Many of today’s touring concert pianists start piano lessons at age 4 or 5. Sean Kennard started at 10, yet has proven that it’s possible to begin then and still have a successful career.

It’s helpful to have a supportive family — Kennard’s father gave him basic lessons on an electronic keyboard as a youngster, and his grandmother bought him the Steinway grand piano he still practices on today. But it’s also important to have a great teacher.

Kennard took his first formal piano lessons at age 10 from an associate of the late Ellen Masaki, long considered the doyenne of Hawaii’s piano teachers, and two months later began studies with Masaki herself, sending him on his career trajectory.

“I was aiming for the highest possible as a pianist from the beginning,” said Kennard, 32, who gives a solo recital on Sunday and performs with the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra the following weekend.

Within a year and a half of beginning studies with Masaki, he was one of a group of local musicians performing at Carnegie Hall and winning the Chopin competition of the Pacific. After three years, he was admitted to the acclaimed Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Since then, he has studied at the Juilliard School, performed internationally and completed two recordings, the second of which will be out soon.

Kennard believes divine intervention has also had a lot to do with his success. He is a devout Christian.

“My faith is an integral part of my music,” he said.

He considers just getting to the auditions for Curtis “a miracle,” he said. He and his father, an airline pilot, had planned to fly standby to Philadelphia, but they were stranded by a snowstorm in Salt Lake City.

They were waiting at the gate for one flight, which was ostensibly full, but the gate agent allowed them to “‘just get on the plane and if you see any seats, just take them,’” he said. “So we did and there were three seats. That’s the only time that’s happened to us in 30 years of flying standby.”

He also believes prayer helped propel him to victory in a piano competition in Chile, his top achievement in the competitive piano circuit. “I played the first round but then I got very sick,” he said. “I couldn’t eat or sleep very well for about three days. I was just laying in bed and couldn’t keep warm.

“I prayed and I asked God, ‘If you’re the one who brought me here, for whatever reason you have for me to play in this competition, give me the strength to play these pieces.’

“Somehow, I did get the strength,” he said, “and I won the competition.”

His religious beliefs have had an impact on his personal life as well. He’s now married to a dancer he met during a church mission to the earthquake-ravaged region of Japan. They have been living in New Haven, Conn., where Kennard is pursuing a doctorate at Yale.

For his solo recital here Sunday at Orvis Auditorium, he will perform some favorites — Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Scarlatti, and Mussorgsky’s famous “Pictures at an Exhibition.”

“There’s really not anything else out there like ‘Pictures at an Exhibition,’” Kennard said, adding that Mussorgsky was part of a group of Russian composers who rebelled against traditional classical styles. “Their music turned out kind of raw and uncouth. I like to play this music because the characters are so unique and so vivid.”

The recital will be a benefit for the University of Hawaii Foundation’s Ellen Masaki Endowed Piano Scholarship Fund, and Kennard is happy to pay tribute to his teacher, who died in 2009. “Even though I only studied with her three years and it was such a long time ago, the memories I have of studying with her are some of the best that I’ve had ever, and I’m sure they always will be,” he said. “Some of the things she taught me made a huge impact on my personality as a musician and the way I practice and the way I work.”

He also will appear Nov. 13 with the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra, with which he will perform Liszt’s first piano concerto, a typically virtuosic work. “It’s a very athletic piece and it’s a lot of fun to play,” he said. “It’s not the deepest, most profound piece, but that’s not the point of it.”