Over the past month Luke Jerram's
streetpianos project has placed thirty pianos in public places in and around London, open for anyone to play. The project comes to an end this weekend in London and the pianos will now be removed and sold.
I've particularly enjoyed this Art 2.0 experience: looking for the pianos took me on a tour of familiar and unfamiliar London, and it's been fun watching the mini-events, friendships and collaborations form spontaneously around the pianos, playing or singing along myself, and meeting other piano-seekers of all abilities. Different locations have drawn City professionals or citizens, travellers or tourists, giving the crowd around each piano it's own feel.
I'd like to acknowledge
D-n-K, the awesome musical trio that were aiming to produce a charity album on all 30 pianos in one day; the lovely Korean illustrator who accompanied my Bridge Over Troubled Water at the Millenium Bridge; the young girl whose parents couldn't tear her away from the Liverpool Street piano; the duo who filled the Plaza with Hero; a chance meeting and chat with fellow blogger and underground chef MsMarmiteLover at Devonshire Court, and everyone I met who also just felt like having a go.
Streetpianos and One&Other have in common an artist who, instead of creating the art themselves, is facilitating involvement by hundreds of users. Of the two, Streetpianos feels more spontaneous. Both Art 2.0 projects say something about our willingness both to participate in creativity and to watch others; the friendly supportive crowds make these events very different from the sinister world of reality TV as there's no competitive side. Streetpianos is a nomadic festival moving from city to city and I look forward to a return to London some day.
Skulking amongst the debris that had been Liverpool Street Station I came across a feral piano, battered, patched, weathered. Pianos were once kept as pets by the pre-Recession super-rich; pampered, tuned, entered in prize shows. Only the finest scores would do. Now the survivors roam the streets unchecked, searching for scraps of music amongst the rubble and litter.
I spotted another piano here in Devonshire Court. These are hardened beasts, evolved beyond the pretty creatures of their heyday - observe their weatherproof shells. Should you find yourself in a close encounter with one, stay calm. Resist the urge to run. Approach very slowly - let them see you coming - and play something gentle and soothing. Singing is also recommended. 
It's a piano-eat-piano world out there - this specimen had come off worst in a fight, and so dragged itself into a corner of St. Paul's Churchyard to lick it's wounds. The piano itself survived but the stool will eventually die - and there's no guarantee that a new one will sprout.
I found this piano scratching out an existence beneath the Gurkhin, a pre-Recession henge or monument to the glass god. Standing out in the open, it had lost any fear of humanity and did not shy away as I approached to play it.
I understand pianos. Abandoned by my parents in a musical instrument warehouse as a helpless babe, I was raised by a Knight upright and a Clavinova. Pianos are conservative at heart. The leader of the tribe, a Bosendorfer, wanted me thrown to the howling strings but a sympathetic glockenspiel intervened on my behalf and taught me the laws of music. To this day I still dream in blues scales.
But when I discovered the secret of rock and roll I knew I had crossed the line that separates man from keyboard instrument, and I went out into the world in search of my own kind.
The range of colourful markings on these feral pianos may represent a new, disturbing evolution: tribalism. Alternately they may be a form of camouflage - this piano has taken on elements from the surroundings of Leadenhall Market. Feral adaptation is a sign: life will find a way.
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