<
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/24/rick-wakeman-vietnam-bears-moon-sanctuary>
"Rick Wakeman has played to all kinds of people around the globe, but he has
now performed to an audience he had never encountered before – an enclosure of
150 bears.
The former Yes musician, who has gone on to have a prolific solo career, played
the piano at a Vietnamese bear sanctuary.
“Before you ask, I won’t be playing the teddy bear’s picnic,” he joked ahead of
the performance. Wakeman, who is a supporter of animal welfare causes and has
rescue dogs and cats of his own, is conducting the concert to raise awareness
of moon bears kept in cruel conditions for the extraction of their bile.
He said he was a bit worried about how hot it is going to be. “You know the
heatwave we had in England? It’s double that,” he said. “They offered to rig up
a fan for me, but I figured that will just blow more hot air around.”
His concert was performed live on a Yamaha grand piano positioned in Animals
Asia’s bear sanctuary in the Tam Dao national park, and Wakeman had written
some new compositions especially for rescued bears.
Asked whether the bears would enjoy the music, he said: “They’ve not got much
choice, really. It’s a well-known fact that all animals react to music,
especially gentle melodic music. So what I am going to do is piano music that
is melodic, and I can only hope that they will come up to the perimeter of the
sanctuary and have a listen.”
Wakeman has been sponsoring rescue bears since 2016 and recently adopted a new
one: “He’s only 20 months old, a big fella, I went to see him today. He came
out right to the edge and stood on his back legs and just stared at me, it was
brilliant.”"
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
