BY GEOFFREY EU

WHEN violin virtuoso Min Lee opened the Wolfgang Violin Studio along with her mother Annie Lee about a month ago, the primary objective was to provide a strong foundation for people who want to learn to play the violin, to make it interesting - and also to help identify youngsters who, like Min, might just happen to be a world-class musical talent-in-waiting.

The age requirement they set was for students to be no younger than four years old, but enthusiastic parents were bringing their two-year-olds to be enrolled - the age, incidentally, when Ms Lee first put a violin in her daughter's hands. In response, they developed a pre-violin programme called Baby Beats to train tender young minds and help detect early potential in musically gifted kids. 'One father beat me to it,' says Ms Lee. 'He came in with his 12-month-old daughter and asked: 'Is she too old?'

Once a hint of musical potential is shown, parents may have high hopes of their children developing into a Min Lee or a Sarah Chang, performing violin solos on the international stage in front of packed houses, or - in a sporting context - playing for a title at Wimbledon or the Masters golf tournament at Augusta.

Traditionally, Singapore has never been high on the list of places to nurture young talent at the top level. However, there are indications that help is available locally for those who have the talent, the will and the means to pursue a different path.

Encouraging results

Encouraging results at the inaugural Asian Youth Games, for example, bode well for the future, and more platforms are becoming available for parents who wish to raise their child's individual skills to the highest possible competitive level.

Schools such as Wolfgang will create fun environments and fresh concepts to make music easier for ordinary kids to digest but they are also able to cater to the needs of gifted children, and point them in the right direction.

Most would agree that spotting the talent in young children is easy, while helping them to realise their full potential is much tougher, requiring - among other things - years of proper instruction, mental and physical discipline, the financial means to see it through and a host of other sacrifices on the part of both parent and prodigy, including the not insignificant step of moving to another country.

'Overseas exposure is a given if you want to be the top,' says Ms Lee, who - starting when Min was four - sent her daughter to music camps in Canada, the United States and China.

After watching her at a recital when she was eight, a top pedagogue told Ms Lee that her daughter was really talented and if she didn't leave Singapore right away, then she would have to forget about it. Says Ms Lee, who was a pioneer member of the Singapore Youth Orchestra: 'It takes an impulsive mother like me to take drastic action but in the last few years, there has been an emphasis on finding talent in sports and music - we are beginning to move in that direction.'

According to her, there are three distinct steps which are vital to a child's development on a musical instrument such as the violin. 'The set-up, or technique of putting them on the violin correctly, is crucial. Next is discipline and training, practising with the right teachers; and finally, when you show promise, you need to get the right mentor - if you want to be a performer, you need someone who has performed.'

Parents in Singapore are naturally wary of removing their children from the standard education path, but there is no getting away from the fact that it needs to be done if they want to reach the next level. 'Special kids are definitely identifiable,' says Ms Lee. 'You can tell by the way they hold the violin, the rate at which they learn - some kids are just naturals.'

Tammy Wong, a contemporary dance artiste who is now the artistic director of the dance programme at the Lasalle School of the Arts, says: 'Kids have more opportunities now than when we were young.' Adds Ms Wong, who left at 18 to study dance in the US: 'For parents who have talented children, information comes a lot more readily these days.'

'Some things take time - compared to other art forms, dance is still lumbering about; but an 18-year-old has more opportunities now. We do have the teachers if a dancer shows potential, and we can also direct them to someone who would show the way.'

Melanie Chew is an active member of the small but growing equestrian sports community here. Her two daughters are national riders who have competed abroad and won on a regional level. Ms Chew, whose older daughter Catherine trains in Germany and has been offered a sports scholarship to Cornell University, is also involved in the development of the National Equestrian Park, a comprehensive new 5.7 ha facility at Thomson Road.

Learning life skills

'Life skills are something that are not taught well in schools but excellently taught in competitive sports,' says Ms Chew, who took her children to compete in places such as India, South Korea and Australia when they were still very young. 'In Singapore, we have been relying on the schools to produce life skills. Academics is one way, but it is not for everyone - sports, pursued at the competitive level, is another way.

'More parents are realising that there are other fields in which kids can excel and learn things like discipline, concentration, time management, efficiency. To achieve their goals, they acquire new mental, EQ and physical skills, and train to improve their skills over time. As a parent, I support my kids if they want to do sports at the competitive national and international level.'

She adds: 'It is a huge commitment, and very costly. The Singapore Sports Council is very supportive of children who are starting to represent Singapore abroad and they are quite generous in helping to pick up expenses. The daunting thing is that children have to get the support of their schools. In our generation, we had no choice but to go abroad - in the future, kids who want to go into equestrian sports can train here.'

There are also opportunities for children who are interested in a more accessible sport such as tennis. For example, the Sanwa Tennis Academy, set up here in 2004 by Japanese professional Hideki Kaneko, teaches recreational tennis but also focuses on its high performance junior programme, where the average age is 14 years old. The goal is to make professional players out of the youngsters.

'When we first started, all of our students were Japanese. But two years ago, we started getting a better mix of foreign and local players,' says academy coach Kensuke Watabe about the competitive cohort. There are three Singaporeans enrolled in that programme now, which has about 20 players. The majority are still Japanese players.

Mr Watabe attributes the lower number of Singapore players to the fact that if they were good tennis players, they would be training with the national team anyway. 'But our numbers are growing every year, and we're now looking for more courts to play in so we can expand,' he says.

The high performance team members train for three hours daily and play in both local and regional tournaments in countries such as South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia and Japan. 'We'll be taking a team to a tournament in Florida, US, at the end of this year,' Mr Watabe adds.

Instilling the right instincts

Over at the Blade Club - a fencing club which has worked with schools over the past few years to promote fencing among children - founder and head coach Henry Koh says that nothing can replace constant training to instil the right instincts in potential champions.

'It's not an easy sport to pick up and achieve a high level,' he says. 'Fencing is not a traditional sport for parents and schools. In order to develop champions, we have to nurture the kids, open their eyes and teach the right drills. Studies have shown that you need to spend a minimum number of hours, learning the right things, to hit a certain level - in that sense, the younger you start, the better.'

Adds coach Nontapat Panchan, a Thai junior champion at 14 who went on to be the first foil fencer from South-east Asia to participate in the Olympics last year: 'If you start early, it will stay with the kids forever - the focus is on giving them skill, coordination, athletic ability.'

For fencing to truly take off among Singaporean youth, governance among sporting bodies has to change and there needs to be a huge groundswell of public support, says Mr Koh. 'Singaporeans are a little on the soft side, we're academically driven and to some extent, we end up having a complacent attitude - talent is nice to have but it doesn't guarantee success.'

Additional reporting by CHEAH UI-HOON

This article was first published in The Business Times.