Encores and Standing Ovations

Numerous articles featuring Tyler Thompson can be found on the internet following his recent performance at the gala fundraising dinner of the Purple Silk Music Education Foundation. Local and mainstream media are highlighting the great talent of a young African American teen and Oakland native who displays great skill in the art of Chinese Opera.

Tyler began singing for the Purple Bamboo Orchestra while attending Lincoln Elementary School. According to his teacher, Sherlyn Chew, he began learning children’s songs as his range, proficiency and fluency progressed. According to SF Gate, his first solo was at the San Francisco Davies Symphony Hall and Herbst Theater at the age of 6. He has also performed on television shows such as “Good Morning America” and at the U.S. State Department, where he sang for then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi. One performance was at HP Pavilion in Silicon Valley in front of 13,000 people. A video of that performance has been played in China and seen by countless millions.

According to the Los Angeles Times, his mother, Vanessa Ladson, said she chose Lincoln because of its high academic standards, as well as its proximity to her job at a utility company. She also stated for the Chronicle that Tyler gets his musical gifts from his grandmother, Addie Thompson, who sings, and his father, who is a percussionist. When asked how she felt about Tyler singing Chinese opera she stated that “Music is universal.” “It has no borders, no barriers.”

The Chronicle also highlighted that one of the featured speakers was Aisha McDaniel, a member of the first Purple Bamboo Orchestra in the mid-1990s, when she was about 11 years old. Now she is 24 and she spoke fluent Mandarin as part of her presentation.