The Greatest Piano Prodigy You’ve Never Heard Of

Natalie Trayling was one of the world’s most wonderful pianists, but her genius was nearly lost to history because she played and lived on the streets, where she truly felt free.

Photo courtesy of Matthew Trayling; collage by Yunuen Bonaparte | Story edited by Jesse Sposato

It’s sunset on a late autumn evening, and a river of suits flows along the streets of one of Australia’s biggest cities: the Friday evening flush of Melbourne’s corporate tide. Accountants, stockbrokers and financiers bob along the sidewalk clutching briefcases, immersed in their own worlds, heads down and eyes glued to phones, rushing toward the subway — until a ghostly figure stops them in their tracks. 

A large crowd has gathered around an elderly busker hunched over an electric keyboard — a Zimmer-frame walker is parked within the musician’s reach. Time has twisted the woman’s body. The bones of her back curve angrily skyward and long strands of wispy white Ebenezer Scrooge hair hang untamed around her weathered face. Draped head to toe in black, she is a haunting yet fragile figure.

Her willowy, arthritic fingers poke through the cuffs of an oversized men’s shirt in readiness to play. They are painfully knuckled and knotty, but the second those brittle bones touch the piano, they burst into life, waltzing across the keys with gusto.

The woman launches into a brilliant arrangement of Beethoven, adding a few of her own touches as she plays. Chopin’s gargantuan composition “Nocturne in E-flat major, Op. 9, No. 2” is next, but there’s no sheet music in front of her to refer to — every note is stored somewhere deep in her soul.

Then she plays a piece of her own, composing the music as she goes along, drawing inspiration from the audience gathered around her. A smile or a frown, perhaps a perplexed stare, will direct the mood of the music and where her fingers take her. She’s never played this piece before, with complex notes and phrasing that rival Rachmaninoff or Liszt, and she will never play it again. Her music is for the moment. 

It’s 2019, and despite the frosty May night air, the suits that were rushing home stop,  mesmerized by her music. Some even wipe away tears as they witness Natalie Trayling, the 84 year-old unhoused virtuoso, in full flight.