When it comes to his viral fame, it helps that Schultz has a charisma beyond his years, equally at ease in front of a camera as he is behind the piano. Because they moved just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Schultz and Julius say they haven’t had a chance to explore the city’s music scene.īut for an artist whose biggest platform has always been online, the increased time indoors-where Schultz takes remote classes and enjoys playing Mario Kart when he isn’t working on music-hasn’t been much of an obstacle. The reason was simple: “We were tired of the cold,” says Julius. The family moved from Michigan to Durham this past February. in 2015, that online success translated to an American audience.Īppearances on Harry Connick, Jr.’s talk show and America’s Most Musical Family followed, and Schultz began attracting attention from more experienced musicians, including the ones who would end up on Gruv Kid. When Julius got a job as a music director at a church in Michigan and the family relocated to the U.S.
#SIX YEAR OLD PIANO PRODIGY FULL#
But in each one, his musical dexterity is on full display.
Shot with a front-facing camera, the clips that earned them a loyal following on Instagram and Facebook are typically short and informal they might show Schultz trying out a new song, covering a jazz standard, or playing a duet with Julius or Jamie-Leigh. As with many contemporary musicians, social media hype brought the Schultz family a wider audience. Soon, Schultz and his sister were regularly joining their father onstage, and their profile grew in South Africa. “There was a keyboard in the house, and I just started fiddling around with it,” Schultz says. Unlike his older sister, young Justin-Lee initially showed little interest in music. Julius composed seven of its tracks, reimagining some of his previous releases as a guitarist.Īt concerts, Julius would sometimes bring Jamie-Leigh out to play drums for a song. Recorded and produced remotely from Schultz’s home studio in Durham, it features collaborations with veteran keyboardist Bob James and the Philadelphia-based jazz-fusion group Pieces of a Dream. Gruv Kid includes a cover of Wonder’s “Do I Do,” and the musician’s influence is palpable across the album’s 11 tracks, with easygoing arrangements that foreground Schultz’s jazz piano. “The fact that he was doing that back in the ’70s and the ’80s-he was so far ahead, in terms of musicality,” Schultz says of Wonder. Stevie Wonder popularized it during a television appearance in 1972, and it’s no coincidence that Schultz has taken to the talk box in many of his videos, including an appearance on America’s Most Musical Family with his father Julius, a guitarist, and his 17-year-old sister Jamie-Leigh, a drummer. A sort of proto-vocoder, a talk box takes the sound from an instrument and filters it through the musician’s mouth, producing a robotic “vocalizing” effect. “And trumpet.”)īut the piece of gear most representative of Schultz’s young career might be the talk box. In the future, Schultz says, he’d like to learn saxophone and harmonica.
These days, if you check his Instagram page-where he has amassed a following of over 300,000-he’s often jamming on the harpejji, an unusual stringed instrument that splits the difference between a piano and a guitar. At five years old, he had already mastered the piano. And while Schultz mainly handles keyboard duties on his debut album Gruv Kid, which is out on November 13, he’s hardly stopped there. On his classic albums, Wonder was known for playing nearly every instrument in the studio. The best of INDY Week’s fiercely independent journalism about the Triangle delivered straight to your inbox.
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