Oh, April.
No, it's okay.
No, no, no.
Great.
Are you performing anytime soon?
Well, my next planned performance is going to be in November.
So long performance.
I'll do something in November in the Medicine Arts area.
They have something for Thanksgiving every year.
Are you live streaming the concert?
I'm sure that can be done.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That way, our audience can watch your live performance.
So before we go, two things.
So one is any advice for young musicians who are currently in college or starting out their
career in music?
I'm not sure if it's advice, but I would say I just want them to know they hold in their
hands the power to change the world because as we all have said many, many times, music
is truly the common language amongst us, right?
And there's opportunity, especially with classical music to make that a reality.
So how we can get involved with Keys to Success is just go to keysnewwork.com.
Find out more information about the organization.
So this has been a really heartwarming and inspirational conversation.
Jihoon, and then I enjoyed so much.
Now before we go, Jihoon, we have one more thing to do.
It's called the rapid fire questions.
So this is part of the show where I get to ask fun questions to each guest.
However, as silly as these questions may sound, your answers will reveal who you truly are.
So are you ready?
Okay.
Yeah, please answer them with the shortest responses as possible and no explanation needed.
Alright, question one.
What's your comfort food?
Nasi loma, Malaysian food.
Cats or dogs?
Dogs, for sure.
So what is your word or words to live by?
God is good.
What is the most important quality you look for in other people?
Acceptance.
Name three people who inspire you living or dead.
My husband, Shane.
Oh, I see I'm going to run on numbers.
Wait, my kids.
And my aunt, who I just visited in Malaysia.
Then name one piece in your current playlist.
What is that Howl's Moving Castle song called?
I have no idea.
I think it's just called Howl's Moving Castle.
Okay.
So last question.
Fill in the blank.
The next one is blank.
Delicious.
Thank you so much.
So this concludes this episode of The Pianopolis.
Thank you, Jihoon, for joining our show today and sharing your stories and insights and
expertise.
And you can find more information about Keys to Success through its website at www.keysnewwork.com.
And we want to encourage the audience to check out the website and to see how you can get
involved with the organization.
And all the links are listed in the description.
And thanks to our wonderful audience and fans for tuning in.
If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate and review it on whatever podcasting platform
you use.
And if you are watching us on YouTube, remember to hit the thumbs up button and subscribe to
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You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.
The links are in the description.
If you are interested in being the guest or recommending someone to be on our show as
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or send us a DM via social media.
We will see you for the next episode of The Pianopolis.
Thank you, Jihoon.
And bye everyone.
Thank you so much.
Bye.