Erick Chang: The App Developer & The Pianist

Hi! My name is Erick and I am a chemical engineer turned app developer who works in New York City. Outside of my job, I enjoy playing jazz piano.

I started playing piano when I was in the 1st grade.  I hated practicing scales and had made a deal with my parents to quit when I got to the 4th grade.  But when that time came around, it was too late – I didn’t want to give it up.  Especially when I realized that it got the attention of girls in my class.  From this realization, I knew piano was going to be important to me in the future, especially with a career in engineering and all.

Most of my time between then and around college was spent learning classical and romantic pieces.  I have done a few recitals here and there and at one point I even performed in a small library at a well-known university in New York City.  However, performing for others was not too appealing to me, so I stopped.

It was not until the end of college when I began to develop an interest in jazz piano.  I cannot describe why, but I guess there is something about jazz that stirs both my brain and my emotions in a positive way.

The music theory behind jazz is really intense and I don’t really have the patience for learning it, at least not right now.  Therefore, a lot of my playing of jazz comes from noticing patterns and just playing with feeling, with very little knowing of “why” and instead, simply just “do”.  This is in contrast to my engineering lifestyle where it is crucial to understand the “why” behind doing things.

Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 is a pretty well-known waltz nocturne by Chopin that most people can recognize, even if they don’t know it by name.  I think I first learned it in the 8th grade.  I heard a jazzy version played in the train station on my trip to Taiwan earlier this year and started looking for jazzy renditions on YouTube.  I found one that I liked and that is how this recording was made.  I have gotten pretty good at learning songs by just watching people play them on YouTube.  I thought playing Chopin for my Encounter would be a nice tribute to my 8th grade self.