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Artful Living Presents | The Story of Tony Cicoria

Today's segment of Artful Living introduces composer and pianist, Tony Cicoria whose near death experience changed his life forever. Crows Feat Farm presents Tony's composition "Lightning Sonata" at "A Classical Confection" on Aug 11. Join our conversation on Artful Living.

Duration:
44m
Broadcast on:
01 Aug 2024
Audio Format:
mp3
(upbeat music) - Good morning, everybody. Jane, call me or hear your host for actual living here on WKXL, New Hampshire TalkRadio.com. WKXL 1450 AM, 103.9 FM conquered and 101.9 FM in Manchester. So we have an interesting show for you. In fact, I started putting this show together, believe it or not. Last night, I was up pretty late trying to put this all together. I saw this was going to be a show on August happenings, right? So I was going through all the delineating, all the August happenings to give a good overview. But I came across this one called a classical confection. And this is a special concert that's going to be at the Crow's Feet Farm, Sunday, August 11th, and three to five o'clock. And it's had this really cool guest. He is a named Tony Secoria that had a story that I just went kind of crazy on the internet and thought I'd bring this story to you. So very basic 'cause you're going to hear the story from Tony's mouth, from his own lips. And basically in 1994, he was a medical doctor. He was struck by lightning. Had a near-death experience and was brought back and came up on the other side with this desire, overwhelming desire to learn how to play classical music piano. And in his 40s, this man did that. He became a classical pianist. And it's just extraordinary what culminated in these few years between when he was struck, how he learned what he does now. And his story, and he will be at a classical confection at the Crow's Feet Farm on Sunday, August 11th. So what I thought might be kind of cool is that we would hear some of Tony's story. And listen to a little bit of his music first. Let's do that first. And then we're going to play video from an online program that he did that tells all about his story. So here is Tony Sickery, a playing a concert, I believe in 2023, so here we go. - Essentially it was given to me from the other side. So I can't claim that I wrote it. But it was given to me and I used the best that I can. With it, I didn't start playing piano until after the lightning. And it took me 12 years to learn how. I started in 1998, taking lessons. And so this is what is actually a fantasy in three movements, but it's called the subtitle of the lightning sonata. Can I put this down a little? - Put it under there, and there it goes. - I have to take shoes off in my house, so I don't know how to play with shoes on. (laughing) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) And I'm down at the bottom of the stairs and everybody else is up on the first floor. And I hear her screaming and all of a sudden she's running down the stairs right at me. And I'm thinking it's not good when your mother-in-law is screaming and running at you. And if she got down in front of me, I could tell that she couldn't see me. Because she was looking off to her left. And as she got to the bottom of the stairs, he was like, I wasn't even there. And she just took off to the left and I thought, what the hell is going on? And so I started to follow her. And I took a few steps following her and all of a sudden I'm confronted with myself on the ground. And I remember looking down and going, I'm dead. It was a shock. I guess all of my life, I thought that when you died, there would be some sort of notification. Either who knows what it was. But I didn't expect to have it not even be known. I thought there would be some bells or whistles that would go off. But it was absolutely nothing. So I'm standing there and I'm looking at myself on the ground. And as this is happening, my mind is racing like crazy. And I'm trying to make sense of this. And all of a sudden, I'm saying to myself, wait a minute, I'm thinking just like I normally would. And I'm obviously not in that body that's on the ground. I'm standing out here. I can hear everybody. I can see everybody. But nobody can see or hear me. And I'm trying to get their attention. And nothing seemed to work. And then I saw this lady who actually was waiting to use the phone behind me. And she started to get down to do CPR. Turns out she was a nurse from one of the local hospitals and help for two of this is that. Constructed by lightning to have somebody waiting to save your ass from going to the other side. So she got down and she starts doing what she's supposed to do. And at this point, I'm thinking nobody can see me. Nobody can hear me. And I'm feeling stupid. And I thought, I'm going to go check on my family because they were upstairs. And my wife and my three kids are up there. And I thought, I'm going to go up the stairs and see what's going on. So I walk over to the stairs and I start to go up. And I get to about the third stair. And I'm looking down at the stairs because I always am afraid I'm going to fall faceboard on the stairs. So I always watch what I'm doing. And as I'm looking down, I notice that my legs are starting to dissolve. And I thought, wow, this is getting really intense. And I just kept going up the stairs. By the time I got to the top of the stairs, I had lost all form. I was just a ball of energy. And the stairs go off to the left and I said, what the hell? I'm not going to go upstairs. I just went through the wall. And when I got to the other side of the wall, I came out right over the top of where my wife was sitting. And she's painting children's faces. And I made a mental note of where the kids were, who was standing where, who the kids were, and what pattern they were standing in. I don't know why I did that, but I did. And later on, I verified that was exactly the way they were standing and traveled through this room. And when I got to the other side of the room, I was going on a diagonal and I went through the roof. And suddenly, I'm outside. Okay. Let's see here. So you're hearing the first part of the story of Tony Sicoria and his, his accident with a lightning strike and how he went through this near death experience. So we're going to take, when, when we break here, we're going to take a break. And we're going to come back and he's going to tell us what happens after the, after this, after this horrible, you know, accident. Because the part two of this is when he comes back to life, how different everything was. I mean, his entire life as he knew it changed. And the very strange, the very strange factor of being compelled to do something that you never thought you would ever be doing. So that's really cool how we go from what happened in the first part. And when you come back, we're going to listen to what happened at the second part. All right. So artful living here, Jane Cormier, your host, WKXL 1450AM, 103.9 FM Cockard and 101.9 FM in Manchester. Stay right where you are because when we come back, we're going to hear the second part of the story of Tony Sicoria, a fabulous pianist and composer and doctor. All right. So hang tight. [MUSIC] Welcome back, Jane. Jane Cormier, your host here, WKXL, New Hampshire, TalkRadio.com. Artful Living is the show. And we're happy that you're with us. If you are just joining us, we are doing a pretty cool program of an event called a classical confection on August 11th. And one of the people that will be at this concert is a gentleman named Tony Sicoria, who is someone who was hit by lightning, had a near-death experience and came back on the other side as this classical pianist composer. And in the last segment, we listened to the first part of Tony's story of the accident and what happened to him. This part is more based on what happens when he is revived and how music had now become the center of his existence. So we're going to listen to the second part of Tony's story right now. And that's when things really got crazy interesting because it was like I had fallen into a river of pure positive energy. And it wasn't anything in this river of energy except absolute love and absolute peace. And it was just, it was absolutely shaking to experience it because it was devoid of anything else. And it was his bluish white light and it had the sparkly appearance to it and it made me think of when I was a kid and I'd be swimming in a crystal clear stream. And I'd see the sun shining through the water as I was underneath the water. And it reminded me of that and as I was looking at this light energy and I could tell what it felt like. And as I looked around, I started to see that whatever this energy was, it actually made up everything. And I could look at the trees and see the energy flowing into the trees and everything was made up of whatever this energy was. And I thought to myself, I'm thinking this is the God energy. This is what everything is made up. And I thought, it's so powerful. I could measure this. So my science brain is kicking and going, we could look at this. I'm like, but the more I looked at it, I could actually see the energy pattern. It had a sine wave pattern and I could see it flowing. And it went through everything. And at this point, I could tell that I was moving someplace. I had no idea where I was going, but I could feel speed and direction. So I was accelerating into something, but I had no idea what. And at this point, I've become absolutely euphoric over the fact that this is the greatest thing that could ever happen to somebody. And I had a short period where I saw high points and low points in my life. Almost like a collage of pictures just showed me pictures in this and this and that. And it wasn't a lot of emotion around it. It was just, these are things that happened in your life that were of some significance. And there was no explanation other than the fact that they just passed on. And so I settled down and I'm floating in this river of pure positive energy. And I'm thinking, again, this is the greatest thing that could ever happen to somebody. And I was just excited about where it was going. And then all of a sudden, it was like somebody flipped a switch and I was back in my body. I was like, no, don't make me go back. You can't do this to me. And I quickly realized that it's not up to me. And I'm laying there on the ground in a place where it hit me in the face and came out my foot. It felt like somebody had taken hot pokers and stuck them in both of those places. But I'm still unconscious and the lady who was next to me had stopped CPR. She just kneeling next to me, but I still can't open my eyes to look at anybody. And so it took several minutes before I had enough mental function to be able to open my eyes and say anything. And at that point, I just embarrassed myself because the first thing I said to this lady who's kneeling next to me and saved my life, I said, it's okay, I'm a doctor. And she just kind of laughed and she said, you weren't a minute ago. And I thought, okay, remember this is making sense. I'm just making a fool of myself. So I'm going to shut up, which I did. And of course, the police and the ambulance came and I said, no, I'm not going. When you get struck by lightning, you're either alive or dead. There's not much in between. And at that point, I said, just talk to my family. And I said, take me home. Let me see my cardiologist to my neurologist and let me just get out of this. So that's what happened. So they took me home and I saw my doctors and everybody said the same thing. You're lucky to be here. And I was like, okay. But I was tormented by what did it mean? When I started to think about it and everything in life is a series of probabilities. And I started thinking about what's the possibility or the probability of a bolt of lightning, several million volts worth, striking a building, losing enough of its current by the time it gets to you that it doesn't turn you into a French fry, it just stops your heart. And then I think, and what's the probability of having a nurse standing behind you so that just in case you got a little too much, somebody was going to be there to jumpstart your heart again. And when I started looking at all this stuff, I'm thinking there's nothing random about this. And as Einstein used to say, God does not throw dice, and that's true. And I'm a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, but I was given no reasons I had no idea. And I was haunted by the fact that this thing had happened and I had no idea why and what it meant or what I was supposed to take from it. And then shortly after that, it was about two weeks after the event. So after the lightning it took me about a week to get the circuits running again properly. After that first week, I could look right at you and say, I know who you are, I'll be damned if I can find your name, it's locked in a box and place up there and I can't get to it. And there were a lot of things like that I just, I knew that I knew something but I couldn't get to where that file was. And I think that disappeared. And it seemed like everything was back to normal. But about another week or two after that, I started having this really incredible desire to hear classical piano music, which was a really strange thing for me because I was a kid in the 60s. I was rock and roll and it wasn't much of anything else. My mother had made me play piano when I was seven years old. She made me take lessons for a year and I had a obligation I did that actually was probably under threat of life and limb. But I did it and never had any interest and never went back. But all of a sudden I can't do anything without thinking about this absolute desire to hear this. And it was so strong that I drove an hour to Albany, which was the nearest big city that would have classical piano music on CDs. And I went into this music store and as I walked in, it seemed like there was a CD that just jumped off the shelf into my hands. And it was Vladimir Ashkenazi playing his favorite Chopin. Ashkenazi was one of the famous Russian pianists. It is one of the famous Russian pianist. He's still alive. And at this point, I didn't know what to do with all of it. It was just, I was so taken by the music and I started listening to the CD and I listened to it nonstop. And made everybody else listen to it. I'm sure they were sick of hearing it. But I just couldn't stop. It was just a compulsion that had made no sense to me. But within a very short period of time of listening to this music, I realized that it's not going to be enough to listen to this music. I need to know how to play it. Which was a big problem since I didn't have a piano and I didn't know how to play. But I was undeterred. And the very next day, one of our babysitters came to the house and said, "I'm going to be moving and I have this old upright piano. I need to store for a year. Could I store it at your house?" And I'm thinking, "Okay, this is really getting weird now." So all of a sudden, I have a piano and she loads the piano in the house and I'm thinking, "Now I need to know how to learn how to play." So I went and bought a couple books on how to try to teach yourself to play. And at the same time, I ordered all the sheet music from the CD, which is magical thinking. I don't know what the hell I was thinking. There were people who've been playing this stuff for 10 years and still wouldn't attempt to do that. But it didn't seem to matter. I was determined to learn how to do this. And so I started to try to teach myself. And within a few more weeks of that, I could go into bed as normal, but all of a sudden, I have this dream. Alrighty, we're going to take a little break here. WKXL, New HampshireTalkRadio.com. Jane Cormier, your host on Artful Living. And we will come up on the other side and listen to the last section of Tony. Tony Cicoria's story. And the upcoming performance of a classical confection at the Crow's Feet Farm. Stay with us. ♪♪ Hello there. Welcome back. If you're just joining us, we have a fabulous little segment here. We are talking about a gentleman named Tony Cicoria, who is a composer and a pianist. And an upcoming performance on August 11th, a classical confection at the Crow's Feet Farm, 3 o'clock PM. And this concert will feature one of the pieces that Tony Cicoria has composed named the Lightning Sonata, which was written when he was hit by Lightning 1994, had a near-death experience and came back with a burning desire to play piano and to create music. So in this third segment, we're going to talk a little bit with Tony and see how this story comes to fruition. And in this dream, it was like an out-of-body experience. I'm actually, I'm walking out onto the stage and I'm walking toward myself. I'm way out on the front edge of the stage and I'm giving a concert at this concert hall. And I'm listening to this music that I'm playing. And as I'm walking up behind myself, the thought comes to me that this is not somebody else's music. This is mine. And I thought, okay, so I start listening intently to it. And I walked up behind myself and I'm listening to what I'm playing and I'm watching everything and I'm looking at the concert hall. And the ending had this loud crashing ending and it woke me up. And so I got up and I sat on the edge of the bed and I looked around and it was 3.15 in the morning and I walked out to the piano and I thought, let me see if I can plunk some of this out that I just heard. I had no idea. I had a write music. I didn't know how to read music. And I sat there and I could plunk out a few notes of what I heard, but I didn't even know how to write down what they were. And so I said to hell with this, I went to bed and I woke up, always at 5.36 o'clock because that was my time to get up and get ready for work. And from that moment on, whenever I went near that piano, the music from the dream would start to play in my head. So whenever I sat down at the piano, it was like a tape recording, it would just start. And if I didn't pay attention to it, it would become intrusive. It would actually start playing when I was trying to work or was trying to do something else. And so I learned very quickly that it was kind of like a two year old, you really had to pay attention to it, or there was going to be some repercussions from it. And so this process went on and I continued trying to teach myself. And I picked out a few of the pieces from that CD that I thought, I'm going to learn these first and I started trying to teach myself. And one day I'm banging away at the piano and my daughter's best friend, Jackie, was over at the house and her mom was coming by to pick her up and she came in the house and she heard me on the piano and she came in and said, "What are you doing?" And I said, "I'm trying to learn this piece of music." It was called a fantasy impromptu piece of Chopin. And I said, "I don't understand why the hands don't line up in this piece of music." And I said, "Why would somebody write a piece of music where the hands don't line up?" And she said, "They're not supposed to." And I said, "Why?" And she said, "It's called a polyrhythm." And I said, "I had never heard of that word before." And I was like, "Why would anyone do that?" And she said, "I'm not even going to try to explain this to you. You need to get a teacher." So at that point, she gave me the name of Sandy McCain, who was the chairman of music at Hartwick College in Onion to New York where we lived. And I called up Sandy and told her this whole story and asked her if she'd take on an old guy to try to teach him some piano. And she did, and we started working two hours a week. The only time we had in common was five o'clock. So five o'clock was our piano time, five o'clock in the morning. So I'm sure that her family was not real happy with me, but that was the best we could do to make the two schedules. And so this went on for quite some time. And then as I'm learning to play, I'm also working on the music from this dream. And as I learned how to do things, I would write down a measure or two, and I'd stuff it in a drawer or someplace thinking someday I'll get back to all of this. And I kept working on learning how to play, and I started going to a music camp, a piano camp for adults in Bennington, Vermont, which was called a sonata. And it's a group of people. They would meet four or five, six times a year. Different people, and at different times, and it's all people that are absolutely obsessed with piano. And this is their week of indulging themselves. And so I started going to that in 2002, in 2006, when I went, the owner's sister, Erica Vanderlin Fiedner, Erica, was the number one sales person for Steinway in New York City. And she had just left Steinway and went to Boseendorfer, and she was there at the piano camp, and she brought five pianos in for people to play on, which was an absolute treat. And we got talking about all of this stuff, and the music, and the music from the dream, and the things that I was working on. And afterwards, she said to me, "There's only one person that can tell this story, and that's all of her sex." And at the time, I didn't know who all of her sex was, other than the fact that he wrote the book "Awakenings" when he figured out how to treat Parkinson's disease. He is a famous neurologist, and I didn't think anything more of it. And so I went about my normal business, and it seemed like that was in May, that meeting was. And in June, I get a phone call from Oliver Sack, and I'm like, "This can't be real." And Oliver says, "I've heard about this lightning story, and I'd like to have you come down in New York City to interview you. I'd like you to be one of my patients. I have a collection of people like you who've had unusual things happen." And I said, "Sure, that would be great." So in August of that year 2006, I went down to see Oliver Sack, and I got to spend the whole day with him, which is an absolute treasure. This was a man who could think circles around anybody I knew, including myself. And we spent the entire day together, which I will never forget. And at the end of the day, we're standing in doorway and saying goodbye. And he looked at me and he had this piercing way of looking at people. And he looked at me and he says, "The music from the dream went through an awful lot of trouble to get here. The least you can do is write it." And I was so taken with what he said. I went right home, and it was about three hours to get back home, so I had plenty of time to think about it. But when I got home, the next day, I went right out and bought a music-writing program called Sebelius, which is... All right, so that is the last section of the story of Tony Securia. And this world-renowned pianist and composer has a story that is just fascinating. On August 11, Sunday, 3 o'clock to 5 o'clock pm, Tony's music will be highlighted at the Crow's Feet Farm in Kensington. And if you go to Crow's Feet Farm, you should be able to pick up tickets there. They're $10 if you're from Kensington and they're $20 if you're from outside the community. 180 drink water road. And as we go out, what we're going to do is listen to a little bit on our last segment last minute here, a little bit more of Tony's music, the Lightning Sonata. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Okay, so what we want to do is make sure everybody remembers that this event is August 11, very special event, a classical confection Sunday, August 11, 3 o'clock at the Crow's Feet Farm, F-E-A-T. And hopefully everybody will go out and hear a little bit of this beautiful music. Thanks for joining us today here on WKXL, New HampshireTalkRadio.com. [MUSIC]