If a piano falls in Fort George Park, you can bet a lot of people will hear.
Just because the garden-variety Winter & Company instrument was no longer able to keep tune doesn't mean it had no voice. Its last note was a long one as the combined force of gravity and 88 keys came together from a great height, the echo hanging in the Fort George Park sunshine for an unusually sustained musical call. It subsided in a heap of wooden shards and recognizable bits of familiar piano anatomy that were surreally cast about the impact zone.
And then there was the cheer.
Those watching roared like a Roman coliseum crowd rooting for the death of a gladiator. They were standing at the western wall of The Exploration Place on Friday night where the Casse-Tete Experimental Music Festival got off to a slamming start by dropping the otherwise irreparable piano from the roof of the museum to the lawn (covered in plywood) below.
"It was cool. I love destruction," said Peter Kellet, proprietor of Page Boy Books, relishing the rare opportunity to celebrate the smashing of something formerly valuable.
"It is now a repurposed piano," said Ron Johnson, an engineer for Deltech Manufacturing and the founder of the Believe In PG page on Facebook.
"I thought it would be cool to see a piano go boom. And it was," said Theatre North West marketing and development officer Carli Staub. "It's also a great chance to meet up with the greater arts community and support Jeremy [Stewart, founder of the Casse-Tete festival]."
Stewart admitted the piano drop was a stunt, but it succeeded in bringing more than 100 spectators out to launch not only a piano from a rooftop, but a music extravaganza unlike any other. The Casse-Tete festival went on through the weekend with an audience topping 120 people for a particularly niche form of music. It more than doubled the attendance at the first event in 2013.
"There will definitely be a Casse-Tete 3, and we would love to have it at Exploration Place again," Stewart confirmed on Wednesday, "but I'm thinking we won't drop any furniture this time. We have to keep that special."
The major development they have in mind for next year is to hold the incoming artists, and put the local artists to more use for musician master classes. Stewart said the benefit to the community would multiply if these players of experimental music could impart their skills and experiences to the area's players.
"Prince George can be so mainstream. You can be stuck in the mainstream no matter where you live," said Staub. "And this is what a festival like this is all about - something new, something interesting."
Do you know what's interesting? Seeing a piano's innards come out of its chest, said Bob Campbell, head curator at The Exploration Place and the man who first said out loud in Stewart's presence that Prince George should have an experimental music event of its own. It was Campbell's roof that the piano (donated by Judy Russell) was placed by Sterling Crane (service donated by Ken Morland of Sterling Crane). He oversaw the construction of some ramp structures so it could slide off the roof without damaging any of the building. He and piano drop conceiver Peter Stevenson of PS Piano Services got the best seats in the house for the final crash.
"I was able to step forward and actually see it hit from this vantage point," said Campbell. "It split in half like a sandwich, then all the deli meats and cheese curds spilled out."
"It was fabulous. Just perfect," said
Stewart. "So many people came out to watch, and so many people did so much to help. I don't know if we can ever do another piano drop, but the first one for Prince George was amazing."
