By Kerri Pepoy,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Tim Maurice’s hands seem to glide over the black-and-white keys, and the beautiful music that soars from the Steinway grand piano looks easy to play.

“It becomes easy,” the Bates College junior said Friday after he finished playing “An Evening at the Ball,” a composition he wrote and memorized. “I find (memorization) easier than reading notes.”

His finely honed talent is the result of years of studying music and practicing piano, although the soft-spoken 21-year-old, who is majoring in music composition, showed an innate interest in the piano before he even started kindergarten.

When his parents, Linda and William, moved into a new home in Oxford, the former owner had left a piano in it. “According to my mom, I tried to play each note with one finger, rather than just banging on it,” Maurice said. That sparked an idea in his mom’s mind: piano lessons. Maurice was just 4 years old at the time.

His parents also suspected he had a special musical ability by his reaction to certain melodies. “When I was little, the theme from Lassie’ made me sad. I would always get sad when I heard it,” he said.

At age 13, he received a keyboard for Christmas and started writing music on it and then recording the music on a computer. Since he has been a Bates student, he has been writing music by hand.

Maurice, a 2003 graduate of Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School, is hoping for a career as a composer, perhaps in the motion picture industry. He will perform several of his compositions from memory at the Olin Arts Center on the Bates campus on Nov. 13, the first time he has played his music for an audience.

He will perform solo for the entire concert, with the exception of the final composition, which will be a piano duet with another student. All the compositions are pieces he has written in the past two years.

“I’m always a little nervous, but I’m not as nervous with my own compositions,” he said.

He has performed before, in middle-school and high-school recitals. He also played for fellow students while he was in fourth and fifth grades at Guy E. Rowe Elementary School in Norway. “They would stop class for a little while so I could play,” he said.

His parents are not musicians, but his grandparents had musical talent, which they passed on to their three grandsons. Maurice’s 30-year-old brother John plays piano and guitar; his 14-year-old brother Michael is taking piano lessons.

Maurice’s compositions are romantic classical, inspired by romantic composers of the 19th century including Franz Schubert and Frederic Chopin. The themes of many romantic compositions are inspired by nature, and the music expresses the emotions of the composer, Maurice said.

“If you listen to the music of Bach, it is a little more rigid in terms of rhythm,” he said. “Romantic compositions are more flexible, and there is a big emphasis on the player’s expression. You learn what the notes mean.”

He continues to take lessons from the piano teacher he has been studying under since the eighth grade and practices daily for at least an hour, although he finds time for other interests, including being a member of the juggling club at Bates. He also has a strong interest in foreign languages.

In addition, he has a part-time job at the Olin Arts Center, which hosts other performers during the year. Maurice said he knows he should listen to as many of these performers as possible, but sometimes there are just too many notes playing in his head, waiting to make their way onto paper. “I get distracted,” he said. “I get something in my head, and I have to go and write it down.”