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About a year ago I wrote here, more or less in passing, about London’s street pianos. Thirty-one they were, scattered round public places and provided complete with laminated songbooks.
This spring, they’ll be back – and at the same time, the Play Me I’m Yours project will also cross the ocean and invade New York.
Play Me I’m Yours is an installation, but you might say it’s also random performance art. It’s the creation of artist Luke Jerramo, whose other works include a plant orchestra at Cambridge Botanical Gardens – amplifying the sounds plants make as they take up moisture – and the acoustic wind pavilion Aeolus , soon to be sited on UK hilltops.
New York’s street piano adventure is to be carried out by the New York based artists’ activism group, Sing for Hope. Sixty public pianos will be available for anyone to play in public parks, streets and plazas from 21 June to 5 July (2010).
Further reading:
June 8th, 2010 at 11:35 am
I can not wait to see people playing the piano in the park. Sharing melodies with the rest is the best way to get harmony.
June 15th, 2010 at 10:43 pm
I honestly can’t think of anything more irritating. It’s not that the music won’t be very good, but it’s that this project essentially makes unsuspecting passersby a captive audience. With an offensive painting or sculpture, one can simply look away. In the case of music, can you “listen away” if you don’t like it? It’s a little rude to impose noise on people who may not want it.
June 16th, 2010 at 12:01 pm
Oh, I can think of MANY more irritating things.
Seriously, I see your point, but this has to be better than the boom boxes that used to infest the streets of most American cities a couple of decades ago.
Really, it doesn’t strike me as much different from the street busking you see all over Europe during the fine weather.
How about South Korea’s advertising dancers, gyrating to a sound system blasting rock on street corners?
Or even just their stores and street vendors, calling attention to themselves with loud music and loud PA systems.
I haven’t been to China yet, but I hear it’s pretty noisy too.
But this is real people making live, impromptu music on the streets. I’m all for it.
February 11th, 2011 at 8:21 pm
I can think of a lot more irritating things too.
I saw the pianos around town last year and heard people playing beautiful music.