- Hi, my name is Briana Poon.

I play the piano, and I go to Arlington High School.

(piano music) When I first heard this piece, I kind of wondered to myself, like, "what exactly am I hearing?"

It's very contemporary.

And it was, like, a really new experience for me to learn.

And it was new because contemporary music relies less on the melody and more on the story you tell on it.

So, the composer, Aaron Copeland, he based his story off of a French fable called "The Old Cat and the Young Mouse", and the fact that it's based on a story kind of says something about how you're supposed to play it.

It's supposed to be, like, entertaining and engaging.

And so, that was really the challenge for me when I learned this piece.

The way that Copeland composed this, I feel really engages the story aspect of it.

Like, when you play it, you can almost, like, hear the cat and the mouse just crashing all around the house.

(piano music continues) And that middle of dreamlike section it's really, like, hazy and kind of whispery, and I just really liked that about it.

(piano music continues) I actually learned this piece, I think around a year ago for just a normal piano recital, but I picked it up again recently for a competition, and then I brought it back for this.

(piano music continues) I'd like to thank Akiko Sasaki for just encouraging me to do so many things I never thought I'd be able to do, and I'd like to thank my past piano teacher, Jerry Rhodes, and my first piano teacher, my mom, for just helping me along my musical journey.

(piano music continues)