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Busking piano goes with him on the road
- Published_at:2013-07-18
- Category:Entertainment
- Channel:gisborneherald
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- description: A TRAVELLING musician has journeyed from Queenstown to Gisborne with a character-filled piano he "rescued" from a Motueka dump. "I saw it sitting in the rain and I couldn't just leave it there," says AJ Hickling, who hails from Marahau — the "gateway" to Abel Tasman National Park. "So I took it home and gave it a bit of a makeover. It's only about 40 years old but it's got a real story to tell." After refurbishing the Seeger piano's keys, hammers and strings, Mr Hickling fitted it with pneumatic tyres while his artist partner, Talitha Walterfang, painted a whimsical image on the side. It attracted a lot of attention when he unloaded it out of his Bedford van to play a few tunes in Gladstone Road yesterday. Mr Hickling has played piano since the age of two and by his early teens he was winning musical competitions and scholarships. In recent years he has focused on other instruments, mostly percussive, but says finding the battered Seegar reignited his interest and started him playing "hypnotic, progressive chord progressions" that he composes himself. Though he is known for the world-style multi-instrument music he releases under the Evolving Rhythms name, he says busking is a means to an end. Film-making is his main profession and he hopes his winter tour will help fund his next project. That will be a development of his 2008 film Island Styles, for which he spent eight months sailing around the South Pacific, shooting music and dance with cameras powered by the wind and sun. This time, though, Mr Hickling wants to go back to the islands with Ms Walterfang and their daughter, Dyani, who is on tour with them. He hopes to do it in his trimaran — also "rescued" and in need of refurbishment. Until then, he has devised a ramp system so he can take the piano wherever the mood sends him and load and unload it with ease. "It's amazing playing out in this beautiful Gisborne day but there is beauty to be found everywhere," he says. Even on a wet day in Queenstown in sub-8 degree temperatures. "There was something really lovely about playing this sad-sounding music in the shadow of the mountains as the rain was coming down."
| ranked in date | views | likes | Comments | ranked in country (#position) |
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| 2013-07-20 | 341 | 18 | 0 |
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