‘Concert truck’ strikes a chord with Hilton Head youth. Where will it roll to next?
Boxed inside a jet-black truck trailer, donned in a floor-length red dress, a classically-trained concert pianist asks a crowd of children: “Who here likes fairy tales?”
Tiny hands shoot up from the crowd. From the parking lot in front of The Children’s Center on Hilton Head Island, the kids look onward as the pianist and her partner perform a duet inspired by the tale of Sleeping Beauty. The duo sits side by side at grand piano strapped to a stage not much bigger than a walk-in closet.
The mobile venue, appropriately dubbed “The Concert Truck,” puts on free shows throughout the country. The truck put on five performances on Hilton Head Island Friday, with the preschool and daycare serving as the second stop of the day.
Concert Truck co-director Susan Zhang, a graduate of The Peabody Institute of John Hopkins University, has played piano since she was seven years old. She met her business partner Nick Luby while they were both in undergrad at The University of South Carolina. It was Luby’s idea to take classical music on the road, Zhang said.
“I remember feeling like I really wanted an out-of-the-box project and I felt like community was really important to me,” Zhang said.
The pair converted a 16-foot box trailer into a fully-functioning music venue, and put on their very first show in 2016 in Columbia, South Carolina.
Zhang often plays alongside different musicians, from violinists to cello players to fellow pianists such as Ahfat, whose performance Friday marked his first time in the truck. The Toronto-based musician and Julliard graduate has also been playing piano since elementary school, but didn’t really get serious about it until he was 12 or 13.
“It’s really the instrument that has the most possibilities,” Ahfat said. “It’s the instrument that can fit in just so many pockets of music, any style, any genre, any size.”
On the 88-key instrument, the duo was able to perform several pieces that had originally been composed for a full orchestra.
The truck’s next stop is in Baltimore, Maryland, where Zhang currently lives. She’ll play alongside Japanese pianist Rieko Tsuchida. After that, Zhang plans on driving the truck across the country for a concert in Seattle, where she will be joined again by Ahfat for a small ensemble session.
Zhang hopes her performances will inspire a love for music in young audiences that will last a lifetime.
“I feel like the things that always move me, are the things that I heard when I was a kid,” Zhang said. “You have that to come back to for your entire life ... so to be able to give them that, it’s just really meaningful.”
