Backstage at Queen's Hall was silent and deserted on Thursday afternoon, except for the faint tinkling of classical piano music coming from, it seemed, outside.

Moving past the dressing rooms where empty chairs and counters awaited performers, costumes and makeup, I found the source of the passionate and sweeping sounds: Richard Tang Yuk, at the keys of the hall's black Steinway concert grand.

The piano was in the loading entrance of the backstage area. Overhead, some of the birds which have made their home in the rafters of the hall were warbling, providing a strange counterpoint to Rachmaninoff's "Second Concerto". Tang Yuk, dressed in a navy T-shirt and jeans, was rehearsing the piece he performs with the National Youth Orchestra this weekend at the hall. He stood up as soon as he saw me.

One of the first things he said was, "Tell me about you." Ironic, since it was I who had come to interview him for this story. He was shy, he said, and preferred to talk about things other than himself. What was my idea for the story?

A profile, I replied.

Tang Yuk looked uncomfortable.

Tell me about Indiana, I asked instead, referring to the state in which he'd completed his doctorate in conducting four years ago. He lit up.

"I just felt this urge to learn more… I have this insatiable thirst," he explained. He had finished his bachelor's and master's degrees in conducting at the Mannes College of Music, New York, and had heard about the Indiana University School of Music. He'd known it was big, but had no idea when he went there that the school has 1,500 music students and puts on about 950 to 1,000 complete productions every academic year. (Other "big" schools have about 100 students.)

"My first impression was, coming from New York, 'What the hell am I doing in this place?'" Indiana, he said, is a cornfield.

"But I never felt like I was in the middle of a cornfield." On his way to the school's administration building he saw an advertisement for Berg's opera Wozzeck. He assumed the complicated and seldom performed piece was being staged by a visiting company. He was shocked to find out it was a student production.

"I was completely blown away by the standard. It was excellent," he said, adding that Wozzeck is atonal music, not based on the system of harmony like most other operas. He illustrated the difference by playing a few notes.

Tang Yuk is a licentiate of the Royal Schools of Music in piano. He's good; even I, a virtual moron musically speaking, could tell that. He played a couple of minutes of the Rachmaninoff for me and it left me feeling queasy and breathless.

But right now he makes his living as a conductor and lecturer at Princeton University. Princeton's cultured environment is a far cry from the Corn Belt, but he is equally enthusiastic about his work there directing choral music and teaching.

The students there are so bright, he marvelled. The members of this choir are lawyers, mathematicians, and linguists.

"They can barely sight-read but they're really brilliant.

"I remember we were doing a piece in a foreign language - not French or Spanish or anything mundane like that - Czech. I said, somebody here must speak Czech.'" Sure enough, a woman in the choir raised her hand: but did he mean Czech or Slovak?

But not everything leaves Tang Yuk excited. He bemoans the state of music, not just in Trinidad and Tobago, but internationally.

"We have become a society that has become used to the convenience of compact disc music. We are fostering a culture that does not appreciate live performance… But nothing can be a substitute for live music. There's something that can't be duplicated."

In live music, unlike recorded, digitally sanitized music, there is something different each time. "Live performance has many variables at play. It isn’t going to be note perfect." And the difference is the spark in it. "There's just something, an energy. It's invigorating."

But it is an invigoration few in the general populace share when it comes to classical music. He wishes more people in his homeland would come to concerts so they could see the light.

Locally, classical music struggles for audiences, recognition, funding, and teachers. And Tang Yuk, who used to teach music here and led the Belvedere choir ten years ago, is not blind to the failings of the musicians themselves.

When he taught, he was often faced with students who booked sessions and never showed up, or showed up not having looked at their music - far less practiced - since their last lesson.

"We have a lot of talent, there's no question about that. We need discipline. We like instant gratification. We gong to do something tomorrow; we prepare for it today.

"We don't have enough good teachers. I had at one time wanted to come back and set up a school…"He stopped here and changed tack.

"Quite often I've come across talent who can't afford to take lessons. And on the other hand you have less talented students whose parents can afford to send them for lessons.

"What does one do, you give them free lessons? If you choose to be a musician in this country it's very hard to make a living."

He wondered aloud about his friend, Kerry Roebuck, a clarinetist and conductor of the Youth Orchestra, who he says, is a freelancer.

He turned his eye back to music in general. "We have to be demanding of our own work and just expect more of ourselves. It's a big problem in this country. If only we had a national music school."

Tang Yuk can think of few, if any, other conductors in Trinidad. "There's nothing to conduct - except the Youth Orchestra."

So he's settled at Princeton, and is assistant conductor of the Opera Festival of New Jersey. On his plate later this year and early next year, he has a concert with the Harvard University Glee Club; Mozart's "Mass in C Minor"; and "Carmina Burana". "I'm very happy where I am right now."

He plans to be home for Christmas and may do a concert with Roebuck and pianist Enrique Ali. In the meantime, catch him at 6 p.m. this evening with the National Youth Orchestra in concert at Queen's Hall.
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