Chelsea Market
This piano is inside, at the far west end of the very long corridor of shops.
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B) I've been seeking out pianos all week -- I played the one in Battery Park last Monday, but the B-flat and G were out (at least when I went), so I couldn't play a couple of the songs I wanted to play.
But I decided after my show today to walk over to Chelsea Market and seek out the piano there... I hadn't been to Chelsea Market in at least 3 years, though I was relatively familiar with the location as the Highline Ballroom is right across the street, as is the Atlantic Theatre Company, where I studied for a year. I was surprised by how tourist-y it had gotten over the course of my high school career, and as I sought out the piano, it seemed like a never-ending tunnel of appetizing shops and bakeries, making my belly and my wallet ache even more!
But I finally reached the piano at the very end of the Market (it was a lot closer to 10th Ave then I had anticipated!). No one was playing it, but a couple people were there with cameras and boom mics... I was quite confused, but they said I could play, so I sat down and got very, very nervous. Like "Lets-change-this-chord-you-wrote-from-major-to-minor" nervous. Still, after messing up a few times, I hammered out four tunes and was surprised at the number of people who had stopped to listen.
I write my own songs, and one of my goals for this summer was to play an open mic, but the ones I had gone to had been jammed back (and sometimes expensive). Besides, my critiques with open mics are that a) everyone there generally wants to show their own stuff and get OUT there, and b) they can cost money. For a poor teenager in New York like myself, these free pianos are truly a godsend. I have no interest, really, in "getting out there," I just like playing the stuff I've written for theraputic reasons, generally, and it's really lovely to have a collective group of fellow humans who might even just pause for a second or maybe just tune in while they pass by. I was really moved and humbled that in a pocket of a touristy (but awesome, I'll admit) part of New York, I got to share the songs I've been wanting to share for a while.
Cheers,
Amy