Leeds Piano Trail 2024
Pianodrome were honoured and excited to return to Leeds as ‘Artists in Resonance’ with the Leeds International Piano Competition. Scattered in public places throughout the city and open for all to enjoy a colourful trail of piano planters and piano sculptures bursting with life lead to the grand Brodrick Hall at the Leeds City Museum where our beloved Old Royal Pianodrome had its spectacular English debut.
Daily free lunchtime concerts, workshops and happenings as well as chance meetings and public pianos played by all and sundry animated the space which was curated throughout the festival by our team of volunteer ‘Pianimators’ led by our very own Tom Nelson and Shona MacArthur. Three new public pianos, tuned to resonate in harmony, were embedded into the three Pianodrome ‘wedges’ of tiered seating specially for the festival each with a different sized keyboard to suit different sized hands, small, medium and large.
On Saturday evenings a series of special live ticketed events co-curated by the Competition and Pianodrome went off like fireworks featuring Lucy and Brad, winners of Channel 4’s The Piano and Pianodrome creators S!nk who hosted their new show ‘How to Play a Pianodrome’ to a packed and appreciative crowd.
Heralding the coming of the festival, the competition and the trail was a unique exhibition of photographic prints; fantastical clandestine portraits of abandoned pianos in dilapidated mansions around the world, by artist/pianist Romain Thiery. This exhibition can now be found at our warehouse workshop in Granton, Edinburgh.
Our special thanks go to Melvin, Sally, George, Jake and Bruce for hosting us so kindly and to Fiona and Adam for their determined and unstinting support with which this epic project could never have happened.
