Dad With Dementia Goes Viral For Amazing Piano Playing
Dateline, England for this heartwarming story…. A guy in the U.K. wanted to cheer up his dad, a former music teacher with dementia. And getting him to play the piano…
The hands of composer and pianist Leff Nicolas Pouishnoff (1891 – 1959), at the piano. In 1938 he was the first classical pianist to make a televised performance. (Photo by Sasha/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Dateline, England for this heartwarming story....
A guy in the U.K. wanted to cheer up his dad, a former music teacher with dementia. And getting him to play the piano usually helps. So he asked for an old party trick the dad used to do. If you give him four notes, he'll improvise a song around them.
The song he came up with was so good that the son posted a video, which went viral. Then someone arranged it for other instruments . . . and members of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra played along to it from their homes.
The final version is so good, Stephen Sondheim sent him a video.
Now it's being released as a single to raise money for two dementia and Alzheimer's charities.
Here's the video of the song that dad wrote after hearing the four notes:
And here's the video of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra picking up the song:
