In 2018, a 15-year-old boy from Shelton in Connecticut, the United States lost his vision suddenly and had to undergo major surgeries.
Now, seven years later, Vincent Vallillo will take the stage at Radio City Music Hallin New York to perform piano – an instrument he learned to play in the hospital room post-surgery.
He is one of 150 young people who performed at Radio City on April 8 for the Garden of Dreams Foundation’s annual talent show. The show puts a spotlight on talented individuals “facing unimaginable obstacles,” according to a news release from Madison Square Garden Entertainment.
“I started playing piano at nine because of a loss of sensation on my left side due to a stroke,” Vallillo said.
Vallillo’s father, who is also named Vincent but goes by Vinny, said his son lost his sight after his optic nerve was crushed from fluid retention.
“He went blind six years ago, and then we found out he had a brain tumor,” Vinny said.
“Then he had a major craniotomy... and then he had another surgery two weeks later, and he came out paralysed on the left side of his body.”
Vinny said that his son was given a toy piano while he was in the hospital, a tool that helped him “get his hand moving again”.
“He started playing piano after all this crazy stuff transpired in his life kind of out of the blue,” Vinny said. “The piano has become his salvation.”
Vallillo said he plays piano every day. Since he has completely lost his vision, it can take him several hours of practice to learn a piano piece.
“I was learning Braille sheet music, but I kind of gave up on that because it was a little hard,” he said. “So I do a lot of stuff by ear, or a lot of YouTube lessons are really helpful.”
In addition to playing piano, Vallillo also writes and records his own music. The Make-A-Wish Foundation gave him recording studio equipment during the pandemic after his original wish of going on a trip was scrapped.
Vinny also helped his son find and enroll in an audio production school called I See Music in Chicago, Illinois. It is a school where visually impaired people teach others who have lost their sight about audio engineering.
“It’s very theraputic to write a song,” Vallillo said.
“I feel like music speaks to me so much because everything I’ve been through has been very difficult, and I don’t like to take out my emotions on other people. So in order to get it out in a healthy way, I like to write songs and just get that emotion out.”
The piece Vallillo plans to perform at the Garden of Dreams talent show is an original song called Confined, which he wrote while he was taking an immuno-compromising medicine to help shrink his brain tumor.
Because of the pill and a new variant of Covid-19 at the time, Vallillo had to leave school for a month. He said that when he returned to school, he had to catch up on several assignments and couldn’t meet up with his friends.
“Every time I came home after school, I had the recording studio,” Valillo said. “I would get in there and write a piece by piece song, and it really helped me through that whole struggle. I called it Confined because that’s how I saw it at the time.”
Vinny said that although his son has experienced several different struggles in life and emergency room visits, including one for another craniotomy last September, Vallillo has “one of the most positive attitudes on this planet”.
“There’s some other kids who have been through a lot more than me,” Vallillo said.
“I’ve just looked at other people who... just have been through a lot more than me and have a soul and strength to keep pushing forward, and I kind of get inspiration from people like that.”
The other young performers who will take the stage alongside Vallillo at Radio City also serve as a source of inspiration for him, he said.
“Just being able to perform here is an amazing step,” he said. “I feel like if I perform here, all the other kids who have been through a lot, either older or younger, are going to kind of help me push me forward in my path.”
Vallillo said that he hopes his performance at Radio City will open a “world of possibilities” for his future in music. His dream is to become an audio producer someday.
“The thing I like that I can do with performing is that I can make other people feel better through my music,” he said. “By helping someone else feel an emotion that makes them happy or in a good mood, that’s worth everything in the world to me.” — Connecticut Post/Tribune News Service
