Pianist Aran Singh, a matriculant at Reddam Umhlanga, wants to move the audience at the 2026 National Youth Music Competition (NYMC). It is his maiden appearance at the annual contest.
He is one of the five musicians from KwaZulu-Natal who were selected to participate in this year’s competition.
The 18-year-old rising star believes that competitions can help him improve his overall ability as a musician because of the stress and constraints they entail.
His father, Sahil, is an amateur pianist and is the reason why Aran began playing the piano. He started playing at the age of five, but only began taking it seriously when he was 12 years old.
His first music teacher was his father, and currently he has two music teachers, namely Georgian concert pianist Ninuca Tkeshelashvili and Dr Andrew Warburton, the head of piano and classical performance studies at the School of Music UKZN.
According to Aran, the number of hours he practises depends on the amount of free time he has since matric is very busy. “I can go entire days without practising or practice up to 4 hours a day,” he explains.
He says he has several musical role models. These include both his music teachers and two of his favourite pianists, Sviatoslav Richter and Arkadi Volodos.
Apart from his schoolwork and music, the talented musician plays football, trains at the gym, and enjoys reading about various topics such as politics, finance, and biographies of his favourite composers.
Hungarian composer Franz Liszt is his favourite composer. “I believe that Liszt was a great composer, of not only virtuosic and flashy pieces but also profound, soul-touching music, not just restricted to the piano. I also believe that he is unfairly judged as a “superficial” composer with no real contributions to music,” he elaborates.
On completion of his university education, Aran wants to enjoy a two-fold life where he gets to be involved in business and in music.
He describes himself as ambitious, saying he doesn’t have a specific motto in life, but he strongly believes in the motto: “A healthy body is a healthy mind.”
Should he be able to be an inanimate object, the talented musician wants to be a sword, as he is an admirer of medieval warfare.