We’ve all seen the GSU’s public piano, but who are the bold folks actually playing it?

When preparing yourself to endure the Starbucks line, to finally study for the midterm tomorrow, or to simply enjoy some authentic water sounding from the waterfall behind the Howard Thurman Center, you cannot ignore the beautiful eccentricity of a pianist jamming at the entrance of the GSU.

The beauty of a street piano is that it does not care where you are from or what your major is, it’s there for anyone who loves to jam.

When we heard an ethnic piano piece we’d never heard before, we had to go and talk to the pianist.

Zaruhi Mkrtumyan, a second year graduate student at BU’s School of Law, comes from Armenia. She told us that the Armenian piece Erebuni Yereyon was the first one she had played on this piano. When she saw the piano, she simply “just went and played”.

“It is a special piece for me, it reminds me of home,” she added.

She also told us that once while she was playing this piece, someone came up to her and told that it was a Japanese piece. “No way” she said, “the pianist is Armenian and my Armenian piano teacher taught me this piece.” Her piano teacher came to her home for seven years, and she enjoyed every second with her.

Zaruhi kept on using the word “wonderful”, as her eyes shined and her smile strengthened when talking about the piano. “I come here after class; playing the piano helps me get relaxed after hours of reading, and writing, and, you know”. Oh we do know! This is proof of the piano’s power: If it can relax a law student, we can all benefit from it.

“No one was here, so we decided to play!” This should be a motto for everyone, as it is for Candice Jian and Zirve Ye.

Both of these pianists come from China and started studying financial economics at the Metropolitan College a month ago. We encountered the artists when it was their first time coming to play at the GSU piano. Being together helped them overcome feelings of anxiety that prevent people from performing in front of others, which is why they were a lot more relaxed and actually enjoyed playing the piano. They were playing a duet, since their 3-year-old friendship had already created a beautiful harmony between them. They enjoy sitting together and banging out random notes, saying “we would have never came here and play alone”. Zirvi has been a pianist since she was six years old, and Candice started playing when she was ten. “We play what we can remember,” they said. This is what we encourage everyone to do, just go and play a few notes you remember, relax, and let your finger-tips take over.

Violet Giddings is a Psychology and Film major in CAS from Philadelphia. She first started playing on admitted students day, saying “I played the piano and made my parents wait for me”. Although Violet is classically trained, she plays by ear. She enjoys playing there because hard surfaces causes the sound to echo. Violet gets a little nervous about playing in the presence of so many people, but she says “they’re not really paying attention to me anyway”. She likes playing anything she hears because it’s more of the “process of playing something new, it’s kind of mathematical”. When she plays, she likes to “look at it spatially, look at the patterns the keys make rather than the pitch, because the pattern moves in the same direction.”

Ramakrishnan Lakshmanan is an Electrical Engineering major in College of Engineering from Kerala, India. Ramakrishnan has an extensive background in Indian Classical Music; he was trained vocally in the art. He then began to transfer this distinct music style onto keyboard instruments. Although he never had formal piano training, he practiced playing his favorite songs by ear on his harmonium at home. He began playing the public piano last fall. Ramakrishnan says that playing in such a public space does not make him nervous, for he only plays for himself. He demonstrated different ragas (Indian scales) by playing Für Elise in many different keys. He also claims that it is a great stress-reliever from engineering, a subject that seems to rarely provide stress release itself.

We caught Juston Scott, a pianist at Berklee College of Music from Waterbury, Connecticut, playing the public piano at the GSU as well. Juston has been playing for about ten years, and he is classically trained. His first reaction to seeing this public piano on his way from work was “Oh yeah I get to play, ooh awesome”. He thinks that he began playing because he was born into a musical family, saying “it’s kind of in my blood”. He began playing on the baby grand his mom had at the house. His musical initiation wasn’t quite simple though.

Juston was born 64% deaf, causing him to undergo about 15 surgeries until he was 11 years old. During his childhood, he could only hear mumbling. It was like “hearing the world you with two glass cups on your ears”.

Because of this, he began humming tunes before he could hear or speak. He started pursuing piano at age 11, when his hearing was fully developed. He likes playing his own music, because he likes to “feel the emotions in the music and let my soul take over”, rather than worry about technique and memorization. Usually he plays whatever comes to mind, because he wants to “let my impulses take over”.

The pianists at the GSU are not just pianists—they are engineers, economists, psychologists. Whenever you encounter one of these brave souls, feel free to approach them and start a conversation. They will talk about the piano in terms that go beyond just music; they will outline the ways that this seemingly misplaced piano interacts with all aspects of of ordinary life.