| PlayingPiano |
| Jim Hlavac |
| I never had a piano lessen in my life. But one day I sat down at a piano and started to play. What came out was fully formed, melodic, detailed nuanced, beautiful classical sounding music. My fingers glide across the keyboard with not a missed note. I bounce around from chord to chord, but I don't know why the keys I touch are chords. I don't know how I know which keys to strike to make a particular sound. I don't think up the music before I play it. And I don't really think about the music as I play. I go into some sort of trance and the music flows out. For twenty years I played piano only when no one else was around. Then in 1999 I played my first "public" performance at a small party. Everyone there, all of whom knew me were shocked and disbelieving. Then I did the same thing the next year; just one party. Again, the people there knew me, but were disbelieving. In 2001 I got a job as a bartender in a bar with a piano. it was not a piano bar. It was a crazed lunatic bar. But for eight months I played there for hours at a time and nearly everyone loved my music. Then I made a CD. In 2002 I got a job playing the piano at a New Orleans French Quarter restaurant. Again, nearly everyone who heard me loved the music. The basic problem is that becuase I don't play other people's music -- i.e. the standard stuff -- many of the people who control the pianos won't let me play theirs. In April, 2006 I came out with a third CD: Saguaro Happens; a musical exploration of America's largest natural and man made natural disaster. In April of 2008 I released my fourth CD, Tumbling Through Time Temporarily, which celebrates my 50 years on Planet Earth! |
| My Music |
