Piano for Pyros

Last night a piano was burned in the center of the Carleton College campus. It was a beautiful thing: a roaring wind-fed blaze lighting up a circle of maybe three hundred students (along with a few scattered codgers like myself). As the fire consumed the piano (really just a big, wooden box) more of the internal structure was revealed. About an hour into the event, as the keyboard fell into the ashes, the vertical strings and metal frame resembled a pair of harps leaning against each other.

The spectacle was a performance of a 1968 "composition for piano" by artist Annea Lockwood, who spoke beforehand to perhaps half the crowd, which is all that could fit in the packed lecture room where she answered questions and provided a context for the piece.

I wouldn't have expected it, but it turned out to be a big media event (with much more coverage than Scarlett Johanssen's visit last year). My photos and videos of the performance are most easily accessible from this post on Northfield.org.