For the last 12 years I have played piano in the streets to create concert situations which are free, inclusive and spontaneous.
It all started in Edinburgh during the Festival in 1999 with an old van I bought and a piano from a charity shop. I wanted to see whether pedestrians would enjoy some piano playing on their way to the shows.
People seemed to like it so I decided to try touring and have done several tours within Europe, getting the piano out in the most unusual places and playing ragtime, stride and boogie woogie to anybody who happened to pass by. My favourite composers of early Jazz are Fats Waller, my all-time stride music hero, and also Scott Joplin and George Gershwin.
The little piano I have been playing since 2000 is a very special instrument, it has the action below the keys which makes it shorter (but no less heavy unfortunately). It was built by Steingraeber, a still family run piano makers in Bayreuth, Germany, and was built in 1937, when those kind of pianos were still being manufactured.
It has served me well and with its very strong steel frame it can hold the tuning in the extreme conditions it has been put through and still sound beautiful.
A short film has been completed about the streetpiano project:
’10 Years of Streetpiano’
View it at www.tiny.cc/streetpiano
2 CDs are available at www.streetpiano.com
The latest CD (released in 2011) is called ‘Streetpiano Ragtime’ and includes tunes such as In the Mood, The Entertainer, Honeysuckle Rose, Singing in the Rain and others.
[Streetpiano in Malmö, photo by Eric Swanepoel]
