12: Ronald Tutor Campus Center, USC

12: Ronald Tutor Campus Center, USC
Designed by: Kent Twitchell
Piano type: Console
Playability: Good - but sustain pedal not working
Weather: 70°F, partly cloudy
How I got here: Metro Red Line subway, Metro Local line 200 bus

Today I attended the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at my alma mater, the University of Southern California (Fight On, Trojans!) Aside from the big book fair, I was also looking forward to playing my 12th street piano, which was here on campus.

Before I got to play the piano, I stopped by the Philippine Expressions Bookshop booth to meet some people and ran into my friend and fellow 'SC alum, Rex. It was a relief to see him here at the Festival of Books because in the past couple months we've only been seeing each other at funerals - of fellow alumni friends, and their family members - so at last we got to meet on a much happier occasion. I told him about the pianos and we heded over to the Ronald Tutor Campus Center,  the brand-spankin' new student union facility near the center of campus.

I had gone by campus in recent years, only to have seen this under construction. It was resplendent in dancing water fountains and an outdoor plaza for meeting and eating. Inside was a food court with the likes of Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, Carl's Jr and Panda Express. Upstairs was an eatery called "Lemonade." The USC we went to was far more humble than this!

We found the piano already being played by an older Filipino gentleman wearing a barong. He was playing various standards, and even Philippine folk songs. A middle-aged Filipina lady, Rex and I sang a long to some of them. The guy was great, although he had been at the piano for nearly half an hour now!

Eventually we had a conversation with him, and he introduced himself as Dr. Quirico "Rick" Samonte, professor emeritus from Eastern Michigan University who incidentally was signing his Filipino food book earlier at the same Philippine Expressions booth I was at. One he found out that one of us played, he finally relented the piano bench to me.

The design of the piano was also significant to me as it was done by Kent Twitchell, a famous Los Angeles muralist who did the Freeway Lady that used to be by the 101, and the Strother Martin mural in East Hollywood (I got to meet Twitchell last year while he was restoring it).  This one was the image of L.A. Chamber Orchestra musical director Jeffrey Kahane.

To pay homage to my school, I played a couple of tunes from my college days, like "A Whole New World" from Disney's Aladdin. I even played a bit of the USC Fight Song (oh why not). Unfortunately, my camers gave me errors when recording video, so my friend Rex recorded me on his iPhone doing Boyz II Men's "It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday":





Later on at the Festival of Books, there was a minor "suspicious package" scare (which turned out to be a bag full of papers). I bought some L.A./California history books and used half of my $10 tip to buy this appropriately-themed book at the insanely-popular $5 Or Less Bookstore booth :) :