Whiz Kid: Southbury Teen Excels on Piano Despite Nearly Losing Finger

Music makes her world go around and damage to her fingers as a toddler could not deter 13-year-old Jessica Penzetta from doing what she loves best.

Penzetta, an eighth grader at Rochambeau Middle School, is an accomplished pianist and plays in the jazz band RMS Express as well as the piano accompaniment for the school chorus.

The Southbury resident began playing the piano as a kindergartener and has been playing and growing as a musician ever since. She auditioned as a seventh grader for the Connecticut Music Educators Association Southern Regional Middle School Festival jazz band and won the audition for her grade. The audition for this year’s CMEA was pushed back due to the October snow storm and Penzetta said she will audition for a coveted eighth grade spot in the coming weeks.

It hasn’t been all ivory coated for this talented pianist, however.

Penzetta had a rough start where two mishaps could have cost her a later playing career. She lost the tip of one of her fingers in a fire place door when she was a toddler. It was reattached by surgery. When she was three, she caught the same finger, but from her other hand, on a patio door and had to have that fingered treated as well.

“It was very dramatic for us all,” says Penzetta’s mother Marjorie.

The accidents to her daughter’s fingers, her mother said, seem especially ironic now. “Even with two injured fingers, I think she was destined to be an awesome piano player.”

“I love playing the piano,” said Jessi, who can teach herself to play just about anything. “I love to learn to play popular songs, but I also love the Beatles and Classical pieces.”

She wants to take her love and ability to play a broad spectrum of pieces to the movies. “I want to be a film composer and write songs for the movies,” she said. “I write songs on my own time. It’s a bit of a difficult process coming up with my own ideas for melodies. You have to have good inspiration.”

That inspiration comes in the form of listening to and absorbing everything she possibly can. “I listen to a lot of music and really have to spread myself out and broaden my horizons,” she explained.

Sharing her music is also a big part of who Jessi is, her mother explained. She has played for the residents at senior living facilities in Southbury including the Hearth, the Lutheran Home and most recently a Holiday Concert at the River Glen Health Care Center.

“She is very outgoing and personable,” said her mother. “She is just so artistic and musically inclined.”

In addition to the piano, she sings in the chorus and plays the oboe in the school band, something she took upon herself to begin learning how to play when she entered RMS because there wasn’t an oboist in the RMS band.

Her career at RMS also includes being a member of the soccer team and the Tri M Music Honor Society– an elite group of student musicians who are able to balance their love of music with a high honors grade point average.

Outside of school, Penzetta helps out with the religious education program, or GIFT, at Sacred Heart Church and performs when she can for local groups including the senior population.

“Jessica is a very talented musician,” explained RMS chorus and music teacher Samantha Mingione who prides her student’s participation in the school chorus and her willingness to volunteer her piano skills for accompanying the chorus.

“She has a positive and enthusiastic attitude in the classroom which helps encourage other students for a strong performance.”

RMS Band Teacher Don West agreed and added that Penzetta is a top student who offers those who are fortunate enough to hear her play a musical treat.

“Jessica is a wonderful artist, maintains top honors scholastically and still has time to participate in sports,” West said.