The Demo Site

The photo above shows a street piano at the London Liverpool Street Station. 30 free-to-use pianos have been scattered around old London town as a part of this month’s Sing London festival, encouraging pedestrians to hit the keys and engage with their urban environment.

Touring internationally since 2008, ‘Play Me, I’m Yours’ is an artwork by artist Luke Jerram

Street pianos are appearing in cities across the world. Located in parks, squares, bus shelters and train stations, outside galleries, markets and on bridges and ferries, the pianos are for any member of the public to enjoy and claim ownership of. So far, Jerram has installed 167 pianos in 8 different cities worldwide.

Who plays them and how long they remain is up to each community. Each piano acts as sculptural, musical, blank canvas that becomes a reflection of the communities it is embedded into. Many pianos are personalised and decorated.

Questioning the ownership and rules of public space ‘Play Me, I’m Yours’ is a provocation, inviting the public to engage with, activate and take ownership of their urban environment.

Here is a French poster of a woman giving child piano instruction with richly colored background, by a French illustrator-artist named Eugene Oge.

This poster could be named: First Piano Lesson. The first lesson is being given by an instructor in a green dress to a red-headed youngster in a beige print. With the red and yellow background and indigo carpet, the richly-colored poster could easily have been a skirmish of competing hues. But Oges keen eye melds them together harmoniously in this quaint design.

Oges principal claim to fame was his long tenure as house artist for printer Charles Verneau around the turn of the century; he also, however, produced numerous drawings that were well-received in fine-art circles. Eugene Oge, a did a number of great advertising during his lifetime from 1861-1936. He was a major figure in the Belle Epoque and did many outstanding ads for resorts, food, and all sorts of beverage brands.

As a piano teacher, this is one of the collection I have on my piano studio.

A retrospective exhibition of all his posters drew a large audience at the Bibliotheque Forney in Paris during the summer of 1998.

This is an antique advertising poster for a piano company. I love these old vintage photos. It is so romantic and nostalgic.

Odenplan is a plaza located in the district Vasastaden in central Stockholm, Sweden, named after the old Norse god Oden. Odenplan is also the name of the subway station located here which opened in 1952. Construction work which began in 2006 and soon to be completed in 2011 will make Odenplan one of Stockholm’s largest public transportation hubs.

The stairs in this photo is located at Odenplan metro station. The stairs were built to test the theory of fun. Every step on the stairs produces a corresponding piano note tune, and passengers are observed to be having fun climbing up and down the stairs producing piano. Here is a video showing the response to the Odenplan piano stairs.

One story after another, we hear of Alzheimer's patients who lost their power of speech, recognition yet can still remember their music. Oliver Sacks, a neurologist theorizes that "Music occupies more area of the brain than language does." Music is somehow embedded in the brain, and Alzheimer's patients are able to recall the function of music and somehow express themselves through it.

The book "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and The Brain", Oliver Sacks, the author neurologist describes the Alzheimer's sufferer Woody Geist, who loses everything but music: singing "can give him back himself, and not least, it can charm others, arouse their amazement and admiration - reactions more and more necessary to someone who, in his lucid moments, is painfully aware of his tragic disease and sometimes says that he feels ‘broken inside'." The book was voted as one of the best books of 2007 by the Washington Post. Here is a video clip of what Oliver Sacks has to say.

One of the most inspiring stories of adults learning piano is that of Aline Chretien, wife of the former Prime Minister of Canada - Jean Chretien who was prime minister for the years 1993-2003 .