One of the best parts about visiting my 93-year-old mom in her nursing home in Ocean Grove on Wednesdays is that Jim Donnelly comes in at lunchtime to play piano.
The eating area is right next to a little parlor area where the piano is, and residents, all in wheelchairs, wander over to gather near the piano once they’ve finished eating, and sing along, openly or quietly, with the favorites Jim Donnelly plays.
Most days he stays a bit after lunch to play “one more song” at least a half-dozen times. But last week, March 30, he remained at the piano until 1:50 p.m., and the residents, my mom, myself, and staff who were coming and going to and from their duties, all listened.
A long time ago, I figured out that visiting my mom, while it seems to result in a brightened face on her part by the time I leave a couple hours later, really also leaves my face brightened.
I’m visiting her, but what they don’t tell you, is that it is a two-way street. She is visiting me.
I visit during other days of the week, most often Saturday or Sunday. But on Wednesdays, the piano is an added bonus.
Sheer Enjoyment
Every time I hear Jim Donnelly play, I marvel at the instrument, and at his ability to play songs for hours without sheet music, just by memory.
There are times when I think it isn’t so much the striking of the keys which makes the hammers strike the piano wire that creates the sound. At times, I can’t help imagining that it is the striking of the keys that plays some mystical piano in time and space, which then activates some grand songbook of music, which comes alive.
Where do these songs come from, from out of the ether, to tug at heartstrings of all these grand folks in wheelchairs? And the heartstrings of this grand person, my mom? And my own heartstrings?
Left hand and right hand creates the music. Oh how marvelous does the player dance along the 88 keys, in hundreds of different patterns. And oh, how the music is channeled through Jim Donnelly’s hands, through his memory, through his craft and through his art out into the “space between us all,” floating, then bathing our ears, our memories, and our thirsting for art appreciation. Talk about social networking.
Song List
I grabbed a flyer insert to the newspaper I was holding early on, and started using it as a surface upon which to write down song titles. I wanted to be able to better remember afterwards the variety of tunes Jim Donnelly was playing.
We only then moved over from the lunch table to be near the piano. Mind you, he had been playing for some time before that. But from when I started jotting down song titles, these are the songs he played:
“If I Only Had A Brain,” “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” “Bicycle Built For Two,” “Down At Papa Joe’s;” “Those Were The Days;” “Personality;” “Blueberry Hill;” “Can’t Stop Loving You;” “Hit The Road, Jack;” and “Under The Boardwalk.
He said he was booked to play at an Italian wedding, so he had been practicing the next four songs, “That’s Amore;” and Frank Sinatra’s “Summer Wind,” “A Very Good Year,” and “That’s Life.”
He continued with, “America The Beautiful;” “God Bless America;” and “The Marine’s Hymn,” because of the timeliness of the second line, “To the shores of Tripoli.” He did “And The Band Played On” and “East Side, West Side.”
And then one of the residents said another resident only liked classical pieces.
So, Jim Donnelly threw in a Mozart piece, which is universally recognizable, but whose title I don’t know. However, it is a piece that required a cross over by the right hand for a couple of notes to the left of the left hand, while the left hand continued to play a set part of the piece. Several times during the piece, it came back to that maneuver, and each time I was hypnotized.
Then he followed that up with Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” Sure it wasn’t a concert hall piano or rendition, for that matter, but it didn’t matter. This was better. Somehow Jim Donnelly on this parlor piano at the end of an extended lunch hour concert had nailed it. It was like Beethoven, himself, had come over for lunch, and there he was playing what he had been working on for an upcoming wedding he was booked to play.
And then the magic came to an end with a hearty rendition of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”
Just brilliant. Just grand.
Thanks Jim Donnelly.
And, of course, thanks, Mom.
For Musings
Denis J. Kelly
April 3, 2011
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