There’s a public art installation in downtown Denver, Colorado, consisting of numerous hand-painted pianos left out for people to play. (I’m in town for the August 19 Disquiet Junto concert being held at the Walnut Room.) This is a recording of someone improvising on one of these pianos within earshot of a water feature. The minimalist repetition of the performance seemed to match the patterns of the water. There’s a pause in the piece, when the performer was moving from one approach to another, and it creates a frame for the sounds of the city at that moment. The pianos appear to have been out in the open, perhaps on and off, for at least two years; here’s a story from the Denver Post from back in 2010: denverpost.com.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/disquiet.
In Iowa City, where I live, we’ve had public pianos in our downtown area for a few years. I made some field recordings involving them in the spring of 2011 and they’re featured in my Podcast #47 from June 4, 2011. Direct link: http://www.markrushton.com/music/podcast/markrushtonpodcast47.mp3 (31:20, 45mb). For the uninitiated and curious, my podcast archive is at: http://markrushton.com/?page_id=241