Sudhu Tewari: Street Piano

Street Piano

2021

The Street Piano has become a destination for local preschools

Some recent Comments on the Street Piano and Sound Garden:

"The best part of the pandemic!"

My child's favourite place to visit!"

My Mom in New Jersey is Listening in!"

"My kids have decided that we must come here EVERYday!"

"You LIVE here?!"

February 2021 - Can Kora refurbished

I refurbished the Can Kora and people have been enjoying the new addition. I'm attached to the name even though I've just learned that it doesn't have 21 strings and therefore shouldn't be called a Kora. The littles often forego the strings and percuss the top of the pepper tin with the mallets.
Loud sounds!!!

November 2020 - more music makers!

Elements of Play Hear have come to live at the Street Piano.
Play Hear was an interactive sound installation masterminded by Bart Hopkin, with contributions from Peter Whitehead, David Samas, Ian Saxton, Ben Carpenter, and Sudhu Tewari. Play Hear appeared at the market Street Prototyping Festival in 2016 and, after an overhaul, at Bridge Storage ArtSpace (2019-2020). The weathered elements of Play Hear have now joined the Street Piano to bring Joy to passersby. Currently the stalk chimes and tongue drum benches are up and running. I plan to get the stomp flutes installed soon. Someday, we'll refurbish and reconfigure the tongue drum benches. For now, They are enjoyed as they Are!

September 20, 2020 - a nice sunset

September 9, 2020 - the Orange Day

Smoke from nearby Wildfires filled the air
and turned the world orange for a day

September 2020 - New Honker

New honker added to the street piano for
hands-free, Corona-Safe music making
(although some still prefer to use their hands)

.

July 2020 - A New Frame

As the weather works its magic, the street piano has begun to deteriorate. For safety and Aesthetics, we built a new Frame and cut out some of the rotten wood.

April 2020 - Inside Out

Our dear friend, composer Cenk Ergun, now living in Berlin, contributed this lovely piece of music to the street piano, the first of many sonic gems to grace the earwaves of southwest Berkeley

video from a local Street Piano aficionado:

Cenk also used sound samples (and image) of the street piano in
Amore Vieni for Isolated Ensemble
a composition of recordings made during the quarantine

photo by Carly McLane

March 2020 - Alvin's Inauguration

Esteemed composer Alvin Curran visited not long ago to play in the sound garden. This wonderful moment seemed like the perfect event to mark the beginning of this new phase of the street piano and sound garden.

Corona Virus Quarantine - 2020

The street piano has taken on a new form and significance during the quarantine. I noticed that a lot more people were out walking in our neighborhood and many seemed to be looking for connection. This seemed like a great excuse to spruce up the sound garden, tune the piano, and invite people to enjoy some 'secret' sonic wonders. I mounted an audio transducer to the piano soundboard and have been playing various sound fragments and musical compositions through the piano. It's not readily apparent where the sound comes from and you typically have to be close to the piano to hear the sound. It's a lovely moment of discovery when someone hears it for the first time.

As always, the tennis ball remains (for playing the piano)
and
Live performers appear daily.

The tuning of the piano changes from time to time.

Some recent guest artists:

Kester Allen's Twitter posts document various stages
of the street piano over the years.

Mabel Street Piano continues to evolve: pic.twitter.com/gfEcXFIMBA
— Kester Allen (@kesterallen) May 3, 2018

R.I.P., Mabel St piano: pic.twitter.com/NNJ1wL4fo9
— Kester Allen (@kesterallen) July 8, 2017

Mabel Street Piano has been adorned with a femo clay timeseries representation of the formation of the moon: pic.twitter.com/M8z9UKg7Ld
— Kester Allen (@kesterallen) June 6, 2017

The Maple Street piano looks like it might just survive to the end of 2016 pic.twitter.com/vF699boinq
— Kester Allen (@kesterallen) November 29, 2016

Maple Street Piano isn't getting less weird #Berkeley pic.twitter.com/pbSG6OE1Ch
— Kester Allen (@kesterallen) June 15, 2016

Mabel Street Piano has had a little spruce up! pic.twitter.com/vTU7L0UliA
— Kester Allen (@kesterallen) April 26, 2016

Increasingly decrepit street piano still has three working notes! #Berkeley pic.twitter.com/Qn9AKIwcub
— Kester Allen (@kesterallen) February 10, 2016

Sidewalk piano is suffering pretty hard from El Niño. #Berkeley /cc @berkeleyside pic.twitter.com/KLJywAGL7F
— Kester Allen (@kesterallen) January 7, 2016

The Street Piano project began in 2015 when I picked up a free piano at DC Piano Company in Berkeley

I was in the habit of driving past DC Piano at least once a week to check for the occasional free piano that would show up in front of the shop, because I had been wanting an old piano soundboard to experiment with, they sound absolutely amazing even without the proper playing mechanisms, keys, etc. On this occasion there was a piano up for grabs and I was able, with the help of one of the awesome piano techs, to tip the piano onto its side and install casters on the piano so I could push it home on the street. This seemed easier than borrowing a pickup and loading the piano into it. I pushed the piano about 10 blocks to get it home, only dropping it once on the way.

Here’s a video of the push home:
(I regret that I didn’t make a better audio recording of the jangling journey)

I didn’t have a good place to store the piano once I got it home and it was already in pretty bad shape (that’s why it was free) so I left it outside thinking I’d let nature assist me in disassembling it to get to the soundboard. I put the piano in the small driveway on the side of my house, right on the border between my property and the sidewalk, thinking that if nothing else, the children who passed the house every morning would get a chance to see the piano slowly disintegrate and reveal its inner workings.

It’s been there ever since, almost 5 years now.

Claire Ittner, a grad student at UC Berkeley wrote a paper and blog post about the street piano and sculpture garden:
http://quirkyberkeley.com/sudhu-tewaris-sound-sculptures-2814-mabel-by-claire-ittner

At one point we lit it one fire, just a little. I would have liked to burn the piano and record it, but I couldn’t imagine our neighbors or the Berkeley Fire Department to be very excited about that, so we contented ourselves with a very small controlled burn, just to get some nice photos.