All Around London, an Invitation to Make Music....

All Around London, an Invitation to Make Music
LONDON — The piano was standing innocently near the Millennium Bridge, minding its own business except for a cheeky come-on — “Play Me, I’m Yours” — printed on its side. For a 24-year-old Australian tourist named Lauren Bradley, it was as alluring as a sign saying “Free Chocolate.”
“I live away from home and don’t have my own piano, so any chance I get to tinker, I take it,” Ms. Bradley said, spotting the piano after crossing the bridge. Without even sitting down, she pounded out the beginning of “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” as passers-by recorded her brief performance on their cellphones.
Ms. Bradley then walked on, but the piano remained, ready for its next customer and its next song. (Rachmaninoff? “Chopsticks”?) All around London its fellow pianos were waiting, too — 30 of them in all — part of an interactive art project meant to challenge people to come out of their urban insularity and also to provide some summertime music.
“They’re out there to get people talking to one another and to claim ownership and activate the public space,” said the creator of the project, Luke Jerram, an artist who lives in Bristol. He previously brought incarnations of it to Birmingham, England; São Paolo, Brazil; and Sydney, Australia. “It’s a blank canvas for everyone’s creativity.”

The London project is scheduled to last until Monday and has cost about £14,000 (or a bit more than $22,000), Mr. Jerram said. The biggest obstacle was the city’s tangled, multilayered bureaucracy, which required him to obtain a separate music license for each location. He used old, unwanted pianos that people had “chucked out,” he said — in contrast to São Paolo, where pianos are scarce and so precious that they cost a year’s salary. There, some people traveled for hours just to have the chance to play.
The pianos, which are secured to the ground with metal cables and have plastic covers in case of rain, have proved a huge hit. All of them are still there — outside the Natural History Museum, on Portobello Road, in Leicester Square and in the churchyard of St. Paul’s Cathedral, among other spots. None has been vandalized. People have tended to relinquish their places courteously after a while to allow others to perform.
A piano tuner who travels around on a bicycle, providing on-the-spot help, has had to bring in reinforcements to deal with all the wear and tear.

Best of all, Londoners have resoundingly disproved the stereotype that they are genetically incapable of spontaneous acts of public exuberance. Professionals and beginners; exhibitionists and their impromptu groupies; players of every aptitude from highly gifted to virtually talentless — all have tried their hand at the pianos. (Highlights, including a pianist dressed as Mozart, a 9-year-old boy playing Chopin and the musical comedy duo Katzenjammer playing on 24 of the pianos in eight hours, are available at streetpianos.com/london2009.)
“It’s quite good at showing everyone some — I don’t know what word to use — culture,” said Connor McElhinney, 15, who was hanging around the Millennium Bridge piano, just listening.
The piano is in a prime location to attract people walking on and off the bridge, which traverses the Thames between the Financial District and Bankside, near the Tate Modern gallery. It was rarely available that afternoon.

A music student named Hannah Watson, 19, stopped to knock out the first movement of the Ravel Sonatine. Wearing a T-shirt saying “Let Me Drop Everything and Work on Your Problem,” a 13-year-old visitor from Israel named Amotz Oppenheim played his entire self-taught repertory: the beginning of “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.”
Then came Martin Roig, 39, a wedding planner from Argentina, who attracted a circle of amateur paparazzi and had people sending videos to their friends with his impassioned renditions of several Scarlatti sonatas.
“He’s not doing it for money?” asked Ilya Fisher, 45, who stopped to listen en route to the dentist. She came back a moment later with a bottle of water for the performer.

Mr. Roig said he had not played in public since he was a child. “I felt like I was a little boy again,” he said. “I think it’s a beautiful idea, and it makes people nearer to the music.”
A young woman taking part in an improvisation project for a Canadian Web site that requires her to interact with props around London sat down and began to play. It wasn’t a real composition, in keeping with the improvisation theme, but it still sounded good.

Suddenly musicians were coming out of the woodwork. Glenn Comiskey, a member of a traditional Irish band called Eist (the word means listen), stopped to play Van Halen’s “Jump” and then a sing-along encore: Abba’s “Dancing Queen.”
Mr. Comiskey said he does not really know how to play the piano, although he does play the guitar, the mandolin and the low whistle. By coincidence, he said, he had just passed the street piano at Smithfield Market, where a man in a fedora was “trying to impress his girlfriend” by playing virtuoso jazz.

“They’re like buses,” he said of the pianos. “You don’t see one for ages, and then suddenly they’re everywhere.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/11/arts/design/11pianos.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss