It was not the kind of music you generally hear in an airport. It was a piano, and it didn’t sound like a recording. A woman sang.
There, near a security checkpoint at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, was Teresa Peterson, singing and playing a 9-foot Steinway concert grand piano as people towed wheelie bags and electric beep-beep carts passed her on all sides.
She had not been hired to perform; she was hustling her music.
Teresa Peterson at the keyboard of a grand piano in Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
She said she felt a little like a panhandler. It is quite a change to switch from playing for friends and family to playing in a maelstrom of strangers in a busy hub airport. Peterson said the first time she played, she felt kind of exposed.
She played as her husband, drummer and sales department, James Shackelford, sold CDs to passers-by.
I was on my way to the Associated Collegiate Press‘ Best of the Midwest convention. This was the couple’s third gig like this in the airport. They generally work the afternoons, when they hope traffic will be heavy.
One afternoon they sold 18 CDs for $10 each. They were happy with that. While small successes are nice, they are not the goal. They are hoping for some notice, some publicity, a shot.
Once, a man who bought a CD said he would pass it along to a contact in Nashville, Tenn. That could lead to something.
I asked the couple if it was a hassle bringing a grand piano through security. Wouldn’t things be easier if she were a violinist? The “Airport Steinway” actually is owned by the Airport Foundation MSP and stays put. Peterson had been hired to play it as entertainment in the past. This playing-for-free ploy was a new idea.
Peterson and Shackelford have a lesson for the rest of us. When you transport your skill or talent to a new environment, new things happen. You attract notice, create in a new ways, make new connections.
An example from journalism: When I worked at the Detroit Free Press, many reporters and photographers cringed when editors went to assign coverage of the annual Michigan State Fair. It meant day after day of big pumpkins, blue-ribbon pies and hog calling. Let the interns do it.
But one year a photographer asked for the assignment. He set up a mini photo studio at the fair, where he painstakingly took portraits of individuals he met in the crowd. His faces at the fair project was remarkable because he did something different. He was not the only photographer who used that seemingly mundane assignment as a way to do something new.
A photo studio at the state fair is the very definition of moving outside your comfort zone. So is a grand piano in the airport.
I bought Peterson’s CD, “Say Something,” and played it in the car after my trip. The first song had a few piano chords and then Peterson sang, “You’ve got a plane to catch … “
