You hum it, this blind savant can play it (+ audio)

DEAN KOZANIC/The Press

ON KEY: Blind autistic savant Jonathan Petty has never read music or formally learned to play the piano. However, from the age of three, Petty has been able to play tunes on one hearing and has stunned people with his ability.

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Blind autistic savant Jonathan Petty has never read music or formally learned to play the piano.
Hear Jonathan Petty play

However, from the age of three, Petty has been able to play tunes on one hearing and has stunned people with his ability.

An autistic savant is a person with both autism and savant syndrome, which means they have a severe developmental or mental handicap but have extraordinary abilities.

"We look at him and we just think `wow'," his mother, Dr Nicola Petty, 46, said. "He doesn't do exams or anything like that. From the time he was five he could play everything he could hear.

"His piano teacher says he really picks up tricky chord progressions in jazz that most people find very difficult. He never practises these days. He used to practise, but these days he just sits down and plays."

Petty, 18, first revealed his talent as a toddler, when he would play along with TV commercials.

Nicola Petty, a lecturer in management science at the University of Canterbury, said her son was diagnosed as an autistic savant at five.

"This combination of piano, blindness and autism is quite common. There is some strange thing in the brain which is wired differently."

Petty, who lives in Mairehau with his mother, father Mark, 47, a land surveyor, and brother William, 20, also has perfect pitch.

"If you change gear in the car he can tell you what the engine note is, or if you a dial a number on the telephone he can listen to the beeps and tell you the number," Nicola Petty said.

"Sometimes when you listen to music you might know how to play it quite quickly," said Jonathan Petty, who is in Year 12 at Mairehau High School.

"I like to play jazz and things I hear on TV and in movies. Sometimes you just have to play around and find the right place."

His ability also surprises his piano teacher.

"I am really amazed by his talent," Nanako Sato said.

"One remarkable thing is that if we are playing in a band, he can immediately pick out people and say who is out of tune or who is out of time. He uses a completely different fingering technique for playing to anyone else, but it doesn't matter to him. He has his own way of doing things."

Sato said she believed Petty would be at the grade eight level on the piano.

Cheryl Moffat, the acting CEO for Autism New Zealand in Christchurch, said that "often people with autism have an ability to focus on a subject of fascination to a greater extent than a typically developing person".

Music lovers will have the chance to hear Petty perform at a free concert to be held in the Mairehau High School hall at 7pm.