pianoNovo

pianoNovo

I stumbled on a repulsive scene: three men were beating a piano with hammers. It screamed minor chords like a living thing. The men were house cleaners who were removing the remnants of the former inhabitants. To me it seemed like a horrible waste of something old and beautiful.

Pianos have emotional and physical gravity. For several generations they were a symbol of affluence, permanence and culture. The older piano-playing generations are fading and leaving their instruments to untrained hands. Most of these go unwanted and are building blocks in the great pyramids of trash our culture builds. So I stopped the man and took ownership of the still resounding 400 pound piano.

After I examined the hammer marks, I began to realize that it was no longer a piano. I did not have the ability to make it appropriately musical. The piano had to become something new. I started to take it apart with ominous bongs and clangs that became the score to my work. The pianoNovo project is a conversation in form between the piano builders, the piano smashers and myself. As I refashioned it, I thought about the changing generational ideas of beauty, permanence and disposability. I thought about the transitions from actual music of pianos to the “frozen music” of sculpture.