This article, written by Marjorie Beggs, was originally published in Central City Extra's November 2015 issue (pdf). You can find the newspaper distributed around area cafes, nonprofits, City Hall offices, SROs and other residences – and in the periodicals section on the fifth floor of the Main Library.

Put a piano in a garden—or anywhere unexpected—and people will come, smiling, surprised, wanting to touch, play, listen. That’s what artists/musicians Dean Mermell and Mauro ffortissimo discover every time their 2-year-old Sunset Piano project places a piano outdoors.

Boeddeker Park was the latest spot. The upright stood in the park’s Celebration Garden for two-plus weeks in October, drawing young and old, accomplished players, chop-stickers and many who’d never before pressed a piano key.

“The first day it was here, a lovely, older Cantonese-speaking woman was attracted to the men from Sunset Piano playing it,” says Kasey Asberry, creator and volunteer coordinator of the Celebration Garden, a mix of ornamental and edible plants in the park’s northeast corner. “She was very shy, kept motioning that she didn’t play, but they encouraged her to sit down and touch it.”

She did, experimenting, listening carefully to the results.

“She was so intent, it didn’t matter that she was unschooled—she was truly playing music,” Asberry says.

Sunset Piano is the brainchild of ffortissimo (born Di Nucci), who’s adopted the name fortissimo, abbreviated ff, the musical designation for “loud.” He launched the project on Half Moon Bay’s bluffs to bring what he saw as an out-of-favor instrument back to the esteem it deserves. He and Mermell collect and restore the pianos themselves, then send them out into the world.

They’ve placed pianos in UN Plaza several times and hauled 12 grand pianos to Golden Gate Park’s Botanical Gardens for 12 days in July.

Photo: Emmerge/Twitter

Betty Traynor, longtime head of Friends of Boeddeker Park, read about the project and stopped by the Botanical Gardens to check it out.

“I thought, why not see if we can bring a piano to Boeddeker too,” she says. Mermell said yes, Traynor got the okay from Boeddeker staff, and the piano was delivered two months later.

“I really didn’t know what to expect, but the piano was treated with respect and appreciated by all,” Traynor says. “Going around with the flyers to tell neighbors about it, I always got big smiles. Some people were puzzled: ‘Outside, not inside?’ But then they got it—there would be ‘music in the air’ at Boeddeker.”

Mermell said that surprise and delight is common when someone encounters a piano outdoors. “It’s out of context. Like good art, it causes people to re-evaluate their place in the world, and perhaps be more open to wonder.”

Official sponsorship of the Tenderloin event was through Rec and Park, Friends of Boeddeker and U.C. Hastings’ Demonstration Gardens, which partners with the Friends to cultivate the Celebration Garden.

Asberry is director. Asberry, who plays piano “a little,” volunteered to watch out for this one, covering it every night and before she watered the garden so it wouldn’t get wet.

“One day, just as I was putting away the hose, an elder gentleman came up the steps slowly and walked to the piano,” she recalls. “I rushed over, uncovered it and said he should feel free to play, that it was here for him. He asked, ‘Really? Just for me?’”

He sat and, without sheet music, launched into a Bach piano concerto.

“Though I was wearing heavy work boots, I couldn’t help but dance,” Asberry says.

Another day, four children, cousins, squeezed onto the piano bench, plinking away.

She taught them some listening games, dividing the keyboard and playing four-part, call-and-response songs, and, she says, ignored their dirty hands: “Washing hands first — it’s one of those rules you just don’t break with playing piano, but they played their parts so joyfully and deliberately, it didn't seem to matter.”

The piano was so popular, Traynor got its run extended for two days, then held a farewell party, inviting the neighborhood.

Traynor hopes to bring the piano back to the park in the spring.

“I play a little and did sit down and play some chords. It really had a nice sound—I’ll be practicing for its reappearance next year.” Mermell says that piano now is in storage with more than two dozen others, awaiting the next round of placements in the spring.