On the tails of 19th century colonial presence in Southeast Asia came a steady influx of pianos into the region. It is not an exaggeration to call such a phenomenon ‘the great piano diaspora’— the dispersion of pianos from their cradles of geographic origin in the West to distant lands. Prepared and packed for the great voyage, pianos—and not forgetting to mention such other members of the keyboard family as spinets, clavichords, harpsichords— endured choppy waves, drastic climate adjustments, and uneven roads to reach new settlements. They were strangers in these parts of the world; a curious addition to local life. While the dominance of pianos in Europe have produced some rather novel trends within society, the piano’s arrival in our region precipitated even stranger, unexpected, and irreversible convergences of cultures.

Housed in present-day Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music are five strikingly unique keyboards— a 1968 Japanese handmade Eastein grand, a Steingraeber grand manufactured in Bayreuth, a pump organ from the Chinese brand Hsing Hai stamped with fading dental clinic decals, a six-pedal fortepiano modelled after Conrad Graf’s by American builder Paul McNulty, and an electronic keyboard invented by multinational manufacturer Roland Corporation. For long their stories have straddled the boundaries of myth and hearsays. While mysteries entice, the fruits of persistent sleuthing and historical research may prove to add just another layer of intrigue and wonder.

As an assemblage, these keyboards conflict in almost all possible ways. Each instrument, too, carries dormant memories of a conflicted past. While their arrival in 19th century was most crucially a battle for survival against the tropic’s humidity, the conflict has perhaps overtime evolved into something more intangible yet pervasive. Born of different ideological and political climates, personal aspirations, craftmanship, and manufacturing processes, the wildly personal history of each keyboard is palpably felt through the jarringly different tuning, tone, and aesthetic across the collection. With them, it seems ostensibly impossible to ‘sing the same tune’. Such layered complexities of conflict, ironically, sets the scene perfectly for a collaborative attempt towards harmony. The concept of ‘tuning’, too, reveals itself as a compelling metaphor to understand individuality, negotiation, and harmony.

The proposed 40-minute presentation-performance is essentially a modern-day epic inspired by a disparate yet shared past. It weaves social and cultural history with audience-based improvisation activities, aspiring to shed light as much on the pianos as on the human subjects in the room.  Our story is one that interrogates the complicated inheritance of colonialism—persons, commodities, ideologies. It invites the audience to a joint retrospection of how bygone eras and regimes continue to shape current values, specifically where the practice, education, and valuation of Western classical music is concerned. While no ‘resolution’ is guaranteed, the ideas that historical inquiry and joint retrospection inspire could perhaps be distilled into parables and allegories; simple stories containing a distilled truth to help us make sense of present and future conflicts. This presentation-performance will be led by Lin Xiangning (YST), in collaboration with students from PGVIM.