Ruined

Hobart Bond Store, Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery

5 April 2009

Ten Days on the Island Festival Of Timbre and Taxonomy

Ross Bolleter. Avant garde composer, archaeologist, social historian and Romantic. The audience is transfixed and transported as he conjures noises, alien and familiar, that stir our imagination. He tells stories that flood our hearts and our memories. Only a labour of love can unearth this kind of magic. Young and old, piano or no piano in our separate worlds, we are connected by a shared history and an extraordinary music.

In the Hobart Bond Store in the bowels of the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery stand the many ruined, rescued pianos from Ross Bolleter’s Tasmanian travels. In his Taxonomy of Ruin, he has set up a classification system for us: neglected (including verandah pianos); abandoned (including shed pianos), weathered; decayed; ruined; devastated; decomposed; annihilated. Hundreds of people are being turned away from this popular, free event. The audience is over capacity. Our curiosity builds.

Over two months, with the help of Teresa Beck-Swindale from Tasmanian Regional Arts, Bolleter located ruined pianos from the furthest parts of Tasmania. As he stands before us, his eyes twinkling-a humble and jolly man-he welcomes us to this leg of his Tasmanian journey. He begins by telling us that he was sorry to tell people that their pianos were ”just not ruined enough”. He reckons the Bond Store is a fitting venue for this performance, as the entry point to Tasmania for many of these pianos would have been the docks that lie behind these walls, across Davey Street. He tells us of a bygone era when the piano was the “bearer of European culture”, and delights us with stories about the hardships born by the lovers of these non-portable instruments.

And the pianos. They look decayed and precarious, these uprights with soundboards exposed-one, found at Scamander rubbish tip, lies on the the ground in the far right corner, chopped up and dismembered. Bolleter introduces each one as he plays them, their original owners, and how each was found from in far reaches of Tasmania. Their provenance lay as

far as Paris, London, Berlin, and America. One woman from Beauty Point rescued a piano just as it was about to be burned, carrying it away in a horsefloat so it could continue a more stately demise buried beneath books in her shed. Many pianos became habitat for animals, insects and birds. Ross recounts a story of how upon playing one, white ants poured out and began dancing for him in concentric circles on the casing.

Ross Bolleter treats each piano with the love and dignity it must have enjoyed in its prime. Each piano is reborn in a clamorous reverie. The timbre is strange and beautiful as he improvises with experience and virtuosity. He plays them on his knees and sitting upright. He plays sitting below the keyboard on a cushion and with his elbows. Felt hammers nock and clap with no strings left to reach. Some ivories ping, some keys tinkle, some make no sound at all. Soundboard strings twang and resonate as he reaches underneath. Now and then he incorporates recognisable melodies.

Ross improvises for us a finale that incorporates all of the pianos, playing fragments of The Road to Gundagai. These pianos are now endeared to a loving audience, for a moment restored to their former cultural glory and to the centre of our consciousness.

Sara Wright is an artist based in Hobart, Tasmania

The October meeting of the Sacramento Valley Chapter, PTG, will be held at a special date and time:

Following this early technical program, we will walk a few doors down to Mary’s Pizza Shack for a brief business meeting, followed by pizza and beverages.  This is an earlier-than-usual start for us, but please plan to be there prior to  5:30 PM, as Mr. Mohr has another event beginning at 7:30 that evening.

We’d like a head count for this event, so please call Dan (916) 224-0122, or email me before October 1st.  If anyone has a copy of Mr. Mohr’s book, he may be available to sign them.  If anyone wants to order a copy for him to sign, let me know ASAP,  (within the next day or two),   and I’ll see about getting a quick order together.

The September  meeting of the Sacramento Valley Chapter of the Piano Technicians Guild will be held Tuesday, September 8th, at the shop of Dale Fox

7101 34th Street,

North Highlands, CA  95660

Business Meeting to begin at 6:30 PM.

Gene Nelson will be presenting the technical program:  “Bending Damper Wires,”  a topic that should both fascinate and frighten most of us.