Piano Man

    I accompanied my friend John to his afternoon gig playing piano in the elegant lobby of the Red Lion Inn at Stockbridge.
    For three hours I sat and listened with great enjoyment, as he played through his endlessly varied repertoire of jazz, ragtime and classical pieces. I love John's playing. But the patrons filed past without a sideways glance: the full-length mink coats, the impeccable Italian suits, being ushered to their places at tables accoutered for the cream of American privilege.
    John played on, and after he finished his last set, he shut the piano and went off to the bathroom. Then I sidled over and gingerly sat down on the gleaming bench, opened the piano, and hesitantly began to play a rendition of my one Scott Joplin piece, Maple Leaf Rag. I was eager to try out the beautiful Steinway instrument, but I felt awkward to touch it in that place, after John's creative and masterful playing. 
    So as a result of my reticence- fear, actually- my playing was lukewarm at best, and in the second movement of the piece I lost my place altogether. In a controlled panic, I faked along dismally for a few bars, and when I managed to find my way again, my only thought was to conclude as gracefully as possible and get out of there. Which I did, finishing with a conclusive phrase, in what would ordinarily be the middle of my arrangement. I never felt the music at all; just embarrassment.
    After I was done and had shut the cover of the piano, John returned, and we were chatting as we put on our coats to leave. A lady came over to us from an adjacent sitting room around the corner, and she walked up to me, ignoring John completely. She said to me, "I loved your Scott Joplin."
I never blinked, but I thanked her, and she walked on.
    Probably, the lady had just arrived, and hadn't been there when John was playing, but it was still pretty funny. The master plays his heart out for three hours and is pretty much ignored, and then this bum sneaks in and plays a hideously stumbling rendition of one-half of a piece, and then the bum gets the glory. 



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Two Show Stories

A Nice Tip -

     A young boy was watching me set up before a show at his private school, and he was being somewhat rude: skeptical and confrontative:

     "What is this for?" he demanded. "A kid I know can play that!" "Why do you have these horns?"

     I was nice to him, although I was busy getting everything set up; I told him, you’ll see how all of this stuff works, when the show starts; not to worry. You'd better get back to your class now; after the show is over, I'll be happy to take all your questions.

     So I played the show, and afterwards I saw the boy again; he was completely changed. He came politely up to me while people were filing out of the hall, and he asked, "Do people ever give you money after you play?" I explained to the boy that when somebody wants me to do a show, he'll talk to me beforehand, and we'll make an agreement of what I'll get paid to come and do it.

     The boy said, "That's not what I meant. I mean, do the people who watch you, ever give you money after they see it?" I said no, not really. He said he wanted to give me some money, and he solemnly presented me with a nickel.

     I didn't tell the boy that this was slightly irregular, I shouldn't really be taking money from him. But I was a bit choked up. What I did is, I thanked him sincerely, took the nickel, and I put it in my pocket.

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Rescue -
       A different event; I was getting ready to go on; this was a summer school program with several schools attending; an exceptionally large group. I had finished getting my stuff set up on the stage, and I was pacing back and forth in a hall behind the stage, waiting until it was time to go in. I could hear the hectic noise from inside, where the teachers were wrangling all the kids into their places; there were over a thousand young boys from several parochial schools, and maybe 150 staff and teachers. So as I was pacing up and down in the hallway, I saw a little boy huddled against the wall by himself, crying. I went over to him and asked what was wrong, why wasn't he inside?
    He said, "I lost my ticket." All the kids had been issued an official ticket by their teachers, so as to keep the event organized.
    "I lost my ticket." the boy told me, trying to hold back his tears. He was trying to put a brave face on it, but he was clearly in deep distress; he had snuck away out of the line, in his confusion. I put my hand on his shoulder and said, "Come with me, I think we can get you in."
    I took his hand and brought him inside, and I found a teacher in the hubbub. I explained the situation, and asked the teacher if he could help me find this boy's class. The teacher said, "Of course," and he took the boy and went off with him to get him situated.
    I went back to my backstage area, and my pacing; soon it would be time for me to perform the show. This was going to be one of the really challenging ones, being an exceptionally large group, and being summer school, with discipline much less rigorous than regular school. And sure enough, during the show the kids started crowding the stage more than once, trying to climb up, trying to grab props; all the teachers were running among them shouting and trying to restore order.  I did my best to keep everything happy and upbeat (thank goodness for microphones), and pretending not to sweat. I found out later from the teachers that from their perspective, everything went much better than they had been expecting, and the teachers were thanking me profusely after the show. I can hardly imagine what they were expecting, and what usually happens with this group.
     But as for that little boy that I found in the hallway, in my hurry of spirits before the show,
I never even asked his name, or found out where he ended up sitting. I don't think that the boy even knew, before the show, that I was "the guy".
    I know this is kind of anticlimactic, but I never saw the boy afterwards, and I hope he enjoyed the show. But I kept thinking about him; the wretched predicament he had found himself in, had really moved me. He had attached such importance to a basically meaningless slip of paper, and he had been so mortified at what he had perceived as his failure. He reminded me exactly of the sort of thing I might have done when I was his age.


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