In the 1970s, a new supermarket selling LPs arrived in my home town of Hornsea, East Yorkshire, and I began spending my pocket money on records. I was just 12, and fell immediately in love with Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. I dreamed of playing that music myself.
I left school at 16 and managed to get into the Royal Academy of Arts. I continued to play piano all my life, working as a concert pianist and a professional portrait painter. In my 30s, I visited Thailand for a few months, where I met my wife. We married in 1996, and I've been in Thailand ever since.
For my 50th birthday, my wife persuaded the manager of Elephants World to allow us to bring a piano into the sanctuary(庇护所). These elephants have worked for humans all their life and many are blind or disabled from being treated badly, so I wanted to make the effort to carry something heavy myself.
When I started playing, it was hard to hear the piano above the sounds of nature and the elephants eating grass. Elephants are almost always hungry – if they get the opportunity, they'll eat and they won't stop. But as soon as I started playing, one elephant, who was blind, stopped eating and listened. We realised that this elephant, trapped in a world of darkness, loved music. From that day, there was never any concern about disturbing their peace, and that was the beginning of it all. We occasionally film the performances and now have nearly 700,000 YouTube subscribers.
I continue to play for these elephants that run free in the sanctuary, though I could be killed at any moment. It seems to be the male elephants, the ones who are moody and dangerous, that listen to the music the most. The music somehow calms them.
