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Sunday, July 20, 2025

Teen musical prodigy who aced CSEC exam:

Always pursue your dreams

by

Anna-Lisa Paul
601 days ago
20231127
Presentation College student Azariah Stapleton, who topped the region in CSEC Music, plays John Legend’s All of Me on the piano at his Mt D’or, Champs Fleurs home yesterday.

Presentation College student Azariah Stapleton, who topped the region in CSEC Music, plays John Legend’s All of Me on the piano at his Mt D’or, Champs Fleurs home yesterday.

NICOLE DRAYTON

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

As the youngest stu­dent to achieve suc­cess in the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) Mu­sic ex­am, Azari­ah Sta­ple­ton en­tered the his­to­ry books when he topped the re­gion and al­so be­came the first stu­dent from his school to write the sub­ject, which is not of­fered at the ex­am lev­el.

Seat­ed in front his pi­ano and sur­round­ed by sev­er­al oth­er mu­si­cal in­stru­ments, in­clud­ing the gui­tar, vi­o­lin and steel­pan, as he played John Leg­end’s All Of Me yes­ter­day, the 15-year-old mu­si­cal prodi­gy re­mained in shock over the mon­u­men­tal ac­com­plish­ment.

The Form Four Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas stu­dent, whose first name means God Helps Me, beamed bright­ly as he re­vealed, “My mu­sic jour­ney re­al­ly start­ed on my third birth­day with a toy pi­ano.”

Laugh­ing as he ad­mit­ted it was fun at the time, Sta­ple­ton said his in­ter­est grew from watch­ing the or­gan­ist at church play­ing.

He was en­rolled in mu­sic class­es at the Christ the King Church in Mt D’or, where he be­gan play­ing the vi­o­lin.

The hum­ble teenag­er sug­gest­ed to his par­ent that he write the mu­sic ex­am whilst in Form Three, in an at­tempt to re­duce the num­ber of sub­jects he would have to sit in Form Five. This, even though the school does not of­fer mu­sic as a for­mal sub­ject and on­ly on an ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar ba­sis.

Claim­ing mu­sic was some­thing he wants to in­clude in his ca­reer, Sta­ple­ton is al­so set to write the IT ex­am this year as part of his strat­e­gy to fur­ther light­en the work­load—as he will al­so be writ­ing eight sub­jects in Form Five.

Asked how his teach­ers ini­tial­ly re­act­ed when the sug­ges­tion arose, Sta­ple­ton said it proved to a nerve-rack­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, as some peo­ple ex­pressed dis­be­lief that he could fol­low through on his plan.

“Cer­tain teach­ers, while I was in the mu­sic room ei­ther learn­ing or do­ing past pa­pers, they would be crit­i­cis­ing from afar, ei­ther think­ing I am too young or they didn’t be­lieve in mu­sic,” Sta­ple­ton said.

He al­so had to apol­o­gise sev­er­al time along the way for ar­riv­ing to some of his oth­er class­es late as a re­sult of his ex­tra ac­tiv­i­ty.

How­ev­er, he beamed, “The re­sults have re­al­ly paid off.”

He ad­mit­ted he was re­lieved to have this weight off but en­cour­aged oth­ers to pur­sue their dreams.

“Don’t let any­one who doesn’t know your sit­u­a­tion tell you what to do, as you may know what’s best for your­self.”

He se­cured all A pro­files in the mu­sic ex­am and be­lieves a prece­dent has been set for the school to now en­sure that mu­sic can be in­clud­ed in the for­mal syl­labus.

While his fu­ture will in­clude mu­sic ther­a­py at some point, Sta­ple­ton said he in­tends to study lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Cur­rent­ly learn­ing to play the trum­pet and trom­bone, Sta­ple­ton cred­it­ed God for his abil­i­ty and over­all suc­cess.

Count­ing his moth­er Eliz­a­beth Pa­ponette and his grand­moth­er, as well as his mu­sic teach­ers at school and the church, among his biggest cheer­lead­ers, Sta­ple­ton said he first learned of his suc­cess as he stood in line to buy a gy­ro.

Smil­ing broad­ly as she watched Sta­ple­ton play the gui­tar yes­ter­day, Pa­ponette could hard­ly con­tain her pride as she spoke of her son’s com­mit­ment to both aca­d­e­mics and mu­sic.

Ad­mit­ting to hav­ing to make nu­mer­ous sac­ri­fices, which in­clud­ed tak­ing sev­er­al loans, to en­sure Sta­ple­ton had all that he need­ed to ad­vance his mu­si­cal path, Pa­ponette en­cour­aged par­ents to sup­port their chil­dren and al­so for stu­dents to fol­low their dreams.


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