Sounds of Now: Annea Lockwood – Piano Garden
This installation of Piano Garden in Woodseats Community Garden was made by pianist Xenia Pestova Bennett on 25 April 2026 following a concert of Annea Lockwood’s piano works presented by Music in the Round and University of Sheffield Concerts.
One of a series of ‘Piano Transplants’, Piano Garden is an artwork by the experimental composer Annea Lockwood. The ‘score’ for each of these performances is a set of instructions to destroy a piano which “should already be beyond repair” by drowning it in water, burning it by fire, or – in this case – by partly burying it and leaving it to slowly become part of the surrounding natural world. The score for Piano Garden is a series of instructions which are followed to create a performance of the work, just as a traditional musical score is played by musicians: “Dig a sloping trench and slip an upright piano in sideways so that it is half interred […] Plant fast growing trees and creepers around the pianos. / Do not protect against weather and leave the pianos there forever.”
Music journalist Kate Molleson wrote in her book Sound Within Sound (Faber, 2022) about the series ‘Piano Transplants’: “Lockwood is one of the world’s great listeners. She is one of the world’s great devotees of tactile sound […] Always she considers how sound is formed by nature and by our own bodies, and what sound can do to nature and our bodies in return […] Sound can make us feel. Sound can make us care.” In 2018, Lockwood described her work as drawing attention to the connectedness of the world: “Listening to the natural world, looking, taking it in, smelling it… all of that is vitalising. All of it re-awakens recognition.”
Ear-Walking Woman by Lockwood, one of the pieces for prepared piano which featured in the concert by Xenia Pestova Bennett can be seen here performed by Katharina Bleier:
You can view a performance of Piano Burning (1968), the first of Lockwood’s Piano Translpants here:
You can view a performance of another Piano Transplant, Piano Drowning (1972) as activated by Xenia Pestova Bennett who installed Piano Garden in Woodseats Community Garden here:
A recent lecture by Annea Lockwood entitled ‘Living by Ear’ can be watched here:
And a recent interview with Annea Lockwood can be read here.
Have you come to this page from scanning the QR code on the piano? What sounds have you been able to make from the ‘Piano Garden’ in Woodseats Community Garden? How has the piano changed since it was installed? Tell us in the comments below.