About Gary Pandora
I enjoy performing Fun Happy Piano Music. I have performed musically starting with playing the accordion when I was eight years old and have continued to play the piano regularly throughout my life. I decided to perform music in the community since my goal is to play fun music that makes people happy. I have been performing monthly at the Short North Arts District "Gallery Hop" since 2021 and at the John Glenn International Airport through my association with the Greater Columbus Arts Council (GCAC) since May of 2022. I have also performed on stage at the Columbus Community Festival (Comfest) in 2022 and 2023.
A portion of the net proceeds from my tip jar are donated to the Columbus Open Shelter. You can see me play music and photos of me on Instagram: @garypandoramusic.
Why I Play Fun Happy Piano Music
Both my father and mother's parents, my grandparents, immigrated to the United States from Southern Italy in the early years of the 20th century. My parents as first-generation Italian-Americans believed it was culturally important that our household feature music...this was the music of the great contemporary opera performers like Mario Lanza or the Italian folk music of the Gaylord Brothers and the American Italian music that evolved in the United States from Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, Jerry Vale, Connie Francis, and many others...my parents' music was played on our 1960s stereophonic record
player on 33 1/3 rpm vinyl records...at the same time I was also influenced by the happy Accordion polka music they also played that included the great Frank Yankovic, Myron Floren, and my favorite accordion player Dick Contino.
That happy music sound was transferred by me to the piano. The greatest influence on my piano playing was JoAnn Castle who was featured playing peppy honky tonk music on an open-faced upright piano on the weekly Lawrence Welk music show. While in high school I was exposed to an album by Ray Charles that introduced me into the world of jazz and blues...that evolution continued through my college and law school years as I began to gather more and more vinyl record albums of the great jazz performers of
our time... I was fortunate in college to be able to attend live concerts of many of the jazz greats including Duke Ellington, Ray Charles, Dave Brubeck, Stanley Turrentine, Buddy Rich, and many others at jazz concerts that I attended in northeast Ohio, upstate New York and Toronto Canada.
I became convinced that for me the beauty of music whether Opera, Italian folk music, polka, blues, jazz, popular standards, country, or gospel...is that the music I play needs to be interesting, exciting, and most importantly Fun!...meaning it should make you Happy! I have always been motivated to play what I feel is my music... songs of others and songs I have composed that I play by crossing all cultural lines and genres of music. I call it "Fun Happy Piano Music!"
