by Dylan Schaeffer
Take a stroll down the bustling Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh on any given afternoon, and amid the city sounds you hear a trumpet wailing away in smooth jazzy tones. Looking around, it’s impossible to tell where it’s coming from. That is unless your curiosity gets the best of you and you follow the sound, taking you down 17th street, almost the entire way to Smallman. There, you’ll find Glenn Surgest sitting on a stoop, blowing on that horn like his life depended on it.
I sat down with Glenn, who I had not previously met, to talk about his street performance. A week from turning 58, Glenn realized in only the past few years that street performance was one thing that was able to fill his life with joy. His inspiration to play, he told me, is the complexity and beauty of waking up alive every morning.
“A lot of people walking around don’t even realize that things could end,” Glenn told me. “They don’t even realize that they’re alive and that life is short. It’s like a match – you strike a match and it burns and… it’s gone. It’s like you’re a fly and you only got one day to live and you don’t even realize it.” The substance that fuels Surgest’s performance is simply that “you got to live while you have the chance.”
While some people throw tips into his jar, I got the impression that Surgest was more interested in the experience of playing to the public. He told me that the interaction with people was a very “real” experience, filling his life with happiness and meaning.
While street performance is something Surgest enjoys thoroughly for its own sake, he told me that he has been a gigging musician for years and that the street performance kept him constantly growing as a musician. Recently, he appeared with vocalist Kea Michaels at Biddle’s Escape in Regent Square in Pittsburgh, where he says he plays fairly often.
Surgest, a very outgoing and friendly character, seemed equally as much a philosopher as he is a musician. Overall, we talked more about how to live a good life than we did about his music.
“It all comes down to the choices you make,” he told me. “You can be in a situation and do the right thing or the wrong thing. Things can always be better and you can always choose to do the right thing in any situation. People wake up every day and say ‘today’s a bad day,’ and you tell them ‘you woke up though. You’re alive,’ and they just look at you like [you’re crazy]. You just got to make the best of what you have.”
While Surgest would rather play to a live audience than make records, he told me where to go online to find a song he recorded with friends. He said that he doesn’t own a computer, so his online presence is almost non-existent. The one shining example of his work that exists online can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujHMWb0VcQc
If you’re ever in the Strip District and hear the trumpet calling through the streets, I would highly recommend following the sounds to enjoy even a brief moment of Glenn Surgest’s music. If you happen to strike up a conversation, tell him where you heard of him. I’m sure he’d be happy to hear it.
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