Free Keys CT Piano Trail to Fill New Haven and Shoreline with Music This Summer

Friday • May 3, 2019

There will be the sound of piano music wafting through the breeze across Connecticut this summer. Beginning June 21 on International Make Music Day, 13 pianos painted by local artists and placed in public, outdoor spaces in New Haven, Branford, Guilford, and Madison, Connecticut will become the Free Keys CT Piano Trail.

The Free Keys CT Piano Trail is designed to provoke people into engaging, activating, and claiming ownership of their community through music, and provides an interconnected resource for the public to express themselves through making, listening to, and enjoying music. It places pianos painted by local artists in pop-up, outdoor locations across the region. The public can play the pianos and participate in sheet music lending “libraries” housed in the piano benches of each instrument. The New Haven Symphony Orchestra, a co-producer of the project, will perform chamber music concerts at New Haven piano sites across the course of the summer.

The Free Keys CT Piano Trail is currently looking for the following:

  • Donations of upright pianos
  • Artists to volunteer their time and talent to paint a piano at the historic C. Cowles Company factory building located at 83 Water St in New Haven the week of June 17
  • Volunteers to sand and prime the pianos

Those who are interested should contact FreeKeysCT@Gmail.com.

The public will be able to view the pianos and meet the artists at an open house on Thursday, June 20 at 11am, presented in collaboration with the International Festival of Arts and Ideas. The pianos will be placed at their sites in New Haven, Branford, Guilford, and Madison beginning on June 21 and will remain in place until the end of the summer.

The Free Keys CT Piano Trail is an expansion of the Free Keys CT Project, which was presented in the Summer of 2018 by the Friki Tiki in the shoreline Connecticut towns of Branford, Guilford, and Madison. Free Keys was founded and supported by Carly Callahan, Greg Nobile and The Friki Tiki.

Learn more about the Free Keys CT Piano Trail, including upcoming piano site announcements and NHSO concert dates, at Facebook.com/FreeKeysCT and Instagram @FreeKeysCT.

The 2019 Free Keys CT Piano Trail receives support from the Could Be Fund, the Friki Tiki, the Shops at Yale, and U-Haul.

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