By Aidan Jones

When I was 17, I auditioned for classical piano at Adelaide’s Elder Conservatorium for Music. I prepared Debussy's Clair de Lune, and was supposed to learn a piece by Bach as well, but didn't like it, so I didn't learn it. 

Honestly, I thought I should be able to play what I want and they should just let me in anyway. Like why do I even have to audition, this is stupid and if you don't agree then you're stupid too.

So yeah, I didn't get in.

I honestly didn't have that much to be angry about as a young man, but like many young men I resolved to be angry nonetheless. Me and my friends spent a few years taking drugs and smashing up the neighbourhood, and then when I was 20  I started doing stand-up, which provided some much-needed direction, along with a community of other beautiful, wayward freaks. 

Ten years went by in a moment.

I didn't miss playing piano during my 20s. Doing comedy every night fulfilled the creative urge and need for attention, and after I left home at 21, I never had a piano in the house, so I didn’t think about it. I'd always sit down at public pianos and play, and sometimes people would comment that I should add music to my stand-up. Never! I'd say, musical comedy sucks, and its practitioners are weak, coward dogs.

When the pandemic hit, I was 29 years old and living in Melbourne. I was working various hospitality jobs and spending three or four months a year gigging around Europe, Asia and at the Edinburgh Fringe. I wasn't making any money from comedy, but I was on stage every night. 

In 2019 me and my friend Peter Jones (no relation!) had a competition to see who could do the most gigs in a year. It ended in a tie – 610 each. I tell you that firstly because I'm proud of the hard work and I want to show off, but also to illustrate how completely I was absorbed with being a comedian. I'd built my whole identity around it, then Covid came and suddenly it was gone.

I remember on that first day of lockdown, racking my brain for something to post on social media, so that I might replace the dopamine hit of getting on stage. I filmed myself juggling a football in the driveway, doing some gardening, and as I’d just managed to score a free Yamaha Clavinova from a friend, I played a little piano. The videos were largely (read: entirely) ignored, but it got me playing again.

If it wasn't for lockdown, I don't think I'd have invested much time into the piano, but with those empty, yawning days stretching into the distance I needed something. I downloaded the sheet music for Chopin's Nocturne in E♭ Major which I had heard, but never played, and started learning. 

I listened to recordings of the piece to hear how it should sound, and from there

discovered the rest of Chopin's incredible catalogue of music. I found my way to other romantic composers like Liszt, Schubert and Mendelssohn, and even, would you believe it, to my old nemesis, Bach!

I learned about these composers’ lives so that I could put their music into a personal and historical context, and because it's jolly to learn about a thing as you play it. I studied music theory and remembered with a newfound gratitude the brilliant teachers who had drilled this stuff into me in high school. Aural recognition, sight reading, scales, harmony - it all came back! The foundations were there - it was like moving into an abandoned house, dusting off the shelves and polishing the floors until you wonder why you ever left in the first place.

The more I discovered, the more joy I felt at this new world that had opened up before me. I wanted to share it with people, so when we were allowed back on stage I swallowed my pride and went up with a digital piano. I wrote jokes to explain the music for people with no background in it, taking the lessons from school and using music theory as premises, with dumb punchlines drawn from years of making bad decisions.

I'd spent so long talking about my own life on stage and wondering why it had never really connected with a wider audience. Somehow, sharing this music that I felt so excited about was more personal than any story I could tell about myself. My show Chopin's Nocturne, in which I break down that first piece that drew me back in, was – is – the most successful thing I've ever done. I'm so proud of it.

Last year I toured the show around Australia, and in Chopin's native Poland on the 176th anniversary of his death. I went with a friend to watch the International Chopin Competition, and visited the Chopin museum in Warsaw, as well as his old home in Valldemosa in Mallorca. I’m bringing the show back to the Edinburgh Fringe this year after an incredible season in 2025, and then I'm taking it on the road to more than 20 cities in the UK from September. Then in November

we're heading back to Edinburgh to film it at the gorgeous Pianodrome. All of this is a dream come true!

Amid everything I make sure to find plenty of time to play. I've been working my way through Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier - I can play four preludes and the first fugue - next I might try Mozart! 

I still get upset when people call me a musical comedian, but I'm working on that too… one thing at a time.

I'm so grateful to have found my way back to the piano. Grateful to all the teachers, and my family, who gifted me the love of this thing that I have now for the rest of my life. They graciously persisted when I fought back, because they saw what I could not. That I was just an angry young man who didn't know what he wanted from the world.

• Aidan Jones: Chopin's Nocturne is on at Assembly George Square at 14:40 – see an extract below. He is also performing a show about JS Bach at  Laughing Horse @ The Counting House at 19:45

Published: 5 Aug 2026