Mostly, I write about the adaptive reuse of space: how old buildings, rather than being demolished, are restored and given a new life, sometimes a new purpose. Old post offices and banks are saved and converted into boutique hotels; warehouses become breweries and coffee shops stimulating the regeneration of entire neighborhoods.
Replace the words “old buildings” with “old pianos” and we have a whole new field of adaptive reuse. Rather than throw these wonderful instruments on the junk heap, they might be restored and given another chance at life. But by whom?
The two protagonists in this story are Mauro ffortissimo and Dean Mermell and knowing a little about them adds the right “notes” to the story.
Mauro ffortissimo
Yes, his last name is spelled with a lower case double ff at the beginning — and you might have guessed that it’s not his real last name. It is Mauro Di Nucci — he acquired “ffortissimo” at the age of 5, when he banged the piano keys so hard, that his family nicknamed him “very loud” in Italian.
Mauro is Argentinian and arrived in the US as a young immigrant. Here, he found a new home and fell in love with new genres of music he hadn’t heard back home. He is a trained classical musician having entered a music academy at the age of six! From the beginning, Mauro loved pianos, tinkering with them, tuning them, and even dissecting them like a cadaver in a laboratory and creating individual art pieces of the sections.
Mauro has been described as a music ecologist, a painter, a poet, and an impresario and I recognize him as a Renaissance man and one of the most interesting people I have never met.
Dean Mermell
Dean is the other lead character and, Mauro’s partner and collaborator, a talented Canadian filmmaker, artist, musician, and writer from San Francisco. It was a fortunate pairing, as Mermell’s professional film background allowed him to document his and ffortissimo’s journey together as they co-founded the “Sunset Piano Project” in 2013. The project’s purpose: placing extremely heavy musical instruments in unexpected places.
Mermell owns a filmmaking company called Storyfarm in San Francisco, which produced the documentary film “Twelve Pianos” based on the the Sunset Piano project. It should also be mentioned that Dean Mermell characteristically wears a fedora hat!
Twelve Pianos Documentary
In 2017, I saw the documentary “Twelve Pianos” at the San Rafael Film Center where it had a special showing, and it set my imagination ablaze. This is a documentary that needs to be seen for its joie de vie and sheer determination.
Many years later, I still encourage you to see it. Handily, it is available on YouTube. Frame by frame it sensitively unfolds this unique and surprising story as it is happening.
“Sunset Piano” and “Flower Piano”
On Feb 1st, 2013, on a typical foggy, Half Moon Bay evening, Mauro hauled a Grand Piano, all 800 pounds of it, to the bluffs near his home, where it was placed at the end of Kelly Avenue on Francis Beach. Every evening at sunset, for one month, he intended to play Robert Schumann’s “Arabesque in C Major” to serenade the humpback whales
He knew as the days went by, the Grand Piano he was playing would begin to decay from the outdoor elements, adding an evolving element of change. After about two weeks, during which time the whales would gather in the water in response to the evening “Concert,” the County decided what Mauro was doing was illegal and ordered the piano to be removed. By this time it was already deteriorating from being exposed to the elements and he decided to burn it. Mauro made it known that the piano would be incinerated, prompting people to arrive and watch the spectacle. He set it ablaze and it burned to the ground. The coverage of a piano on the Bluffs at Half Moon Bay started to gain more traction and be reported on the internet, TV, and the papers, heralding numbers of people to come out to Half Moon Bay to follow the story.
To retaliate for “condemning” his first piano, Mauro decided to move 12 pianos and their benches across the San Mateo Coast in a clandestine operation. He found 25 volunteers who dragged the twelve pianos and their benches through fields, forests, and cliffs, placing them in designated places. This time he invited well-known musicians to perform and when the pianos were unoccupied, the public was permitted to take a seat at the piano stool and play, spontaneously, whatever they wanted to perform. Again the bureaucrats declared this illegal and the pianos were removed.
Although the officials won for a second time, Mauro and Dean found the pianos were front and center of a large story in the making. On the coattails of the publicity, ffortissimo and Mermell received an invitation from Santa Clara County to put pianos in five state parks, paying them $4,000 to keep them there for three weeks — legally, this time.
Then, another invitation in 2014: this time from the Mayor of San Francisco, whose office of Economic Workforce asked the collaborators to bring three pianos to the UN Plaza in San Francisco, installing them so that anyone who passed and wanted to, could sit down and play. This lasted four months and included twenty events — the San Francisco climate being a little more forgiving than the coast.
The Pianos Move to The Tenderloin
The next chapter of The Pianos took place in the Tenderloin, an insalubrious neighborhood of San Francisco’s where it was not unusual to see people dealing drugs or passing out on the sidewalk from the effects of drugs or alcohol. It is among the least safe neighborhoods in town — for people or instruments.
But pianos were loaded onto moving trucks for their journey to the Tenderloin, then trundled them down the street to the the corner of 6th and Howard Streets. This was in the heart of the Tenderloin neighborhood, and it was incongruous to see an army of piano movers trundling grand and baby grand pianos down the street, weaving in and out among the down and outs and hookers and addicts.
The destination? The decaying and empty “Defenestration” Building. Brian Goggin, a famous multidisciplinary artist — with the help of one hundred volunteers — had designed an art installation in the building that demanded one’s attention because it was so surreally shocking. He dangled huge pieces of furniture, such as fridges, stoves, couches, standing lamps, armchairs, sofas, tables, grandfather clocks and now pianos, seemingly right out of the windows (hence “Defenestration”). Although secured to the walls — hopefully — the illusion was that they were about to crash to the ground from the upper stories annihilating anyone in their path or on the ground.
The Defenestration Building, already a big tourist draw, because of Brian Goggins installation became an even bigger draw once grand pianos were added to the furniture tumbling out of the windows.
Mauro, Mermell, and their team began to organize underground concerts here, for invited paying guests who came to hear high-class piano and voice performers among this often violent, drug-addicted, and homeless population. From Half Moon Bay, with its pure coastal breezes and tranquil setting to the grittiest streets of San Francisco: a new chapter in musical history was about to unfold in San Francisco.
The beginning of “Flower Piano”
The crumbling Defenestration building was torn down and ffortissimo and Mermell were offered an interesting new project by the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department to showcase another side of San Francisco.
They were asked to create an event in San Franciso’s Golden Gate Park, to celebrate its 75th anniversary. The general plan was to conceal twelve pianos in designated places in the San Francisco Botanical Gardens where piano players could sit down and play whatever they wanted to play.
This was to be the first “Flower Piano” event and it was a huge success — big enough to be repeated each year, gaining larger and larger crowds who come to enjoy music in the open-air “Alfresco Concert Hall” that is the Golden Gate Park.
A Stroll in the Park that hits all the high notes
This year will be much like the others: in preparation, Twelve pianos are concealed in designated spaces throughout the Park. Starting their journey from a piano warehouse in the City, the pianos arrive by truck and are placed via dollies — legally, this time. Arriving at their designated spot, their legs are carefully balanced with pads underneath and an umbrella is installed overhanging the piano to protect it and the performer from the elements — because the concert goes on rain or shine. Once it is situated, the piano will have a final tune-up after its long journey as it awaits multiple performers. Hopefully, the damp air in the park will not cause any notes to stick! Just in case there are always two piano tuners on duty to deal with unexpected problems.
Golden Gate Park.
A little about the stage: Golden Gate Park is the largest park in San Francisco, measuring 1,013 acres of magnificent mature gardens, 55 of which are landscaped: an encapsulated green jewel brimming with a curated assortment of mature, trees, shrubs, and flowers, surrounded by urbanization on all sides. A year-round treasure, the gardens are juxtaposed into different sections based on geographic location. One may travel the world by passing through gardens of different diversity such as an Andean Cloud section, next to a Mediterranean garden, then South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, a California Redwood Grove, and plants from temperate Asia.
All this unflinching beauty comprises roughly 9,000 varieties of plants and is flawlessly connected by paths, lakes, and bridges punctuated with places to sit under the mature trees and commune with nature.
Lisa, my daughter invited me to join her at Flower Piano 2023. It was a perfect summer’s day — and I needed no coaxing!
The performers.
Flower Piano had had ten years at that point in time to build up a roster of performers — a community who volunteers to play or have been invited because of their talent. Most of them are not professional, but they all share a love of music and the joy of performing.
Finding your way around.
Arriving at the event, each guest is given a map of the park, indicating where the pianos are concealed. And if you lose the map, just follow the sounds of the tinkling piano keys. Signage was excellent and was coordinated with the printed map. Each location was different and chosen for its aptness acoustically and scenically — as well as the audience’s comfort.
The terrain needs to be flat so that the audience can surround the piano as well both sitting or lying on the grass. The venues also tend to be a mixture of sun and shade. One piano was placed under an old chestnut tree, with its extended mature branches creating a natural venue.
Each piano had an audience, some larger than others based on the popularity of the music being played or the time of day. Chairs are provided at the paid performances but mostly people sit or lie on the grass, or perch on the garden walls. We saw a birthday being celebrated, with birthday cake and gifts handed out during a performance. People may just listen to music, draw, enjoy a picnic, or even play cards. Someone even brought a garden swing!
It is completely informal. And where can you get front-row seats equivalent to this: if you want you can go right up to the piano and lean on it to get the best unobstructed view — or snuggle up to your love interest under the midday sun.
Organizing the Day
Each day is divided into segments and most segments have a main performer who plays whatever he or she wants to play. Once the performance is over, the performer will stand up and invite someone in the audience to take his place. In this “democratic” way, anyone can volunteer to perform. Mostly someone will step forward, but if not, the original performer will resume his place and continue the performance.
Not all pianos were active all day. Some were left unmanned. This was to allow passing minstrels to sit down and play. Unexpectedly, someone would walk up to the piano, throw their backpack to one side, and begin to play, and usually an audience would build. The spontaneity was refreshing.
The performances
Usually, twelve little concerts are going on at one time, and if you don’t like the program, just move along to the next piano. Enough space is allowed between concerts so that the sound does not overlap. The selection of music is highbrow, lowbrow and everything in between! We heard pieces composed by Brahms and Schubert, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Claire de Lune by Chopin excepts from Broadway Shows, Queen, Prince’s Purple Rain, Jazz , “When I Fall in Love” performed by a loving young couple, and “As Time Goes By” performed by an elderly performer!
The weekends are more structured, with ticketed events. One may hear the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra or specially invited national and international performers. These performances take place in the Great Meadow Garden with its, expansive lawns that can accommodate with a bigger audience,
Who are the performers?
I enjoyed speaking to some of the performers. An elderly gentleman said he plays to keep his Alzheimer’s at bay; a young lawyer who was a consummate classical pianist said he loves music but does not have space in his small apartment for a piano. Two young brothers in jeans and beanie hats who played jazz said they play duets because they love performing together. An elderly woman admitted she hadn’t played in 50 years, hardly knows what day it is, but can remember the music she learned as a child and hopes her mother would be proud of her!
The Pianos
I don’t know how many pianos are warehoused by ffortissimo and Mermell, but by now they must have several hundred thousands of dollars’ worth. Most of them are donated. After all, what can you do with an old piano when you no longer need it? You can’t fold it up and put it in a drawer. It’s much easier to have someone come by and collect it — especially if they’ll move it for free.
Once a freshly donated set of ivories arrives at the Sunset Piano warehouse, ffortissimo cleans, repairs and tunes it. Perhaps some parts need replacing. There are more Kanabes and Yamahas than Bechsteins and Steinways, of course — which is irrelevant, because they can all be played.
What did I love about Flower Piano?
Everything! I loved walking through the park and being surprised by yet another piano tucked away inside the foliage. The spontaneity, the inclusiveness irrespective of class, education, background, age, ethnicity, sex, or anything else that divides us. And I love that Mauro ffortissimo and Dean Merman brought this amazing experience to San Francisco — it’s long road from serenading the whales in Half Moon Bay to giving joy to thousands of people in San Francisco.
Conclusion.
What a day! In the afternoon the fog began rolling in from the ocean, bringing a cooler breeze and a cloud build-up — after all, this is San Francisco. Lisa and I left still wanting more.
Flower Power 2024.
Flower Power 2024 is scheduled for September 13th to 22nd, and it is best to reserve tickets online. San Francisco residents enter for free: seniors from elsewhere pay $9.00 and the rest of the tickets cost a little more. The schedule is yet to be published and will include the paid events and a grand opening night concert that will also be ticketed. Be advised to book online: gggp.org/flowerpiano.
How wonderful! This is a special story and remarkable event that I am tempted to visit. I know so many people who have had difficulty getting rid of their pianos, so this would be a superb way to pass it on.
I love this!
I loved your post. Beautifully written & aptly describes the experience of a day in the magical Golden Gate Park. Let the notes continue!
Thank you for asking me to go with you! It was an uplifting day. Can we do it again next year?