“PET scans, MRIs, X-rays, biopsies, everything,” James says. That morning, doctors found a golf ball-sized tumor filled with fluid in his lower abdomen and sent James by ambulance to Children’s Hospital Colorado, outside of Denver-a 140-mile trip. “I knew we had to get him help right away,” she says. “I can’t take it anymore.” Noriko was alarmed. “Mom, we have to go to the hospital now,” he told her. ![]() When Noriko picked James up from baseball practice and saw a look on panic on his face. James was slated to play catcher on a Little League baseball team headed to the state tournament. But his intense pain returned one morning as he attended baseball practice. It eventually subsided, and the family returned home to Wyoming. The family was house hunting in Akron and stopped at a sushi restaurant right as James began experiencing severe pain in his abdomen. In the summer of 2014, shortly after James’s trip to Paris, Matthew accepted a job as dean of the University of Akron School of Law. “He was riding this amazing wave,” Matthew recalls. The PBS station in Wyoming ran a feature on him. The governor of Wyoming invited the 13-year-old prodigy to his state of the state speech and saluted him. His success landed him plenty of attention. He was the only American selected to compete in the final round of the 2014 Lagny-sur-Marne International Piano Competition in Paris. After working with Bogard for a while, James continued to compete-and often win-international competitions, earning him invitations to perform at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. James began training with Theresa Bogard ’85E (MM), a professor in Wyoming’s piano department. In 2009, Matthew joined the University of Wyoming as associate dean of student affairs and professor of law. “He told us, ‘If I were to strip away his age and just look at raw talent, I’d probably put him in the top 10 of anyone I’ve ever met,’’’ Matthew recounts. The family returned to Utah, Matthew’s home state, for the summer and a college professor who had trained concert pianists began working with James and was quickly floored by his talent. He performed using portable floor pedals because his feet didn’t reach the ground or pedals. James was only 5 when he finished third in the 12-and-under division of an international piano competition at Middle Tennessee State University. He’s a prodigy, on a path to do some amazing things.” “Soon he’ll be better than your 11-year-old. “Your 3-year-old is better than your 5-year-old and your 7-year-old,” the instructor told them. When the instructor asked to speak to us about two months into lessons, I was ready to tell Noriko, ‘I told you so.’’’ “I thought there’s no way he’s going to have the patience to do this. The instructor suggested James, only 3, join the group to make piano lessons a family project. Matthew and Noriko had both played piano and signed their three older children up for lessons in Tokyo, where Matthew was serving as an associate dean and general counsel for Temple University’s Japan campus in the early 2000s. He was born in Orlando, Florida, but the family also has lived in Tokyo, Wyoming, Missouri, and Ohio, due to Matthew’s jobs in higher education that include serving as president of Missouri Western State University and the University of Akron. James Wilson is the youngest of four children to Matthew and Noriko Wilson. Since his illness, he has performed three more times at Carnegie Hall, and in Italy and the Netherlands.īut he says the hospital in Akron is the concert venue that has had the greatest impact on his life. Now cancer free, Wilson is a piano performance major at the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music. And doctors performed surgery to remove the tumor. The strength in his ankles eventually returned. The therapy helped Wilson recover the use of his fingers. “It was like having our own Symphony Hall channel in the oncology department every day,” says Laurie Schueler, a communications specialist at Akron Children’s Hospital. From his bed, the teenager performed everything from Mozart to Taylor Swift, entertaining other children and hospital staff. A music therapist brought a keyboard to Wilson’s hospital room so he could strengthen his fingers by playing. His music career-and his life-were in jeopardy.īut through the piano came healing. Weeks of treatment left him with numbness in his fingers and weakness in his ankles, common side effects of chemotherapy. He was a finalist in an international competition in Paris.īut at 13, Wilson was playing at an unscheduled venue: Akron Children’s Hospital in Akron, Ohio, where he was battling a rare cancer called Ewing sarcoma. ![]() Stricken with cancer as a teenager, the prodigy used music to heal himself and others.īy age 12, pianist James Wilson ’23E had performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and Carnegie Hall in New York City.
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