PIANO ACTIONS

A whole day of grand pianos, spiders and a museum in motion

Saturday 19 September, at 11:00–17:00

190 kr

We are all pianists.

For one day, the piano takes over Henie Onstad Kunstsenter. Grand pianos, upright pianos, electric keyboards, self-playing technology, loose piano parts and instruments have been prepared, rebuilt or taken apart. Some are played by professional pianists, some by students and children, some by dancers, and some by you.

PIANO ACTIONS is composer and curator Nils Henrik Asheim’s six-hour exploration of the piano as instrument, object, body and playground. The event is made for families, young audiences and curious listeners of all ages.

In the art center’s Studio Stage, Reinhold Friedl, Ellen Ugelvik, Christian Wallumrød and many other outstanding pianists perform throughout the day, turning familiar piano traditions into new games and experiments. In the corridors and foyer, piano students from the Norwegian Academy of Music and pupils from Bærum kulturskole play prepared pieces and improvisations.

The building is full of things happening at once. Follow a sound into a corridor, stay for a while in the Studio Stage, go outside, come back. Among the surprises, oversized spider-like sculptures that stretch piano strings and hammers into new bodies.

The piano leaves the home, the practice studio and the concert hall, and moves into the galleries, the landscape, and into your hands.

Steinway & Sons. Photo: Steinway Piano Gallery

Keys to PIANO ACTIONS

The title points to the piano’s inner mechanism. Pianos are not only instruments. They are also boxes of wood and metal, full of hammers and strings. Press one key, and the whole machine starts to move.
Try the self-playing Steinway Spirio grand piano. You can play on the keys or draw sound on an iPad. No experience is needed.
Touch the sculptures. They come alive through sound, movement and touch.
Follow the dancers from Nagelhus Schia Productions and Rud upper secondary school as they move through the building and outdoors.
Like your classics? Beethoven, Bach and Chopin show up, but perhaps not quite as you know them. The day also draws on Cage, Feldman, Kagel and Henie Onstad’s experimental history, where music could also be action, instruction, theatre and play.