Play It Again Tony - Pianist

playitagaintonypianist.soundclick.com

England, United Kingdom

February 08, 2017

512,185 plays
165,065 views

Soundclick is a funny place where people give themselves 1000s and 1000s of plays and rarely listen to anyone else. But it's a great place to upload music to, and then in my case I isolate myself with a Pro. Account and a Soundclick Domain. I do get visitors from the search engine friendly text I put on my music sites though.

Band/artist history

THE PAST: I was born a handful of years after end of WW2 in Stockport UK (what is now part of Greater Manchester). My parents were Bill and Alice Gay of Heaton Norris, This bears no ID Security risk as this is not my surname now. I spent my childhood in Heaton Norris and through to my early 30s. By this time I had ceased working as a Musician and was Married to Susan, and we had an amazing thriving Magic Entertainment business from Wilmslow, Cheshire, and brought up our kids there. Today - "somewhere" very rural in North Staffordshire, England where my wife's family originated from.

I owe my musical roots to parents and family on my father's side, also a Dancing Teacher Aunt called Joan Bates of Stockport (Bates Dancing School Stockport or Melbourne School of Dancing) on my mother's side, to an excellent Music Teacher in Heaton Norris who taught under The Trinity College of Music London Syllabus. I was enabled at age 15 to play at Kings Hall, Belle Vue, Manchester by Joan G. Bates for her shows there; I also worked Bands - one in particular in partnership with Guitarist Alan Yates of Altrincham UK which went through an amazing short spell at top venues in the North West England; many Manchester Clubs playing for Cabaret and Dancing on (hopefully) Hammond Organs; and also three "ok-ish" years 1977-79 in Prestatyn, North Wales for "what was then" - not now! (questionably) a reasonably nice Holiday Company called Pontins with venues also all over the UK and many in Europe.

Have you performed in front of an audience?

My first big memory was stepping out into Kings Hall, Belle Vue, Manchester UK to play for a Children's Ballet Show as part of the British Railways Annual Carnival. I'm not going to say the year - but I was only 15. All I had done was play at school and Church Hall Concerts before . . . probably about 1800 to 2200 people at these. But the Kings Hall hosted famous names from all over the world. Held about 5000 max. Now all gone. there are venues in Manchester now in 2025 that dwarf this capacity, but it was a nice old venue in it's day. This in turn led to audiences for Music and Magic far too numerous to mention here.