Ethan Loch: Blind Scottish piano prodigy set to make history

“When I heard them applauding it was one of the most amazing experiences,” he said after his keyboard final win, which aired on BBC Four this evening. “Hearing all these people in one room clapping, it sounded like they enjoyed it.”

Any big night nerves were calmed by listening to the performances of his fellow musicians as he waited backstage.

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“It was almost as if the music spoke to me and said: ‘It’s alright, this is just a concert, it’s just for you to play to the audience’. At that point I was ready to play.”

Raised in Canada until he was five and born with a genetic condition which makes him completely blind, Mr Loch began formal piano lessons aged four. But he had his first exposure to the instrument aged just 18 months.

“I remember going to the piano and it was huge, it was literally taller than me and I remember my hands reaching up and poking the notes. But as soon as I did I heard so many beautiful overtones, sounds, all kinds of harmonics I didn’t understand but wanted to learn. That was what really opened up the world of music to me.”

He was helped by the fact that he has what he calls “crazy perfect pitch”.

“For example if I hear cars outside I can tell you the pitch of the cars … Even if I hear people talking I can tell you the exact inflection and pitches of their voices. I have an insane sound mapping studio in my brain. If people were to ask what music is to me, I’d say music is the world.”

Even the sound of the wind in the trees sounds like a form of music to him. “They don’t have particular piano notes, they have what I like to call dissonance, between E flat and F sharp, and it’s usually very, very high. When I’m walking around I can hear all that.”

Unsurprisingly, music runs in the family. Mr Loch’s mother is a classically trained pianist and his grandfather was a piano tuner with a side line in jazz piano.

“I remember so well when he came to our house he would do a lot of blues improvisations. So you have a combination of the tuner and jazz pianist, the pianist, and then you’ve got me.”

Blind pianists can use braille music to learn pieces. Mr Loch prefers to learn entirely by ear. The process begins with listening to various recorded versions to memorise the notes and hear different interpretations. Then he and his mother go through the score to check details and articulation points. Finally his teacher triple checks their work and the practice in earnest can begin.

“It’s a bit of a complicated process but I would say the hardest part about it is figuring all the details out. But when you get to performing it, it’s almost as if it’s a reward for figuring out all those details – once you perform it you can just go out there, make a sound, communicate something to the audience and just enjoy yourself.”

Mr Loch has been competing in international piano competitions since 2016 and in 2019 won the Scottish International Youth Piano Competition. He has already released a CD of his own compositions and has recently begun his studies at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) in Glasgow.

One recent composition is called The Calling, inspired by the famous Nokia mobile phone ring tone.

“I didn’t copy the ringtone but I re-arranged the notes and made my own melody out of it, basically,” he said. “Because I had been at home for most of my musical education, going outside to the world was a massive change for me. It was almost as if at the time the world was calling me, dialling my number, telling me it was time to be step up and be independent. But because I’m a hopeless romantic I slowed it down and I basically just made it into a beautiful soft voice calling me to independence.”

BBC (Image: BBC)

But while executing complex piano runs is now second nature to him the process of adapting to life in the city is posing different problems. “I would definitely say it has been chaotic, yes. It has been pretty difficult. There have been bumps in the road.”

So what does the future hold for him once his time at RCS draws to a close?

“Predominantly my goal would be to compose new music, perform and hopefully travel different places and show people different things.”

Joining Mr Loch in Sunday’s Grand Final are viola player Jaren Ziegler, flautist Sofía Patterson-Gutiérrez, trumpeter Sasha Canter and percussionist Jordan Ashman (pictured above). Previous winners of the competition include Nicola Benedetti and cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, who played at the wedding of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle.