Curtis Elton knows he is a special child, knows that he is super-talented. But sometimes, do you know what? The finer details of his remarkable gift escape his grasp.
‘What is the difference between a child prodigy and a child genius?’ he wonders, in his piping, clear voice. ‘I think a genius is someone really clever. I am not sure about prodigy.
People call me that but what does it mean? I should have looked it up by now but I haven’t.’
Close: Silver-suited piano sensation Curtis Elton with his mum and mentor, Hayley (left) and (right) the 11-year-old is also an ice skating prodigy too
On a school night, when most children his age are in their pyjamas preparing for bed, 11-year-old Curtis is wearing his silver stage suit with its matching tie, and a cream shirt with a rich roll of cuff.
As he sits on the leather sofa in his living room in Barnet, North London, his size 4 feet don’t quite reach the floor.
Every now and again he gets up to play on the white baby grand piano that dominates the room, his little hands skipping across the keys in a blur.
Curtis is already an acclaimed concert pianist known as ‘the Mini-Mozart’ but there are moments when he is a right Little Liberace, too. ‘I admire Liberace, he was more like a comedian. I have started to write my own music,’ he announces, plinking away. ‘This is a jazz piece.’
Thonck, thonck, trrrrriingkle, bam.
‘I am still working on this part. I have given it a funny name. As it is my first piece, I’ve called it… The First!’
Ripple, ripple, glissando, thunk.
He comes back to the sofa and sits down. ‘Next question?’ he asks, like a seasoned pro. He is hilarious, a one-off who likes eating chicken for breakfast, watching Bart Simpson and monitoring his daily fitness with his new Apple Watch.
‘Today I have walked 6,000 steps and consumed 350 calories,’ he says, tapping the screen on his wrist, into which he logs his food intake. ‘I know I shouldn’t be counting calories, but it is fun and I like to challenge myself.’
Watching from the corner of the room, his mother beams with delight. Thanks to her, little Curtis Bushell — Elton is his stage name — is something of a musical sensation. He has just been awarded a degree-level piano diploma by the music examination board at Trinity College London — the youngest ever candidate to receive the accolade.
Prodigy: At the age of 11, Curtis Elton has become the youngest person in the world to gain a university degree in music
Curtis, who started learning the piano when he was three, practices on a white Yamaha grand piano
To pass, he had to play a challenging 37-minute programme, mostly from memory. It included Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E flat, Mozart’s Sonata in F, two Etudes by Chopin and April by John Ireland. Impressive, particularly as Curtis is still so small he has only recently been able to reach nine keys — an octave plus one note — with one hand.
‘I couldn’t even reach an octave a year ago. Liszt could reach 13 notes, which is massive,’ he says, spreading a little starfish hand in awe.
He feels that the two hours of daily practice to get his degree was ‘worth it’ and his next goal is to be the youngest pianist to receive a masters degree.
His career to date has been a cavalcade of firsts and profound early achievement. He started playing at the age of three, and a year later became the youngest child ever to achieve Grade 1 in piano. At eight, he was one of the youngest to achieve a Grade 8.
From the beginning, he has been tutored by his mother Hayley, 42, who is also a gifted pianist and was once herself the youngest student to be admitted to the Guildhall in London.
‘When I was pregnant with Curtis, I could feel him kicking when I played the piano,’ she says. ‘That is how he first got into music.’
‘I was born with a gift,’ says Curtis.
Curtis Elton has become the youngest person in the world to gain a university degree in music, aged 11
The secret of his success was a minimum of two hours of training every day – and plenty of pasta, according to his mother Hayley, 41, a professional concert pianist (pictured together, right)
Although his father Jonathan, a 44-year-old graphic designer, has always been encouraging, it is Hayley who has been the devoted architect of Curtis’s career. From day one, it was she who pushed him forward and mentored his progress both on the piano and off it.
Her son has been on Britain’s Got Talent twice and appeared as one of the gifted children in Channel 4’s Child Genius series last year. Together, mother and son have released an album called Mozart, Mummy and Me.
There has been interest from The Ellen Show, hosted by Ellen DeGeneres in America. ‘We couldn’t make the dates work,’ says Hayley.
There has also been a concert in front of the Duchess of Cornwall in which Curtis, for extra ‘wow’ factor, played blindfolded, and there was even an interview on London radio station LBC this week, which Curtis liked so much he asked if he could present his own show. ‘For kids, with kid guests. It would help get children interested in radio and get their ratings up,’ he says.
Anything else? Oh yes. He is also a competitive figure skater, who ice skates to advanced novice level and has won several national competitions as a solo performer and as half of a couple with his little sister Sophia, who is ten.
She is also proficient on the harp and will soon appear in a solo dance and acting role in English National Opera’s new production of Carmen at the Coliseum in London.
‘I want to be a concert pianist but if that fails I want to be a prime minister or a doctor, as a back-up plan,’ says Curtis. ‘I want to be in the Olympics as a skater but I would prefer to go in solo.’
Not with your sister?
‘Nope.’
‘Curtis!’ cries his mother. Then she suggests: ‘Perhaps you could do both?’
All of which raises the question: is Hayley Britain’s pushiest mum?
‘I don’t like to be called a pushy mum. I prefer to be described as supportive,’ she says.
She knows that some people do think of her as pushy. ‘No one has ever said it to my face but there is always a first time, I suppose. If you have a very talented child, people don’t understand.
‘There is always a bit of jealousy, but I have never made Curtis do anything he doesn’t want to do. He is just naturally bright, with a very high IQ.’ (Aged nine, he was said to have the IQ of an 18-year-old. Another test rated him at 152 — Einstein famously had an IQ of 160).
‘He has nimble fingers and great concentration. And he loves the piano, he loves his ice skating.’
Curtis has appeared on Britain’s Got Talent in 2011 and 2014, but did not make the final selection
She does her best to shield Curtis from the inevitable disappointments of a performing career, but there have been a few setbacks.
In 2013 she took him out of one school because they would not exempt him from playing rugby.
‘Someone trod on my hand and I couldn’t practise the piano for four weeks,’ he says.
‘I warned them he could get injured,’ says his mum, who has insured her son’s hands against injury to the tune of £250,000. ‘He should not be forced into rugby. There should be a law against that.’
He then attended a well-known public school in Central London, leaving after two terms because of his mother’s concerns that he was being bullied. The headmistress told Hayley the school had never received ‘so many emails from one parent’.
Curtis was then home-schooled by his mother from last July until last week, when he began attending the Sylvia Young Theatre School, also in Central London.
‘He is very happy there. I realised I was going down the wrong path with the other schools. They would say sorry about things, but sorry isn’t good enough.’
It is clear that Hayley will do whatever it takes to protect Curtis’s best interests. Indeed, she is still rather furious with Simon Cowell and Britain’s Got Talent after Curtis appeared on the show in 2011 and 2014. Each time he got four ‘yeses’ from the judges but was not put through to the semi-finals.
‘They just rang up and said that Simon felt the British public were not really interested in the piano,’ she says. ‘Just a made-up excuse. Then they invited him to come back on the show last year. I said OK, but only if you make it up to him for the last disappointment.
‘They did the same thing again! The show is supposed to be about talent, so why don’t they let someone with real talent’ — she points at her son — ‘win the thing?’
‘There are a lot of dogs in it this year,’ observes Curtis.
How did he feel about not being put through?
‘I cried,’ he says.
The Bushells live in a four-bedroom, semi-detached house in a private close in Barnet. At the front door, there are musical notes on the rubber welcome mat.
Inside is the ordered chaos of a family with two children on the ice at 6am sharp most mornings for skating practice before school. One room contains Sophia’s harp, surrounded by a clutter of boxes. In here, the piano is forested with framed photographs of Curtis and Sophia — but mostly Curtis — while thickets of their trophies and awards cover every surface. That the curtains are drawn against the spring evening light adds to a slight air of claustrophobia.
Curtis has said he would like to play at the Royal Albert Hall, Carnegie Hall and the Royal Opera House
Jonathan is not here. He is, says his wife, very shy and never appears in his son’s publicity photographs.
‘He is a quiet person. He is like Denis Thatcher, he doesn’t like to be in the forefront.’
They have been married for 13 years and as a couple they are, she insists, very much together on Project Wunderkind. She feels lucky that he is so supportive.
‘But in the end, only one parent can do it. You can’t have two parents battling against each other.’
They certainly have raised two remarkable children. ‘I don’t get pocket money, I earn money. I have my own bank account,’ Curtis tells me, taking an interview break to buy a flight simulator app. ‘My mother was against it, but I insisted.’
Sometimes it feels as if I’m talking to a small but very focused adult instead of a child, but he is clearly a happy boy who loves performing and understands that in the wonderful world of showbusiness, not everything will always go his way.
‘I am prepared, but it is not nice to be disappointed,’ he says.
His mother, to whom he is very close, tells him that if things go wrong, well, there will always be a next time. But will there? What happens when the velvet curtains start to close on Curtis Elton’s window of opportunity? What happens when he grows too old to be the youngest and cutest piano-playing kid in town?
‘I stand behind Curtis. I support him in whatever he does. And whatever he does, he will be a success,’ says his mother. ‘I never worry about his future because Curtis is so talented and bright.’
At her side, Curtis, the munchkin concert pianist and Olympic skating hope, nods in agreement. When he thinks of his future, he thinks of himself playing in the dark in a concert hall.
‘And there are blue and white lights and everyone is clapping,’ he says.
‘And I will have my own house. My mother will be in a different house, probably somewhere in Spain.’
‘What?’ she cries. ‘How do you know I’ll be in Spain? I might be in the house right next to you.’
She might indeed.