October 2018, photos Susan Levenstein

2019, photo Luca Vitiello

January 2024, photo Dora Stiefelmeier

PIAN DE PIAN PIANO, a bit of poetic nonsense, is a natural continuation of my life as a pianist and a form of post-modern piano-art, created as an installation for No Man’s Land, an open-air artspace created by Mario Pieroni and Dora Stiefelmeier (RadioArteMobile/Zerynthia) on the eastern edge of the Abruzzi mountains at Via Giacomo Acerbo, 1, 65014 Loreto Aprutino (Contrada Rotacesta), a half-hour from Pescara.

In July 2017 I placed a legless, strangely shaped old French grand piano slightly tipped on a pile of local stones, a small Japanese maple planted discreetly behind it, atop a hill overlooking other works in the collection.

Antonio Trimani created and installed a mechanism that made all the keys of the piano play a single tone-cluster chord every 90 seconds, while loudspeakers inside the piano played a music with no beginning and no end, a concerto for piano and symphonic woods, an absolutely organic product where sound and nature blend in absolute harmony.

The instrument is meant to remain outdoors rain, snow, or shine as it metamorphoses (or decays) into an imaginary silent symphony hall for deer, wild boar, snakes, birds, and all kinds of microcosmic bacteria.

Video by Curran; video by Zerynthia.