Star Soprano

Wowing the World with Chinese Opera

by Thaai Walker

photography by Craig Merrill

Tyler Thompson is just now learning Mandarin, which seems strange since he has been singing Chinese opera in flawless Mandarin ever since he was 8. But although Tyler, now 10, has earned international fame for his singing, truth be told, he's never really understood the words that have brought some of his listeners to tears.
The East Oakland boy's after school lessons have given him enough confidence to show off at least one phrase: "Gong zou lei ma?" which means, he'll tell you with a serious look on his oval face, "Are you tired from work?'' This particular fifth grader likes to greet his mother with it at the end of each workday as she rushes him off to choir, Mandarin lessons or piano practice.
Tyler is still basking in the attention two years after a Wall Street Journal reporter discovered him and told the world his tale. Deep in Oakland's Chinatown, the story went, there was a schoolboy who sang Mandarin folksongs and Chinese opera, a largely unfamiliar art in Western countries that typically takes four years of training to master. It is often sung in Mandarin, a language in which a word can have four different meanings depending on the tone used. On top of that, this child wasn't even Chinese-he was African-American.
The story landed Tyler on the Journal's front page. Within days, CNN, Good Morning America and others rushed to put him on the air. His voice was carried thousands of miles away to listeners in Beijing via a Chinese television broadcast of his appearance at San Jose's HP Pavilion.
He's performed at Oakland City Hall, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall, where he was so nervous that he decided to remove his wire-rimmed glasses before going on stage.
"I couldn't see the audience," the 4-foot-11-inch boy explains earnestly, "so I wasn't afraid. Everyone just looked like big black and white Milk Duds.''
Through it all, Tyler reacts to the fanfare like the kid that he is.
The highlight of one performance in Los Angeles? Definitely the candy that awaited him in the Town Car. The most thrilling thing about appearing on Good Morning America? Hands down, the Toys "R"Us that was next door to his hotel.
Today, Tyler is still honing his unusual talent with Sherlyn Chew, the teacher who introduced him to Chinese song when he was only 4 years old. Chew has received her own acclaim locally for instructing Oakland school children in Chinese song and traditional Chinese instruments.
Her current cross-cultural endeavor takes place these days at Oakland's International Community School where most of the students are Latino. She is also a professor at Laney College where she directs the Great Wall Youth Orchestra and Chorus, of which Tyler is a member. New York audiences may soon be treated to Tyler's skills; he and the rest of Chew's Great Wall Youth Orchestra and Chorus have been asked to perform at Lincoln Center. They were invited to perform this year but had to decline because Chew was unable to raise the $100,000 needed to send the orchestra's 52 members. She hopes to raise the money and be able to accept another invitation in 2007.
Chew met Tyler at Lincoln Elementary, a predominantly Chinese-American school that his mother, Vanessa Ladson, enrolled him in because it was closer to her job. Ladson, a single mother, works as a senior administrative clerk for the East Bay Municipal Utility District.
He was "cute'' and "well-behaved'' and had a lovely soprano voice, Chew recalls of Tyler, and he soaked up Chinese folk songs in that easy way that children sometimes have for picking up things that would stump an adult.
There is, though, an aspect of Tyler's story that has largely been ignored: He really only knows one opera song, a tale about a cow herder who comes across a lost maiden. And whether he is truly singing what is known formally as Beijing opera, a highly stylized, nearly 200-year-old art that includes song, acrobatics and elaborate makeup (which Tyler doesn't wear) is debatable, says William Hu, who regularly lectures on Chinese opera at San Francisco cultural organizations and is considered an expert on the subject.
"His voice has great possibilities," says Hu, a former Chinese opera performer, who saw Tyler perform in San Francisco. "But it is not Beijing opera. It is a skit.''
Still, Tyler's story has put a spotlight on what has been referred to as a dying art and left many impressed and confident about where the Oakland boy is headed in life.
"As a boy soprano, there is no guarantee he will be able to sing past puberty,'' says Michael Morgan, conductor of the Oakland East Bay Symphony, who has also heard Tyler sing. "But it has given him a base of self-confidence to build from for whatever he wants to do.''
Tyler has been repeatedly asked what he wants to do when he grows up. Not long ago he told inquirers that he wanted to be a wrestler. Then he wanted a job at Disneyland.
"Now, I have three things I want to do,'' he says ticking them off on his fingers. "I want to keep singing. I want to become a marine biologist. And I want to be a chef just like my dad.''
Tyler smiles and says, "I can make some mean tea cakes.''  _

To help send Tyler and the Great Wall Youth Orchestra and Chorus to perform at Lincoln Center, send a tax deductible check to Chew's nonprofit organization, The Purple Silk Music Education Foundation, 967 Park Lane, Oakland, CA 94610.