Michael Playing Piano at Bondi Beach Affordable Acupuncture Clinic

The Bondi Beach Affordable Acupuncture Clinic, which I have been running for over  3 years, is continuing to be a joy! Last night a member of the public played classical piano through the whole evening.

 

This individual is a very talented classically trained musician. I’ve often seen him on the street corner outside clinic smoking cigarettes and I would say hi.

It was just recently that I heard about his amazing piano playing talents. To be honest I couldn’t believe it. So one day he started playing one of the two pianos at the chapel and I was amazed. One of them is an upright and the other is flat grand type piano. It’s hilarious as the first thing he said about the pianos was that they were terrible. He’s on the street all the time looking homeless in raggedy clothes and he whinges about the quality of two pianos he can freely play!

When you chat to him he will tell you the royalty in London he knew, the posh suburbs he was living in and his world touring. It’s all quite incredible.  So I guess he would know a good piano  from a bad one…

So for a long time I have encouraged him to play for patients in clinic and sometimes he would. Only a little bit. Just recently I have been encouraging him to play on the street corner where usually he just smokes, to make some busking money. Other people have been asking him too. 

The last two weeks he has been in the chapel everyday practicing. Literally playing his scales for hours and then going through music, sitting there reading music, which also blows my mind! Someone else who plays the piano has joined him and last night he played for a good couple of hours while patients were getting acupuncture. It was very inspiring. In fact I gave him some money from the acupuncture donations for his time.

So this is a new phase and if he comes in next week to play I know we will have some traction with his playing at Affordable Acupuncture and maybe even on the street. That is if we can find him the highest of quality electric pianos as he is very particular about the quality of the instruments he will play!