Mepham High School’s own piano man

Jeremy Kaplan, of Bellmore, earns Billy Joel Scholarship

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Backstage at his sold-out Madison Square Garden show on Aug. 21, Billy Joel gave a $20,000 scholarship to a young piano player from Bellmore.

Jeremy Kaplan, 18, recently graduated from Mepham High School and the Nassau BOCES Long Island High School for the Arts, the only public high school program on Long Island dedicated entirely to art studies.

“It was definitely a surprise to me,” Kaplan said. He added that he was humbled to meet Joel, who has been an influence on him throughout his musical studies. Kaplan played Joel’s “Reverie” in a recent piano competition hosted by the Grace Music School in Huntington, and earned second place.

He began playing piano in his elementary school band, and said that he started taking it seriously in sixth grade, when it became his instrument of choice.

Kaplan found an outlet for his music outside school by joining the pit orchestras of several Long Island theater companies, including the Oakdale Performing Arts Center and Merrick Theatre and Center for the Arts.

Eventually he began directing pit orchestras, and his most recent endeavor was the Merrick Theatre’s production of “Hair.”

When he began attending LIHSA two years ago, he was reserved and kept mostly to himself, according to Jerry Nobile, one of Kaplan’s music instructors. However, he let loose when he sat down at a piano. “The minute people heard him play, they went to him,” Nobile said. “I think he gained a lot of self-confidence at our school.”

Kaplan said that LIHSA allowed him to pursue his passion in a community of musicians. “There’s something to be said about being in an environment where nothing’s going on but music,” he said.

Each day at LIHSA, Kaplan said, students were given a new piece of music to play as a group. None of them had performed it before, but Kaplan enjoyed the challenge, and said “that kind of rapid-fire playing is really stimulating.”

While he was at LIHSA, Kaplan also founded its Tri-M Music Honor Society and served as its president, played at the Nassau BOCES Education Partner Awards Gala and was the pianist for the school’s jazz ensemble.

In addition to their mastery of the piano, Joel and Kaplan had something else in common: their devotion to LIHSA. Joel’s scholarship was his most recent act in support of the school. Last year he donated $1 million to erase its $400,000 deficit.

Joel also hosted a master class at LIHSA. Kaplan attended, and said that it gave him a glimpse into Joel’s practice style.

Before meeting Joel at Madison Square Garden, Kaplan watched the famed Long Islander perform. “He’s nearly 70 years old, and he killed it for two hours straight,” Kaplan said, noting Joel’s cover of the Beatles song “A Day in the Life.”

Kaplan recently began his studies at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, from which Joel received an honorary degree in 1993. Kaplan is considering majoring in jazz composition, and said, “I’ve been performing a lot, so I want to learn something new.” He added that he intends to perform in Boston wherever he can find work.