A little over four years ago, Bangalow teen Malik couldn’t play a note of music. This year he was selected to appear in an episode of the ABC’s reality television series The Piano, and last month performed in front of hundreds of people at the Terrace Park Soundshell in Brunswick Heads, in a concert to mark the arrival of a new community piano. Digby Hildreth went along to listen. On both occasions Malik produced a thunderstorm of notes – his favourite effect: whether playing the difficult third movement of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ or Duke Ellington’s equally challenging ‘Caravan’, his ideal musical expression is intense, dramatic, romantic.
Despite his comparatively late start, once the passion for the instrument was ignited, Malik began to practise with a “ferocious enthusiasm” says his mother, Ambyr, and in a very short time he has come a long way, creating a serious future for himself.
Malik Traki Johnston (or Malik Sofian, his middle name and Insta identity) is not a typical 17-year-old, and his development as a pianist has not been conventional. For a start, growing up, he didn’t have much interest in music, and was even confused about why other kids liked it at all: “I’d see them listening to various genres like metal or rock or rap music, and I just never liked it to any degree. And I thought myself rather strange for that.”
The only music he could relate to was in films, such as ‘The Imperial March’ in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, “so I guess that was a sign I’m more aligned to dramatic classical music”, he says.
He listens to more music now and has multiple playlists featuring many different genres. Classical is the foundation, then jazz, from early 20th century through to Charlie Parker.
His favourite jazz pianist is Oscar Peterson, for his virtuosity. “He’s incredible. His fingers are just so nimble and he can create a thunderstorm of sound.” That word again.
Another unusual feature of Malik’s development was how his ability to play outstripped his theoretical understanding, as Ambyr explains: “Many gifted kids learn from when they’re two or three or four; they learn to play and learn music at the same time. But Malik became quite advanced in his playing before he ever learned how to read music.”
When Malik met his first teacher, Bangalow’s Linda Armstrong, a little over four years ago, “he didn’t even want to look at the music”, she says. “We were starting from scratch, the very basics.”
But Malik knew what he wanted to play, and he has a “fantastic ear”, she says. “He can listen to the music and then hear if he’s doing it right. He picked it up so quickly. And he has an amazing memory.”
“The hardest piece I’ve ever played, I learned by ear,” Malik says. The piece, Liszt’s ‘La Campanella’, requires an astoundingly brisk allegretto tempo and is famously difficult.
But when he knew that he wanted music to be his life, he caught up with the theory, and in 2023 learnt to read music in nine months; in 2024 he was awarded the Licentiate Diploma of Music Performance (LMus) with honours from St Cecilia – signifying a high level of musical performance, achieved through rigorous practical and theoretical assessments.
Some of this commitment was due to the influence of his second teacher, Mark Hooper, in Brisbane, who insists his students study the sheet music: “What is the music telling you?” he asks them. “That’s the best connection you have to what was in the composer’s mind.”
Malik says: “It’s a privilege to be able to be in a position where you can express the music, absolutely. That makes you a real musician, in a way. As Mark says: ‘An amateur uses the music to express their feelings, and a professional uses their feelings to express the music’.”
To pursue his interest in jazz, Malik studies with Nick Campbell at the Lismore Conservatorium, where he had a scholarship for two years, the first through the Con itself, the second through the Harmony Fund, established by local identity (and music lover) Vicky Brooke.
Along with determination and a phenomenal memory, Malik possesses another distinctive quality, Linda says. “If he loves a piece of music and wants to learn it, he researches it – learns how old the composer was when they wrote it, and if they’d had their heart broken, and so on, and he wants to play with the same feeling the composer had when it was written, which I see as a very adult concept.”
Malik began homeschooling with Ambyr in 2022, after a few unsettled years of high school. He attended several over the years but, as he told The Piano presenter, Amanda Keller, “I did not fit in at school. A lot of people probably thought I was weird, but I see myself as a very shy kid, and self-critical”.
Homeschooling allowed him to prioritise the piano over other studies but he has returned to high school, at Cape Byron Steiner, to do his HSC. He plans on enrolling for a Bachelor of Music Performance next year, ideally in Melbourne, and is looking forward to the cold and the grey: it’s that romantic temperament emerging again – the drama of stormy skies.
But there is another side to this tendency too: “With Liszt, like the other Romantics, there’s the very virtuosic thing, all the drama and the showmanship, which I’ve always loved, and then the contrast – a very delicate, gentle side, which a lot of people maybe didn’t see in him when he was alive. There’s an emotional quality about it, reflective,” he says.
It could almost be a description of himself: with his wild hair and velvet jackets he looks, and plays, like a romantic hero, blowing listeners away with his bravura performances. But behind this is a sensitive and vulnerable young man, someone for whom, as he revealed in The Piano, music signifies hope. Succeeding with the piano has taught him that he can tackle difficulties in other areas of his life, he said.
Malik says The Piano was a great experience, especially meeting other pianists and piano enthusiasts, and it was likely a big confidence booster too, judging by the reception he received: the Beethoven piece is “one of the most deceptively difficult pieces in the repertoire and especially for someone with three-and-a-half years of piano playing”, said international star Andrea Lam.
“Unbelievably impressive”, was Harry Connick Jnr’s verdict of the performance.
The experience also proved cathartic: “Before the piano I was very angry,” he tells Amanda Keller. “Now I can channel my emotions through the music, the good and the bad. The piano is joy, kindness, struggle, hope, strength and despair. You can really tell a story through the music, and make people understand.”
The Brunswick Heads concert was just the latest in a series of successful appearances: At the invitation of White Rabbit Gallery owner Judith Neilson, he performed an hour-long recital at a venue called The Church, in Alexandria, eight pieces altogether.
He also played at the Bangalow Chamber Music Festival, and had lessons with one of the Festival’s stars – the terrifyingly gifted Konstantin Shamray at a piano intensive in Armidale.
“Last year Konstantin played, out of the blue, ‘La Valse’ by Ravel, and almost blew the ceiling off,” Malik recalls. “It was insane. The sound he creates is just like what I said about Oscar Petersen in the thunderstorm. Just like that, but on drugs.
“That is my ultimate mood. I want to replicate that. I want to give my audience that kind of transcendent experience.”