Rick Wakeman Plays Grand Piano for 150 Rescue Bears in Vietnam

Rick Wakeman, the former Yes keyboardist and longtime animal welfare campaigner, played a private concert last week for an audience of 150 rescued moon bears at a sanctuary in Vietnam.

Wakeman performed at a grand piano, debuting several new compositions written specifically for the bears, The Guardian reports. He declined to play one obvious repertoire choice. "I won't be doing 'The Teddy Bears' Picnic'," he joked.

The concert aimed to raise awareness of bears kept in cruel captivity for their bile, which is extracted via a needle stuck into the gall bladder and used in traditional Chinese medicines. The market for bear bile ranks among the largest in east Asia's illegal wildlife trade. Vietnam recently outlawed so-called bile farms, but some bears remain in captivity.

Wakeman, 75, laid out the stakes in concrete terms. "We have 150 bears at the sanctuary, but there are 125 bears left in cages in the old bear bile farms, and there are four dying a month," he said. "We have to get them out quick and into the sanctuary."

He chose the programme deliberately. Animals, he noted, "react to music, especially gentle melodic music." He added: "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." Video of the performance shows several bears doing exactly that.

Asked whether his audience would enjoy the show, he quipped: "They've not got much choice, really."

Wakeman has sponsored rescue bears since 2016. Among his most recent adoptees is a 20-month-old bear that attended the concert. "He came out right to the edge and stood on his back legs and just stared at me, it was brilliant," Wakeman said of meeting the "big fella."

The musician credited the sanctuary's rehabilitation work, describing transformations in animals that had known nothing but confinement. "To see the bears be rehabilitated, having a life they never had before, some have never put their feet on grass before," he said. "They are so wonderful, that we can do such horrendous things to animals is beyond belief. Before this, they were chained in cages sometimes for 10 or 20 years in conditions where they couldn't even turn around."

He continued: "If you see them, you can't help but be moved. They aren't tame but they are very safe, very happy, they play, they romp. I witnessed two today jumping in a bubble bath and playing. They've got a life back."

With 125 bears still caged on Vietnam's defunct bile farms and dying at a rate of four per month, the sanctuary's race to transfer them continues — and Wakeman's compositions now form part of its soundtrack.