Fragrant flowers, melodious music
They were wiping the dewdrops off the pianos in San Francisco on Friday.
Not just the dewdrops, but the pine needles, the flower petals, the bird droppings and a lot of other things that don’t usually find themselves getting wiped off pianos.
“The piano is a parlor instrument, and we’ve taken it out of the parlor,” said Dean Mermell, the founding genius behind Flower Piano, the annual outdoor doityourself piano festival at the Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park.
Friday morning was the grand opening for the 12 pianos — grands, baby grands and uprights — scattered around the 55acre garden. Within minutes, Michael Smith of San Francisco took a seat at the piano in the Garden of Fragrance and began pounding out an etude by Philip Glass.
The etude tried to fit in with the scent coming from a nearby rose bush and the shade from a chestnut tree and the twittering of a bird but, it being the music of Philip Glass, didn’t quite.
Playing in the elements, Smith said, involves stiff fingers, wet keyboards and the occasional twig that can fall into a piano from on high and wreak havoc on the 88 keys.
“But I love the piano
and I love the Botanical Garden,” he said. “It’s all worth it.”
In the Rhododendron Garden, a half dozen kids enrolled in the garden’s day camp listened while Mermell played the “Graceful Ghost Rag,” which got more than one young toe tapping.
“I liked it,” said Adrian Botha, 6. “I never heard a piano outside before. It’s more naturey.”
Keeping all dozen pianos in working order was piano tuner John McArdle and his footlong tuning wrench. The A note on the baby grand piano in the garden’s meadow was registering 438 hertz, which is not enough hertz by two full hertz. A cold, lonely night in a meadow can do that.
“It’s flat,” McArdle said and tugged on the wrench ever so slightly. In the hands of a master, a tuning wrench doesn’t really wrench, it makes suggestions. McArdle tuned all of the piano’s 222 strings by ear, without benefit of batterypowered gizmo.
“It’s all a matter of balancing the fourths and fifths, and checking the thirds and sixths,” said McArdle, which is what he proceeded to do for the next hour.
Last year, 61,000 piano and plant fans showed up at the garden, breaking all attendance records. Most days, an early morning visitor to the San Francisco Botanical Garden can have the place practically to himself. Not during Flower Piano.
In the five years that the event has been running, it has gripped San Francisco like a cable car on the Hyde Street hill. The event, said Mermell, brings out the unsung living room pianists of San Francisco.
“It’s surprising how many incredible players there are,” he said. In return, they get their 15 minutes of fame — that’s how long each player gets, according to a sign attached to each piano.
Tinkling is OK. “Chopsticks” is OK. “Für Elise” is OK. There is really only one rule at Flower Piano and it’s printed on all the signs, too: “No banging.” “But,” said Mermell with a sigh, “there are going to be kids who bang and plink and pound, and there will probably be more performances of ‘Chopsticks’ than I’d care to hear. It’s all part of the magic.”