Do you remember what you achieved by age eleven? Memories of exciting childhoods seem to stay with us forever as we recall our favorite family vacations, movies, music, and what we hoped to achieve.
San Ramon student Connor Roham, age eleven, will have a lot to remember as he has already garnered a mountain of achievements. At age two Connor played the piano; at six took his first piano lessons, and at seven played at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York.
Since then, he has won several national and international piano competitions held in New York City and at age ten was invited to perform on the main stage of Carnegie Hall at Stern Auditorium. We all know that playing at Carnegie Hall is every musician’s dream and Connor has already performed there six times.
These are gigantic accomplishments for a young man who is not yet a teenager and who has already achieved what could seem impossible. Showing an early understanding of advanced math and classical music by the age of six, Connor was accepted into the high IQ society Mensa after having scored an IQ of 173. Membership in the society requires supervised intelligence tests that score in 98 percentile or higher to qualify.
There are only 134,000 Mensa members worldwide with 3,400 under the age of 18. The youngest member was admitted at the age of two years and five months who could already read, count in three languages, and was able to identify and locate most countries in a world map puzzle. In short, to become a Mensa member one has to be very, very smart.
Connor is a precocious young man who is partially homeschooled and already studies math and science at high school level. He attends classes at Davidson Academy for Profoundly Gifted Youth which requires IQ and achievement tests in 99.9% range nationally. He also attends a SRVUSD school for Social Science, Writing, and PE. Connor’s most favorite subjects are Math, Human Anatomy and Ancient Civilizations. He gives piano lessons to children and plays with his beloved Westie terrier, Millo.
Connor has already decided his future profession and wants to enter the medical field as a Pediatric Surgical Oncologist convinced that his dexterity on the piano can be translated to doing delicate surgery on children. His dream is to attend Stanford.
Recently at a Friends of the Blackhawk Museums membership event at the Behring estate, Connor was invited to be guest pianist and his rendition of “La Campanella” by Franz Listz so stunned the audience that he was promptly invited to a future performance.
Frederic Chopin is his favorite musician whose compositions of scherzos, mazurkas, and polonaises are the most challenging works, so it stands to reason that Connor would admire this musical genius who wrote and performed his first composition at the age of seven in 1817.
Connor desires to eventually bring back classical music to the mainstream for his generation and believes in the therapeutic power of music.
Frederic Chopin died of cystic fibrosis in 1849 and being Connor’s favorite composer, Connor plans to organize a fund raiser concert. Wearing hats of both pianist and impresario he is hoping to work in tandem with the Palo Alto Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, targeting the summer of 2018 for the charity concert.
His mother, Faranak Nekoogar, explained to me that Connor’s main focus is to qualify to participate in the prestigious Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw in 2020 and 2025. The event in Poland happens every five years and is open to only 350 musician applicants ages 17 to 35.
Connor has been featured twice on ABC7 News, San Francisco and New York, KTVU Channel 2, and all performances and upcoming events are available at Connor Roham Piano on YouTube.
Creativity comes in many forms and Connor, being not only an accomplished pianist, wrote a musical piece at six entitled “Memories of London,” and showed me the draft of his first book written at the age of eight to introduce children to classical music, “Say Hello To The Great Composers” which includes a Q&A quiz and fun facts.
Connor is well-rounded and also enjoys golf and Tae Kwon Do. I asked what he would like people to know about him besides playing Carnegie six times; “I want people to take me for more than just being a child prodigy…”
He loves cars and attends the monthly “Cars & Coffee” event at Blackhawk Museum. Upon a recent visit to New York he dragged his parents to the Manhattan Motorcars Dealer of elite multi-million dollar automobiles and scored a private tour to view the high end inventory. “The Lambourghini Centenario was my favorite,” he said.
I researched his favorite car and it all made sense that this young man would be dazzled by the 2017 mega-dollar masterpiece one-off line of only 40 ever made that reaches top speed of 217 mph and commands a whopping $2.3 million.
Connor’s parents both have doctorate degrees in science. His mother, Faranak Nekoogar Ph.D, is the Chief Technology Officer at Dirac Solutions Inc. and has authored five technical books and over twenty inventions in the field of wireless technology. Connor’s father, Sassan Roham Ph.D, is Director of Engineering at Lam Research, a leader in semiconductor capital equipment manufacturing.
When I asked Faranak what was most important to the family the answer was simple: “Our family emphasizes science, music and humanitarian causes.”
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