ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, December 11, 1995 TAG: 9512120002
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO B
SOURCE: KAREN ADAMS SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
Sometimes 11-year-old Joshua Hester hears so much music in his head that he can't sleep at night. 2. He goes to his piano and plays for awhile, and then he goes back to bed.< Last year, when he was in the fifth grade at Monterey Elementary School, Josh surprised music teacher Rose Ann Burgess one day by asking if he could play a song for her on the piano. She knew this quiet boy could sing - although he rarely talked - but she didn't know he was a piano player.
Josh sat down and played ``The Rose'' beautifully. The melody, chords, and even the tempo were all perfect. ``The rhythm was like a metronome,'' Burgess said. She asked when he had learned it.
``Yesterday,'' he said.
Burgess was stunned. Josh told her he had been playing basketball at the Booker T. Washington gym when he heard a man playing the piano in the corner. Josh wandered over to listen and the man asked him if he would like to learn a song. The boy said yes.
Josh had tinkered with an electronic keyboard at home, Burgess said, ``but he had no real exposure to a piano before.''
In more than 30 years of teaching music, she had never heard anything quite like it. It's no small feat to repeat music so accurately from memory, she said.
Making it even more remarkable is the fact that Josh suffers from kidney disease, asthma, and attention deficit disorder. Everything is much harder for him to do. His mother, LaWanda Hester, said that Josh's whole short life has been frustrating - schoolwork, playing with other kids, trying to keep up with his siblings at home.
Then he discovered his music, and his life became more fun.
After that first day with Burgess, Josh would come in each week and play a new song for her. He didn't yet read music, so he learned by ear and relied on his memory.
To get started with a new song, he said, ``I just start. I play as much as I hear in my head, as much as I can remember.''
Then he tries to keep going.
One time he played part of the Bach fugue from ``The Phantom of the Opera'' after hearing a woman play it on a pipe organ during a class field trip.
``He had heard it once,'' Burgess said. ``He really is quite remarkable.''
She was also taken by his complete absorption with each song.
``When he started to play, it was like he was the only person in the room. His personality went to another extreme.''
When his classmates heard him, they applauded. Burgess said that soon Josh became more outgoing and confident, because he had found something that he was good at - really good at. And the other children looked up to him.
Recognizing this, Burgess wanted to develop Josh's gift. She knew that his family was in no position fInancially to pay for lessons. Josh's father, Jerry, has been disabled for four years, and Josh's own medical bills are considerable. She called his parents, told them that Josh had a lot of talent, and asked whether they would mind if she helped out.
``We couldn't say `thank you' enough,'' said his mother.
Knowing the Hesters didn't have a piano, Burgess went out looking. Sure enough, she found an old one at College Lutheran Church in Salem. The congregation donated the piano to the Hesters and had it tuned free. The Hesters were overwhelmed by such generosity.
``We'd never even met these people,'' Jerry Hester said incredulously.
Then Burgess set about securing music lessons.
``I wanted him to study with someone who would continue to foster his ability to play by ear as well as teach him to read music," she said.
She found that person in Rebecca Wallenborn, who teaches in the Hollins College Preparatory Division. Now in the sixth grade at Breckinridge, Josh started lessons last December, with the tuition paid entirely through donations.
``He obviously has a gift,'' said Wallenborn. ``He's such a good student, and I appreciate the opportunity to work with him.''
``His time with Mrs. Wallenborn is very private,'' said Jerry Hester. The weekly lesson has turned into a special time for father and son, too: Jerry drives Josh to Hollins each Tuesday afternoon and waits for him outside, while strains of his son's music drift through the door. ``It's a very peaceful time each week,'' he said.
In a telephone interview - with Josh playing Beethoven in the background - his mother said, ``When he got that piano, it was his. You should have heard the music come out of him then.''
The family was astonished when so many people came forward to help, LaWanda Hester said. Josh wrote thank-you notes to everybody, and she and her husband did too.
``We were so grateful,'' she said. ``We explained that Josh had had such a rough childhood because of his medical problems, and that this was one thing that he could do now, since he couldn't run as much and play with the other kids."
She added that the music has helped him physically as well; he hasn't had any major illness recently.
The piano has also been a blessing because it offsets the intensely stimulating effect of Josh's medication.
``He plays the piano to relax,'' she said. ``When something frustrates him, he'll go to his piano and just play and play. It's like a river: It just keeps coming and coming.''
Josh likewise heads for the piano whenever gets into a squabble with his brother Chris, who is 13.
``Then Chris will get out his cello and they'll play together and everything's okay,'' their mother said. ``They love their music.''
Josh is in good company when he plays at home. The whole Hester family is musical - they all sing, and father Jerry plays the guitar and bass; mother LaWanda plays the guitar; sister Donna, 16, plays the electronic keyboard; and brother Chris plays bass and drums in addition to cello.
Three grown children, also musically inclined, live away from home. And then there's Josh, the youngest, who just started playing the French horn in addition to piano.
``Now I try to play on the French horn what I've learned on the piano,'' he said.
Sometimes, if Josh is having trouble with a piano chord, his father will get out his guitar and help him figure it out. Or Chris will show him
Now that Josh is learning to read music, LaWanda said, he can pick up a piece of his parents' old sheet music (``Lean on Me'' is a recent example) and they can all play together.
These days Josh is studying key signatures. He said Becky Wallenborn encourages him to ``listen to what's in my head and then I try to write it down.''
``I'm just amazed,'' said LaWanda. ``He hears something on the TV or radio and he sits down and plays it.'' Jerry added that cartoons are a great source of classical music - especially Bugs Bunny, who features a lot of Beethoven. ``Instead of watching cartoons like most kids, Josh listens to them.''
Rose Ann Burgess said that what will happen when the money runs out is anybody's guess. She's hoping that a scholarship will become available.
``There must be something we can do for him,'' she said.
In the meantime, Josh plays and plays. He would like to someday accompany the children's choir at his church, Rainbow Forest Baptist. ``The youth pastor has already asked me,'' he said, ``As soon as I get a little better at it.''
Recently he heard Becky Wallenborn play Liszt's ``Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2'' - he recognized it from a cartoon - and decided he'd like to play that, too.
Josh shrugged at the suggestion that it would be quite an undertaking.
``I'll just learn it note by note,'' he said. ``I can hear it in my head. It's fun.''
Karen Adams works at Hollins College and is a free-lance writer.
LENGTH: Long : 150 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: KEITH GRAHAM/Staff. 1. Joshua Hester's parents wanted aby CNBteacher who would ``foster his ability to play by ear as well as
teach him to read music." They found that person in Rebecca
Wallenborn (right), who teaches in the Hollins College Preparatory
Division. 2. Josh Hester, practicing in Talmadge Recital Hall at
Hollins College, hasn't let health problems prevent him from
excelling at piano. 3. Clockwise from above: Josh works on a band
class assignment at Breckenridge Middle School. 4. He started
playing the French horn, a difficult instrument, this school year,
and clearly seems to enjoy it. 5. He practices at home on the piano
that his fifth-grade teacher, Rose Ann Burgess, arranged for him to
have after she heard how well he played without a single lesson. 6.
When [Josh] started to play, it was like he was the only person in
the room. color.