Michael Meneguin’s senior project was normal enough, he learned to play piano. It was his presentation that was note worthy. Meneguin is a very quiet, “in the background” kind of person, so when he stood up to do his presentation the class wasn’t ready for his stage presence, or how funny it was going to be.

A fun fact about Meneguin- the day of his presentation he had fallen and sprained his ankle during a badminton tournament. During third and fourth period he was in the emergency room and when he came back, he was hopped up on pain meds.

So, when Meneguin limped on stage, we all smiled and asked him to show his ankle, which was twice its normal size. Meneguin (known as Charlie to a few people) pulled out his key board and explained that he had decided to learn piano for his senior project because he was already good at other forms of music and figured the piano was something he could do easily. Charlie is a member of the jazz band here and he used to do marching and concert band. While he was still learning piano he was asked to play it with the jazz band. “I was super under prepared, I had to BS a lot of it,” he says.  His normal instrument is trumpet.

He opened the presentation with a joke about using musical skills to find a woman, with someone in the audience calling out, “You should be a stand-up comedian!” He then proceeded to give his presentation as a “how to play piano for dummies”  lesson that he totally killed. At one point, Meneguin even tried to use a fog machine to add some “Pizzaz.” However, it didn’t work, but the sentiment was there. His humor aside, Meneguin showed the class that he had mastered the piano, giving several demonstrations and even playing the melodica, which is essentially an instrument that is a mix between the harmonica and the piano. When asked if music was something that he would want to continue doing in the future he said no, that there’s no money in music and that he’s going to study business.