ANATOMY of the piano

Anatomy of the Piano is a critically-acclaimed one-man performance featuring virtuosic playing, storytelling and piano dissection with hand drawn animation. It has been enjoyed by audiences of all ages across the world from Sydney Opera House to the Alaska Centre for the Performing Arts, with many places in between. It has been translated into Chinese and performed over 300 times across China.

In 2015, I adapted my original Anatomy show into a performance for family audiences. Anatomy of the Piano (for beginners) is the story of a boy who asks Father Christmas for a spaceship but is given a piano. Initial dissappointment turns to curiosity when a special piano dissection manual hidden inside the instrument leads him on adventure. Meeting Bach, Beethoven and Fats Waller along the way, he discovers that the piano and music will take him to the Moon and beyond.

Anatomy of the Piano (for beginners) was selected as part of the Made in Scotland Showcase 2016 and also for I.P.A.Y. 2017 in the U.S.

Along with the live piano score, the stortelling is supported by illustration and piano dissection. Tim Vincent-Smith’s scrappy, spontaneous drawings, which appear on a giant screen above the piano during the show, for me, perfectly capture the essence of the piece. These come to life towards the end in an animation by Ross Hogg, set to Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata.

I wrote and premiered the show at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2013. There the performance space was an old vetinarary school where professors had once dissected animals in front of students. I was inspired by the idea of part recital, part dissection.

Here is extract an adaptation of Anatomy of the Piano for school children, commissioned by Leeds International Piano Competition, entitled Piano Fantasia.

Taking the piano apart was a preoccupation of mine since childhood and in early 2013 I’d been at a friend’s concert where they were playing inside the piano. Seeing the hammers striking the strings never loses its charm. But I was struck by the power of the reveal. I don’t think they had intended the act of strpping the piano back to be part of the show, rather an incidental requirement. For me it was the best bit of the performance. I knew I had to capture this in Anatomy of the Piano.

Written and performed by Will Pickvance
Illustration by Tim Vincent-Smith
Animation by Ross Hogg
Script edit by Robert Alan Evans
Directed and produced by Magda Dragan