Piano & piano

There probably aren't that many musicians out there who fit in the middle of a Venn diagram between dedication to the piano and interest in the music of Annea Lockwood. Being a pianist usually involves an obsessive focus on one segment of repertoire. (19th-century European literature and bop/post-bop jazz language come to mind, for some reason...) Acoustic ecology, as seen in Lockwood's output, is one of the most refreshing and productive correctives to the idea of "repertoire" as a foundational idea in music. And then there's the whole piano burning thing, which certainly gained her some attention, and seems maybe an inimical statement vs. modern pianism.

But setting a piano on fire or sinking it in a lake is not necessarily about destroying The Piano. It certainly does constitute a revocation of the special elevated status it took on in Europe a couple hundred years ago, but here's the thing: that allows us to reaffirm it as just another musical instrument, another box with strings and hammers, another object that can make great noises.

The piano's association with old music has really pulled it down in recent decades. But if it can become just another means of creating special sounds, on the same level as the others we have around us, its possibilities begin to reopen.