Steve Lopez discusses and signs The Soloist April 18, 2008

When Lopez, an L.A. Times columnist, first saw Nathaniel Ayers in March 2005, he was intrigued. Dressed in grubby, soiled rags standing next to a shopping cart, the middle-aged man was playing Beethoven on a battered violin that looked as if it had been pulled from a dumpster. Lopez found it impossible to walk away from this musical genius whose talent had been buried under years of untreated mental illness, and what originally started out as a simple column has become a moving story about second chances and the power of human connection & friendships.

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