- Title: 'Everything will be OK' lying under this busker's piano, immersed in music
- Date: 6th May 2022
- Summary: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (MAY 3, 2022) (REUTERS) WASHINGTON ARCH IN WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK / 44-YEAR-OLD PIANO BUSKER, COLIN HUGGINS, PLAYING PIANO FOR ALEX ALPERT, LISTENING UNDER HIS PIANO VARIOUS OF HUGGINS PLAYING "METAMORPHOSIS" BY PHILIP GLASS FOR ALPERT
- Embargoed: 20th May 2022 14:32
- Keywords: Colin Huggins Washington Square Park piano piano busker
- Location: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
- City: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
- Country: USA
- Topics: Human-Led Quirky,Human-Led Stories,United States
- Reuters ID: LVA001558103052022RP1
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: As a piano busker plays Philip Glass's "Metamorphosis" under the arch in New York's Washington Square Park, Alex Alpert lies under the baby grand piano and feels the vibrations from the keys throughout his body.
"I've never heard music like that from that angle," said Alpert. "It's powerful."
"It was like everything kind of stopped existing, except for what was underneath the piano," said another bystander, Alex Stafford, wiping tears from her eyes. "Like there was no sound and it was just that music. It was almost like being in a cocoon. I've never experienced anything like that before. It was so beautiful. I can't believe what I just got to witness and be a part of."
Colin Huggins has been a piano busker for 15 years, playing mostly under the Washington Arch. He wheels his 900-pound 1958 Steinway B grand piano more than half a mile from a Manhattan Mini Storage crosstown five to seven days a week and plays for eight hours a day.
When the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020, New York City - the country's most densely populated city - soon became the epicenter for the disease in the United States.
After initially saying the virus would go away with warm spring weather, then U.S. President Donald Trump - whose approach to handling the pandemic was widely critiqued - declared a state of emergency on March 13th. Cities and states across the country imposed lockdown restrictions.
Huggins continued playing throughout the lockdowns, frequently to an audience of zero.
"During the pandemic, he was the only live performance in New York City," said his piano tuner, Arpad Maklary, who tunes his piano a couple of times a week in the park. "You couldn't go to Carnegie Hall. You couldn't go to any other places. So if you wanted to listen to any classical music, it was here in the park."
When Huggins wore down his Yamaha piano from 2007, Maklary rebuilt him his Steinway in 2018.
Despite over $1 trillion spent on COVID relief, by May of 2022, roughly one million people are estimated to have died in the United States of COVID-19.
"Sometimes when I get frustrated with my situation, I don't have enough money to live, I don't have a really beautiful place to keep the piano, I don't have a lot of the things that I used to have, but when I think of the million people that died, I think to myself, I wish there was more I could have done," Huggins said. "Even though I pretty much lost everything, life is the best thing we got and I wish I could have done more to keep people alive. But right now, the best thing I can do is help people recover emotionally from the intense and tremendous disconnect that we've had."
Before the pandemic, Huggins made a modest living playing on weekends only in the park. Now, he makes less than half of what he used to make and works much, much more.
The 44-year-old Georgia native moved to New York in 2003 and was an accompanist at the American Ballet Theatre.
"Most pianists are accompanists when they're first looking for work," he said. "But I wanted to do something that was more meaningful and more beneficial to humanity. I've always wanted to accommodate feelings in the best way possible. And I want to do it with music. And this is the best way I figured out how to do it. Maybe someday I'll figure out a way to do it even better. And I won't need to push this piano here. But as of now, this is the best I've got."
Huggins survives on donations and in the firm belief that "everything will be OK," also the handle to his Patreon account (patreon.com/Everythingwillbeok). Patreon is a platform that lets artists seek financial patronage from their fans.
(Production: Hussein Waaile, Roselle Chen) - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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