Natural sportsman and musician

Ever since his boyhood, His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej has proven to be resourceful, self-motivated and independent. As an adult, he has shown himself to be a talented painter, photographer, musician (and composer) on several instruments, as well as a linguist and sportsman.

In recent years, he has employed the camera as a tool of development in his upcountry travels.

He has photographed terrain in order to study in his leisure time the best means of channeling water for irrigation. He also recorded nature's excesses - floods, droughts, and the likes in order to devise remedies to these age-old problems.

From an early age, His Majesty's first love has been music. He was coaxing sounds from a saxophone even before he had reached his teens.

His love of jazz - especially the blues - was nurtured from an early age, and developed to such a level of proficiency that, on a visit to New York in 1960, he was invited to sit in with jazz great, clarinetist Benny Goodman.

That joyous occasion led to jam sessions with other jazz legends, many of whom visited the Kingdom in order to play with His Majesty.

Not content with a single instrument, he also achieved admirable skill in playing the clarinet, trumpet, and guitar.

From playing tunes, it was a natural progression to composing music, experimenting with phrases on the piano as he wrote.

One photo depicts him deep in concentration, writing a score while a cat perches above him on the piano lid.

He is the composer of 48 songs, his signature cadences immediately definable.

One of his best-known works, "Blue Day," was adopted by Mike Todd in 1950 for "Peepshow," perhaps the only time a Monarch's composition has been showcased in a hit Broadway musical.

His Majesty is a talented linguist who has used his command of languages to communicate with foreign heads of state and visitors to the Kingdom.

Fluent in English, French, and German, he has employed his skills as part of the broad outreach of his education program, translating into Thai foreign books he feels would benefit his people.

His Majesty has always been as physically active as he has been mentally adroit.

While living in Switzerland, he learned to ski, a sport that he pursued avidly.

But it was sailing that captured his lifelong interest. He learned to sail single-handed off Hua Hin and took part in competitions at the Royal Varuna Yacht Club near the beach resort town of Pattaya.

Interested in the engineering potential of fast boats, he began designing and building his own craft.

The ultimate recognition of his sailing skill came in 1967 when His Majesty and his eldest daughter, Princess Ubol Ratana won the Gold Medal for sailing at the Southeast Asian Peninsular (SEAP) Games.

(China Daily 12/05/2007 page21)