HE is being described as possibly the most talented nine-year-old musician in Scotland.

Joel Gutierrez, from Edinburgh, stunned his parents when he taught himself to play the piano – and then at the age of seven composed his own classical piece.

When he played it at a talent show for all the pupils at Dean Park Primary School, he ended up wowing the judges and won.

A gifted violin and piano player, he has since created 20 classical compositions for violin, piano and one for a chamber ensemble.

He is now enrolled at the prestigious City of Edinburgh Music School where he has won a Grade 5/6 competition in violin for under 19s at the Edinburgh Competition Festival.

The school director, Tudor Morris, said that he believed he could be the most talented young classical musician in the country.

“He is the most exciting nine-year-old at the school and he is certainly one to watch for the future,” he said. “He is very gifted. And has a readiness to compose and arrange pieces himself or add to compositions with his own flourishes.”

The Flora Stevenson Primary School pupil’s love of classical music is believed to have come from his violin-playing father, Dr Tony Gutierrez, 44, Reader in the School of Life Sciences at Heriot-Watt University.

Mr Gutierrez said: “His love of music just comes out of him. We don’t go out for competitions we would rather he would be his own little boy self. He wants to be a composer. That I think is his love.”

He said that his son was inspired to construct classical pieces by listening to Brahms or Mozart.
Joel’s introduction to the world of classical music began when he asked for a violin when he was four and began learning to play when he was five.

“He is just one of these children who gets absorbed in things and that’s what happened,” said his mother Nicole Freire, 39.

My husband plays violin, and Joel has seen him play and when he was four he asked for a violin and he got it. He didn’t start taking lessons till he was five-and-a-half.

“Then something clicked and he became absorbed in music and he wanted to read about composers and everything was about music. He loves classical music, and going to concerts, ever since he was quite small.

“We listen to classical music as well. I think something about it just resonates with him. I always say I think he is a bit of an old soul in that sense, that he has this ability to tap into the emotions of pieces, and really feels them, whether it’s a sad piece or not.

“At seven he got a keyboard and he just pretty much became completely absorbed with that and within a few weeks he was playing tunes without lessons. He was just playing bits of Mozart pieces, and bits and pieces he picked up here and and there. He would hear something on the radio and just pick it up. We were quite surprised about that.

“Then he started composing his own music as well on the piano, which he didn’t have any lessons for.”

When he auditioned for the Edinburgh Music School he played a four-minute composition that he had made up for piano.
“And then for the talent show at Dean Park Primary School two years ago, he ended up playing his composition on piano that he never had any lessons for, and he ended up winning.
“A lot of people were quite impressed with that.

“But we would never classify him as a musical prodigy. There have been times when all of a sudden he taught himself piano within a few weeks and was composing his pieces and was playing for the whole school that people were coming up to us and saying, ‘oh, he’s a prodigy’, but we haven’t followed along that route.

“We think he is unique and wonderful, but we definitely wouldn’t want to put him out there for something that he is not.”