East Side Buskers

When I arrived at the Music Under New York spot at the 59th street subway station at 11:40am I found Tai Qi singing ‘Ave Maria’ there. He is an opera singer from China – really nice guy, tall with a bass voice. He had only been playing for 40 minutes when I arrived, but he didn’t mind at all seceding the spot to me – he much prefers performing at 77th street. He was just whiling away the time until the musicians there (three guys singing along with a keyboard) are done with their set, at 1pm.
Tai Qi told me he also likes to perform at 68th street, but there is a Polish accordion player who hogs the spot there – he shows up at 8am and stays until 8pm, thus not giving anybody else a chance to perform there. He is there every day, too! Tai Qi and I both said we wish we could perform this long, but he can only sing for 3 hours before his throat feels like it needs a rest, and my left hand usually starts to hurt after 4 hours of non-stop playing 🙁

The homeless guy who walks tilted and frequents this subway station walked by, and as is his custom – looked into my donations box. He doesn’t mean to steal – he is just curious, I think.

Still no sign of Jefferson, the nice sanitation guy in charge of the station. It’s been a very long time now, at least a month, in which he hasn’t been there, with a rumor that he is ill. I hope he is OK. May be he just took some time off his MTA job to pursue his passion, which is music. He promotes a band in his spare time and sometimes he takes them overseas.

By the way – I’ve recorded a soundtrack for a TV commercial for LG Electronics. If you see a commercial where refrigerators are being destroyed (a lady with a large drill wracks one, a train hits one, a magician makes one disappear, etc.) – listen to the soundtrack. The dreamy music features my musical saw. I was told this commercial will be aired internationally.