Nathaniel was shy in our first encounter a couple of months in the past, if not a bit cautious. He took a step again once I approached to say I favored the way in which his violin music turned the clatter round downtown L.A.’s Pershing Sq. into an city symphony.
“Oh, thank you very much,” he mentioned politely, apologizing for his look. He had gone via a few latest setbacks, Nathaniel mentioned, however he meant to be entire once more quickly and taking part in at the next stage.
Subsequent time I noticed him, he had relocated to the mouth of the 2nd Avenue tunnel close to Hill Avenue.
“Well, first of all, it’s beautiful here,” mentioned Nathaniel, 54, who advised me he had been identified a few years in the past with schizophrenia. “And right there is the Los Angeles Times building. New York, Cleveland, Los Angeles. All I have to do is look up at that building and I know where I am.”
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Nathaniel had an orange purchasing cart that contained all of his belongings, together with an enormous plastic water gun, a single black boot and his violin case. We had been virtually within the shadow of the brand new Disney Live performance Corridor, and though Nathaniel mentioned he wasn’t positive the place it was, he had written the next on the aspect of his purchasing cart:
“Little Walt Disney Concert Hall — Beethoven.”
Nathaniel performs classical music, a few of it recognizable to me, a few of it not. Someday, I requested if he may play jazz, and he tucked the violin beneath his chin, closed his eyes in anticipation of the ecstasy that music brings him and commenced to play “Summertime.”
He doesn’t all the time hit each be aware, however it’s abundantly clear that Nathaniel has been a scholar of music for a few years.
Ayers drags his belongings in a purchasing cart he calls “Little Walt Disney Concert Hall” on the streets of Los Angeles’ skid row.
(Los Angeles Instances)
“That was Ernest Bloch,” he casually advised me after one piece, spelling out Ernest after which Bloch. “Opus 18, No. 1.”
I used to be greater than a bit impressed, particularly when it occurred to me that Nathaniel’s dirty, smudged violin was lacking two of the 4 strings.
“Yeah,” he mentioned, frustration rising in his brown eyes. “This one’s gone, that one’s gone and this little guy’s almost out of commission. You see where it’s coming apart right here?”
Taking part in with two strings wasn’t that tough, he mentioned, as a result of he started his music schooling within the Cleveland public faculties, the place the devices had been usually a problem.
“If you got one with one or two strings,” he mentioned, “you were happy to have it.”
I observed an empty bag from Studio Metropolis Music in Nathaniel’s violin case and gave the shop a name to ask if that they had a homeless buyer.
“Black man?” requested Hans Benning, a violin maker. “We do have a guy who plays with a badly beaten-up fiddle. He comes here every so often. He’s very kind, very gentle and very proper. He’s a delight.”
I advised Benning his identify is Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, and he appears to know a factor or two about music.
“Yes, he does,” Benning mentioned. “He talks about the Beethoven sonatas and then slips back into another world.”
The explanation he used to hold round Pershing Sq., Nathaniel advised me, was so he may examine the Beethoven statue for inspiration.
“I’ve never seen anything in my life that great,” he mentioned. “I’m flabbergasted by that statue because I can’t imagine how he’s there. I don’t know how God is operating.”
After I requested extra about his coaching, Nathaniel advised me he had gone to Ohio College and Ohio State College. He additionally mentioned he’d performed many occasions on the Aspen Music Competition, and he’d gone to Juilliard for 2 years within the early ‘70s.
Juilliard? I asked.
“I was there for a couple of years,” he said, as if it were nothing.
While waiting for a callback from Juilliard, I called Motter’s Music Home in Lyndhurst, Ohio. Nathaniel advised me he had purchased many devices there through the years, together with the Glaesel violin he now owns.
“He’s an outstanding player,” mentioned Ron Guzzo, a supervisor at Motter’s. He noticed quite a lot of Nathaniel over a span of 20 years, as a result of Nathaniel’s devices had been usually stolen from him on the streets. He would work at a Wendy’s or shovel snow to avoid wasting up for one more.
“As I understand it, he was at Juilliard and got sick, so he came back home. He’d sit out in our parking lot on a nice day playing the cello, and we’d wonder where the heck that was coming from. It was Tony,” Guzzo mentioned, utilizing Nathaniel’s nickname.
Cello? Sure, it seems Nathaniel began on the bass, switched to cello and has by no means had any coaching on the violin. He switched to the latter after ending up on the streets, as a result of it matches extra neatly into his purchasing cart.
All the things he had advised me about his life was trying out, so I figured Juilliard should be for actual too.
Certain sufficient.
Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, who sleeps on the streets of the town, takes his meals on the Midnight Mission and performs a two-string violin, attended the acclaimed New York Metropolis music college on a scholarship.
Ayers seems on the calendar exterior Walt Disney Live performance Corridor in downtown Los Angeles.
(Los Angeles Instances)
Nathaniel advised me a bass participant named Homer Mensch was one among his mentors at Juilliard. Mensch, 91, continues to be instructing, and he instantly recalled Nathaniel.
“He had the talent, that was for sure,” mentioned Mensch, who remembered that Nathaniel had abruptly disappeared, by no means to return. I advised him Nathaniel’s sickness had begun whereas he was at Juilliard and he was now a homeless violinist in downtown L.A.
“Give him my very best,” mentioned Mensch. “I would certainly like to hear from him.”
Nathaniel has memorized the cellphone numbers of the individuals who impressed him. To recall the numbers, he writes them in mid-air along with his index finger. Someday he gave me the house cellphone variety of Harry Barnoff, a bass participant and former instructor who lately retired after 46 years with the Cleveland Orchestra.
Barnoff was in tears on the reminiscence of Nathaniel.
“Please,” Barnoff pleaded, “you have got to go tell him how much I think of him and that I still remember what a wonderful musician he was.”
Barnoff says Nathaniel was a little bit of a slacker when he was in junior excessive and taking classes on the Cleveland Music Faculty Settlement. However with encouragement, Nathaniel set the best attainable targets for himself.
“During the riots, he was in the music building, practicing. He really worked at it and got to where he knew I had gone to Juilliard, and he wanted to go, too. … Next thing I knew, he got a scholarship.”
Nathaniel had the potential to play with any of the main orchestras in america, Barnoff mentioned. He tried to assist Nathaniel via his most troublesome occasions, providing him work round his home and taking Nathaniel’s calls from psychological hospitals and the streets.
Nathaniel was usually in a state of misery, Barnoff says of his former scholar, till they started speaking about music. After which all the pieces was proper with the world.
“He once sent me a card saying he would give his left hand for me,” Barnoff mentioned.
I obtained maintain of Nathaniel’s sister, Jennifer Ayers-Moore, at her residence in Fayetteville, Ga. She was relieved to listen to that her older brother is OK however disturbed to know he’s on the streets — once more.
He was by no means the identical after he obtained again from New York, Ayers-Moore mentioned, and he has been out and in of hospitals and group properties for 3 many years. Time after time, he has examined the endurance of the individuals who love him.
“It got to the point where he didn’t want to talk to anybody and didn’t want to be in reality. I couldn’t watch the movie ‘A Beautiful Mind,’ because every stitch of it reminded me of Nathaniel.”
As accomplish that many schizophrenics, Ayers-Moore says, her brother would enhance with medicine however then refuse to take it and slip again into his tortured world.
“It was very difficult for my mother, because he would curse her out, call her names, threaten her. When we went to visit her in the nursing home on her birthday, she looked at me and said, ‘I miss Tony.’ He was her pride and joy, and she did everything she possibly could to help him.”
Nathaniel talks usually of his mom, expressing his love in his personal manner.
“She was a beautician,” he mentioned. “That’s beauty. And music is beauty, so I guess that’s why I started playing.”
Nathaniel got here west after his mom’s dying 5 years in the past. He attached along with his estranged father and different kinfolk however quickly discovered the streets.
“It’s an absolute dream here, and I notice that everyone is smiling,” Nathaniel mentioned at 2nd and Hill, the place he typically steps into the tunnel to listen to the echo of his violin. “The sun is out all day, and the nights are cool and serene.”
“All I want is to play music”
— Nathaniel Anthony Ayers
Nathaniel usually takes a rock and scrawls names on the sidewalk.
“Oh, those,” he mentioned. “A lot of those are the names of my classmates at Juilliard.”
Someday I requested about his hopes and desires.
“Oh, that’s easy,” he mentioned. “I need to get these other two strings, but I don’t have the money right now.”
He had no use for a home, he mentioned, or a automobile or anything.
“All I want is to play music, and the crisis I’m having is right here,” Nathaniel mentioned, pointing to the lacking strings and calling out the names of Itzhak Perlman and Jascha Heifetz, as if the famend violinists would possibly hear his plea and ship alongside the strings.
Nathaniel refused to simply accept cash from me or freebies from Studio Metropolis Music. I instructed he return to Pershing Sq., the place passersby usually dropped cash in his violin case, however it didn’t appear logical to him.
After I introduced him a brand new set of strings from Studio Metropolis Music, I needed to insist that he not pay me for them. He had hassle attaching the strings as a result of his violin is in such unhealthy form. However by the following day, he had jury-rigged them and was blissful to present me a present at his Little Walt Disney Live performance Corridor.
I had invited two staffers from Lamp Group, a service company for homeless, mentally ailing women and men. Perhaps they might get his belief, I figured, and decide whether or not they may assist him in some unspecified time in the future.
However as Nathaniel started to play, I doubted there was anybody or something that would ship the identical peace that music brings him. He was in his sanctuary, eyes half-mast in tribute to the masters.
As automobiles roared by and trash flew off a dump truck, Nathaniel was oblivious. He performed a Mendelssohn concerto, a Beethoven concerto and the Brahms double concerto for violin and cello, his bow gliding effortlessly because it sliced via the insanity.
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