At the tender age of five, Dylan Zhang decided he wanted to learn how to play the piano.
Why? Big sister Dana was doing just that, so why shouldn’t he?
“It was a little hard starting it,” the 11-year-old River Forest resident recalled. “I had to get into the cycle of practicing every day, around 25 minutes a day, and my sister would help me a lot. My family was very encouraging.”
Now, some six years later, Dylan, a student at Roosevelt Middle School, [DG1] has found his rhythm on a piano’s 88 keys and in life.
Dylan won the 2025 Arthur D. Montzka Young Artists Concerto Competition on Jan. 4, hosted by the Kishwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Held at the Boutell Memorial Concert Hall in Northern Illinois University’s Music Building, he bested two runner-up high school violinists with his rendition of the first movement of Beethoven’s Concerto No. 1 in C Major.
Not only did he win a cash award, he’ll perform as a soloist at 7 p.m. Saturday at NIU with the Kishwaukee Symphony Orchestra and participate in a pre-concert talk. That means this week will be busy, busy, busy preparing under the tutelage of his teacher, Sueanne Metz.
“I listen to other people play the piece,” Dylan said, adding he takes great pains to add what he likes from those performances to his own, “to make it my own style so it can be the way I’d like to play it.”
Pretty insightful for a fifth grader. But he is about as humble as they come, even if he is the assistant concert master at the school – behind Dana, his concert master eighth-grade sibling.
He’s organized, too. He practices for roughly 60 to 90 minutes per day on the piano, and another hour on the violin, at which he’s also quite proficient. He also loves to write and code and is a top-flight student. Add in interests in cross country, tennis and history, and he’s a busy person.
How does he make all of that work?
“When you think about it, it’s kind of hard,” Dylan said. “‘This block is going to be practice, this block is going to be school.’ It’s easier when you have it all planned out.”
But the piano has a special spot in his repertoire, and he’s been rewarded for all of his efforts to improve. He’s been a consistent competition winner in recent years, including in the Illinois State Music Teachers Association competition in the Elementary Division (2023) and the Junior Division (2024).
Mona Mann, music teacher at Lincoln Elementary School and leader of the Recital Club, taught Dylan for four years and is a frequent attendee of his out-of-school performances.
“He was a regular participant in the Lincoln Recital Club and now as a fifth grader at Roosevelt, he still returns on occasion to play for the younger students,” Mann said. “It was a joy to have Dylan in general music, and it was exciting for all the students to have opportunities to hear him play the piano.
“It also gave us a chance to talk about how hard work and practice lead to exceptional outcomes.”
The other thing about Zhang is that while he used to get nervous about performing, he’s managed to put those feelings aside when he steps on stage,
He was nine when he participated in his first competition and he recalled, “I was more nervous waiting to play. After a few competitions, I said, ‘I don’t have to worry because I can trust the work that I’ve done.’”
Take the Montzka Young Artists Concerto Competition in January, for instance.
“It was a really nice environment and the pianos are really good,” he said. “It was fun to play with my accompanist and express yourself.”
Dylan’s parents, Peter and Maggie, pointed to the fact that both of their children collaborate and support each other. Dana, for example, practices up to 90 minutes on the piano each day.
All that work creates a lot of music in their household, but for Maggie Zhang, who works at home, that’s not a problem.
“You can close the door of my office and they can close their door, so my colleagues don’t hear them,” she said with a chuckle.