2: Wells Fargo Center, Downtown L.A.

2: Wells Fargo Center, Downtown L.A.
Designed by: Ryman Arts
Piano type: Full upright
Playability: Fair
Weather: 62°F, partly cloudy
How I got here: Metro Red Line subway, walking

One of the many things I'm involved in is a citywide music festival called Make Music Los Angeles, which is intended to be Los Angeles' version of Paris' Fete de la Musique festival, and would bring free music performances, of all sizes and genres, to public spaces around the city on the first day of Summer, June 21. We meet in an office building Downtown, and being a member of its board, we talked briefly about the street pianos as a similar-themed public music event.

I alerted my fellow board members to the fact that there were two street pianos just a short walking distance from our meeting, so a small delegation of us made our way towards Bunker Hill on a windy, yet party cloudy Spring day, with the snow-dusted San Gabriel Mountains looming towards the north.

When we arrived at Wells Fargo Center, below the two bronze-colored highrises in the Downtown skyline, I had no idea where the piano was, until I heard the faint sound of the plinking of piano keys. Like a pioneer finding a river, I spotted it after just several seconds, right along Grand Avenue, and called over the rest of the camp.

When the piano was free, I got on it -- my second piano. As fellow board member LeRoy Downs took out his cameraphone, I started to improvise a little blues ditty (to plug Make Music L.A.):






Right away, I noticed the out-of-tune honky-tonk sound and the black keys in the lower octaves falling apart! I had to struggle with manually placing the broken key back to its original location in order to play it, before it fell off again!

One of our board members, George Novinger, brought along his singer-songwriter daughter, Saya, and she played a little Maroon 5 on the piano:






It seemed that only Saya and I were the only ones in the group who played (or at least who were brave enough to). I had intended to make a picture and video performance from every piano visited, so I handed my camera to Saya and had her record me doing Stevie Wonder's "Love's In Need of Love Today":






As soon as we got done, it was all a matter of crossing the street to get to the next one!