To kick-start my career, I put a piano in the sea
mainA Cornish teenager with a lovely voice and ambitions to be a singer-songwriter decided the best way to get started was to play a piano in the sea, in a shallow beauty spot at low tide, and call in a film crew.
According to local media: ‘A plea was sent out on Facebook by Diani to find an old piano for the film, luckily a lady from Newquay who had owned one for 45 years heard about the appeal and offered hers; although she was not told what it would actually be used for.’
All well and good, and we hope Diani, 17, gets the lift-off she seeks. But every time a musical instrument is abused by getting dumped on a beach, or thrown out of a window, or mishandled by an airline, the art of music gets devalued one more notch and the profession of musician becomes that much more tenuous.
There needs to be a society for the protection of unloved musical instruments.
On reflection, this particular stunt and others like it aren’t exactly all that original in any case – surely director Jane Campion set the ultimate precedent in this regard with her 1993 arthouse film “The Piano”, set in the nineteenth century, which shared the Palme d’Or in Cannes the same year.
As a result, for a while afterwards, I seem to remember there was also a bit of a trade downunder with T-shirts bearing the words “I left my piano on the beach”! – great film though, with its very accessible and appealing Michael Nyman score. It has to be said, however, that the piano in the film (ostensibly a Broadwood) came to a very sticky end indeed. (… As for that poor Steinway in Kansas, that really is a bit of a shocker.)