Scott MacIntyre started playing the piano by ear when he was 3 years old. He had to -- he couldn't see the music.
MacIntyre was born with severe tunnel vision, which limits his field of sight to the equivalent of looking through a straw. As a result, he learned music one note at a time. Despite his disability, MacIntyre, now a 19-year-old piano performance senior, has performed in international concert halls and become one of the youngest recipients of the prestigious Marshall Scholarship.
The national scholarship will allow him to study graduate-level piano performance and music theory next fall, dividing his time between the Royal College of Music in London and the University of Cambridge.
He is one of only 40 recipients in the country.
"My love for music has more than 100 times over compensated for my lack of vision," MacIntyre said. "When you set your mind to something, anything is possible, and I think I'm living proof of that."
MacIntyre spent much of his education as a home-school student, but when he moved to the Valley from Toronto five years ago, his parents decided to put him into a public high school.
But because MacIntyre had been doing superior academic work for some time, a high school counselor suggested he take college classes.
MacIntyre was 14 when he started at ASU. The college environment forced him to adapt quickly to a rigorous schedule and a heavy course load.
According to his mother, Carole MacIntyre, starting young at ASU gave him a chance to learn independence in a way that a public high school probably would not have.
A high school likely would have watched over him more closely as he found his classes and obtained alternative study materials such as textbooks on audiotape.
"[The high school] would still be advocating for him, but he's had to become his own advocate," Carole MacIntyre said.
But while his visual impairment has presented challenges, it has also given him some unique abilities. MacIntyre has perfect pitch, or the capability to identify any musical note he hears.
MacIntyre also has the ability to know how to play and when to stop when he is playing music, said Walter Cosand, a professor in the ASU School of Music.
"We decided Scott must have radar like a bat," Cosand said. "It's a challenge [to teach him] in the sense that you have to do things differently, but it's less of a challenge in that he listens and concentrates and learns things very fast.
"He's a very unusual kid, and he would have been successful anywhere."
MacIntyre is already a successful musician, having recorded five CDs and performed across the United States and Europe. He has studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Boston University Tanglewood Institute and the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria.
MacIntyre will perform a free concert in Grady Gammage Memorial Audi-torium with the ASU Chamber Orchestra on April 26.
Reach the reporter at elias.arnold@asu.edu.
