I was born in 1932, a year when American America was gasping for air amidst the Great Depression. My father, a gifted pianist, once graced elegant tea rooms, but fate dragged him into the darkest corners of society. Despite our poverty, his piano’s melody was the very breath in our cramped, rented apartment.

He taught me to play when I was just five. Every time my tiny fingers touched the keys, a new world unfolded. My mother, a quiet, hardworking woman, would often listen from the kitchen, her eyes shining with love and pride. She was born to play, she’d say. And I believe my life would always be as harmonious as those tunes.

But life isn’t that simple, is it, my dears? When I was 16, a terrifying fire stole everything. The merciless flame devoured our small home and my entire family. I was the only one to escape the inferno. But the price was devastating. Left with nothing. No one. I was thrust onto the streets, becoming a phantom, drifting from city to city, hiding in dark alleys.

 Hunger cold and indifferent stares. These were my constant companions for years. Yet amidst those dark days, a small miracle would sometimes appear. A dilapidated piano abandoned in a churchyard or a rusty one in a deserted hotel lobby. Every time my fingers touched the keys, a jolt of life would surge through me. The music wasn’t perfect, sometimes out of tune, but it was my personal prayer.

It transported me back to memories to my parents love to the beautiful days I’d lost. Even for a fleeting moment, I was home again. On those biting winter nights when my body achd with exhaustion and hunger gnored at my stomach, I’d huddle in the darkness and my father’s melodies would echo in my mind. I might not have had food, but that music was the most potent spiritual medicine sustaining me through moments close to death.

It was the resilient beat of my heart. Refusing to surrender to the darkness, I played sometimes only in my mind for lonely souls, for painful memories, and for a world I still believed held justice. My fingers were calloused, my skin cracked from the cold, but I never stopped. My biggest fear that if the music ceased, I’d lose my will to survive, sinking into the abyss of despair.

The song wasn’t just a melody. It was my declaration of existence. Nearly a century has passed since that fateful night. I’ve survived, my dears. I’ve endured things few could ever imagine. Now at 93, with my strength waning, I still have this song. It’s the melody I’ve played in my head thousands of times whenever I thought dawn would never come again.

And tonight, this is the first time I get to play it on a magnificent stage like this. I take a deep breath, placing my frail fingers on the keys. My gaze isn’t on the audience anymore, but fixed on the empty space where I see my father and mother smiling back at me. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.

Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. you.