The Elephant's Pianist
As I noted a short while back, I accidentally came across a series of fascinating videos. They’re all from a pianist Paul Barton who has used music to deal with people therapeutically, and he wondered if it would be effective with animals, as well. This is something that Barton has been doing in the jungles of Thailand for many years – I can’t tell exactly, but it seems like perhaps 15 years so far. And he’s developed connections with several of the elephants.
Here, Paul Barton plays “Debussy ‘Clair de Lune’ for a gentle female elephant called Ampan. Ampan is 80 years old and lives at Elephants World in Thailand. As the organization writes, “She is blind in one eye and can barely see with the other. 80 years old is very old indeed for an elephant, it’s about 10 years past the natural life span of an elephant in the wild.”
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