Play a street piano an artist is still painting
150 pianos, painted in public
Painted upright pianos placed around downtown, free to play, run jointly by the city's Art in Public Places programme, the Bohemian Foundation and the Downtown Development Authority.
Why it's unique
Pianos About Town puts working, tuned, artist-painted pianos out on the street for anyone to sit down and play. More than 150 donated pianos have been painted over roughly fifteen years, and the painting itself is done in public in Old Town Square between May and October.
Street pianos exist in a lot of cities. What is unusual here is the scale, the length of the run, and that the decoration is a rolling public performance rather than something that arrives finished overnight. You can watch a piano being painted and then play it.
Before you go
They are maintained and tuned, so they are meant to be played rather than photographed. That is the thing most visitors get wrong: people circle them like sculpture.
May to October is when an artist is working on one in Old Town Square, and catching that is the better version of the experience. Outside those months the finished pianos are still out around downtown but nothing is being made.