I was born on Valentine's Day, February 14th, 1923. Your arithmetic will tell you that I'm 101. We always had a piano in the living room when I was growing up. My mother taught me three or four chords, and E flat. I always liked to see what I could play. Grew better and better as I listened to jazz pianists during the ‘30s and through the war and beyond.

There are frames around periods of time. You live through seasons, but then, eventually, if you live long enough, as I fortunately have, even the months break down into weeks. And what I anticipate, before long, my frame is going to come down to day by day.

I look forward to Mondays and Thursdays in a particular way because I’m going to be there playing the piano and serving that purpose of making things a little easier and a little more friendly, particularly at University Hospital, where I’ve spent so much of my life and my career.

Your identity becomes to a considerable extent what you do. I have been an author, as well as a professor. But nowadays for me, as it has been for the past 10 years or so that I’ve been playing there, four hours a week I play that wonderful piano and meet the people who are listening in the lobby of a hospital. My life has been fortunate.