Five World Championship medals for musical prodigy
Fourteen-year-old Sria Velloo might only be learning how to read sheet music now, but she has put her natural talents to good use over the last 10 years.
With a knack for picking up a tune almost instantly, the first hint at Sria Vello’s musical talent came at the age of three, when her mom, Kanya Pillay, played a rendition of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star on a small toy keyboard and Sria was able to play the piece back perfectly.
No more than a year later, Sria began her first piano lesson at the age of four at Smith & Trump Music Arts Collective, a music school based in Noordheuwel. She has been under the guidance of musical teacher Marco Smith, whom she described as “the best music teacher I could have asked for”, for the last 10 years.
By age 11, Sria was playing Grade 8 musical pieces and was even able to learn a song within a week for one of her South African Championships of Performing Arts performances. Sria’s talent has simply skyrocketed over the last two years, with the pinnacle of her hard work thus far coming in the form of the World Championships of Performing Arts which took place from 6 to 15 July in Long Beach, California, United States of America.
The nine-day competition got under way with a boot camp, where she had the chance to learn from none other than musical legend Romeo Johnson, who has worked with the likes of Michael and Janet Jackson, Snoop Dogg, Stevie Wonder, and Blackstreet, among many others.
At the World Champs, Sria, who was 13 at the time and a learner at Curro Wilgeheuwel, was tasked with performing five items in five different categories (Classical, Jazz, Contemporary, Original, Open) on the trusted piano.
Sria was chosen for the semifinals round, where where the approximately 5 000 performances were whittled down to about 300, and received a special semifinalist award for this achievement. She was also awarded gold medals in the Jazz, Contemporary, and Original categories as well as two bronze medals in the Open and Classical categories.
Sria’s Contemporary performance:
Sria’s Original performance:
Sria’s Classical performance:
Sria’s Open performance:
Sria’s Jazz performance:
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