About

Piano (de)composition is a long-term installation organized by Brown Ph.D. candidate Devanney Haruta. The project features a piano that is located outdoors, open for public interaction. The piano will be in place for the next three years until 2026, and visitors are invited to play and engage with the piano to observe its changing materials and sound over time.

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Piano (de)composition challenges the notion that a piano must be in ‘good condition’ to have musical value and expands the piano’s possibilities for music-making. When I heard that the department was getting rid of an old piano, rather than have it sent off to the dump, I thought this would be a good opportunity to give this instrument a second life. Relocating the piano to a new home outdoors gives us a chance to see and hear how the instrument reacts to and performs with the environment through the changing weather and seasons. It also opens up opportunities for reflection on the relationship between sound, material, and environment, and our own interactions with and expectations for instruments.

This project is inspired by the work of Ross Bolleter, an Australian composer and pianist, who finds, creates, and performs on what he calls ruined pianos. Whether found in abandoned buildings or received as donations, these pianos have fallen into varying states of disrepair from neglect or disuse. Bolleter relocates these instruments outdoors, where he performs and improvises on them. As the pianos break down in the elements, their material changes the sounds of the instruments in unpredictable and extraordinary ways. This work also draws inspiration from Annea Lockwood's series Piano Transplants, particularly her piece Piano Garden (1969-70). This blog is inspired by the site "Piano + Time, a blog," which documents an installation of Lockwood's Piano Drowning at Plas Bodfa in Anglesey, Wales.

This blog will follow the material, sonic, and social journey of the piano over the coming days, months, and years. I would like this instrument to be a resource for creative projects, whether musical, artistic, or otherwise. Please reach out to me if you have ideas for a project; I also look forward to featuring the various engagements with the piano on this blog. 

Many thanks to the Brown University Music Department, whose support made this project possible.

Devanney Haruta is a Ph.D. candidate in the Musicology & Ethnomusicology program at Brown University. She holds an M.A. in Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University, where she wrote her master's thesis on piano destruction in works of art and music, and an A.B. in Music and Math from Brown University, where she wrote an honors thesis on player pianos in the early 20th century United States. While at Wesleyan, she curated an exhibit titled Beyond Repair: Examining Brokenness in Musical Instruments, which was on view in Wesleyan's Olin Library in 2021. In her current research, she is interested in musical instruments, their materiality, and their relationships with humans and the environment. She is currently working on her dissertation to examine themes and metaphors of life and death of musical instruments.