Life at 95 Is a High Note for Brunch Pianist

Want to get on the good side of Olivia Scalzo? Ask her to play “Maple Leaf Rag” or, for that matter, any song that might test her incredible memory of songs.

“That’s why I like requests,” said the 95-year-old pianist who has been playing for the brunch crowd on Sundays for the past three years at the Harbor Grill in Dana Point Harbor.

“It keeps me in touch with certain numbers I haven’t played in a long time,” she said while playing the piano just inside the eatery’s entrance.

While the nonagenarian favors playing ballads and popular songs for the brunch buddies, “I like to play ragtime music when they ask for it.” Especially “Maple Leaf Rag.” “I like that one,” she said.

Even though she studied classical music, Scalzo shies away from it during brunch. “Classical music always has a part that is exciting and people eating a meal want more relaxing music,” said Scalzo, who said she studied at the Juilliard School of Music.

Her piano career started 88 years ago at age 7, when she studied with teachers who she says were graduates of the Boston Conservatory of Music and the Juilliard School.

Before she married, Scalzo played piano at roller-skating rinks and in movie theaters during the silent-film era.

After marrying at 22, she never performed in public, preferring instead to play only for her husband.

Olivia and Joseph Scalzo had been married 70 years when he died. In fact, “Not one of my family members is alive,” she said. “I’ve outlived all of them.”

Scalzo said playing the piano “is all I do since my husband died.”

She was playing at another restaurant six nights a week but had to give it up when she moved from San Clemente to Laguna Niguel.

She got her chance at the Harbor Grill one night while attending a birthday dinner with friends there. Scalzo asked the management if she could play while the regular pianist was on a break.

They agreed and she became the restaurant’s brunch musician.

“I was looking for something to take up my time,” she said. “I’m happy here and hope I’ll always be here. I hope they will want me as long as I live.”

Harbor Grill co-owner Alaa Elsadek said: “As long as she can play she has the job. We love her and everybody here loves her.”

That includes the cooks.

“The told me they would make anything I want to eat,” the plucky entertainer said. “I haven’t done it yet. I don’t like to eat when I’m playing the piano.” And she never takes a break during her four-hour brunch stint.

At times when the night piano player is unavailable, “we ask her to play and she always responds, ‘Yeah, no problem,’ ” Elsadek said.

Scalzo said she is content: “My life is ending up in a happy way and it’s all because of my music. I love my music.”