Wants to audition for national competition

MOSES LAKE — It turned out Charlotte Alvarado was right all along.

Charlotte bought a piano at a yard sale, a purchase that her husband Jesse Alvarado said left him a little puzzled. After all, neither one of them played the piano, nor any other musical instrument. But his wife liked the idea of a piano, so a couple of his nephews moved it into the house.

Then Jesse Alvarado’s mom died, and one night he was having an especially tough time. “Something drew me to the piano, and I started playing.” He just played and experimented, coming up with an original composition – and it sounded pretty good. “Holy smoke, I was really surprised,” he said.

Alvarado has been playing piano since 2010, he said. “I just sit down and play. Practice and practice and practice, and it comes to me. A miracle happens.”

He sticks to his own compositions, he said. Alvarado suffers from cerebral palsy, which means he only has the use of nine fingers when playing piano.

Alvarado never took lessons, he said. “It’s a gift from God.”

He doesn’t play other music, but he listens to it, “anything and everything,” he said. Currently he’s listening to a lot of Mozart, he said, which influences his own compositions.

He just keeps playing until he hears something he likes, he said. “It just comes to me.”

An employee at Samaritan Hospital, periodically he plays the grand piano in the hospital lobby. He wrote a song for Charlotte that he played when the piano was dedicated. Charlotte suffers from multiple sclerosis and lives in an extended care facility. “Her face just lights up when he plays,” said Jesse’s friend Janet Shearer.

Playing brings up “good memories of my wife,” Alvarado said.

Currently he plays once a month at the Wenatchee Performing Arts Center and the Pybus Public Market, also in Wenatchee. There’s the possibility of a concert at Big Bend Community College. But he has bigger ambitions.

“Some day, I want to play on a stage,” he said. He was accepted for an audition for “America’s Got Talent,” and his friends set up a GoFundMe page to help him pay expenses.

But his dad passed away, and he wanted Jesse to play at his funeral. He honored his dad’s wish, even though it conflicted with the date of his audition. He plans to try again for that audition, he said.

Alvarado showcases many of his songs on his Facebook page.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at [email protected].