Imagine being inside a piano. Imagine the piano expanded to the size of a concert hall. This EMPAC-commissioned concert and installation is grounded in the idea of “prepared piano,” a tradition where screws, rubbers, bolts, etc., are attached to the strings inside a piano, altering the sound. Building on the many famous mechanically prepared piano compositions from John Cage to Aphex Twin, Expanded Piano transforms the idea into a uniquely electronic form. An acoustic piano is wired with both regular microphones and contact microphones attached to the body of the piano, its strings, and mechanisms. Each microphone’s signal is manipulated in real time through a computer and then routed to its own loudspeaker, creating a multichannel space around the audience that puts the listeners “inside” the piano.

The performance “Expanded Piano” pays homage to the ever-evolving aesthetic character of the instrument. Here the spectral and spatial piano properties are not merely extended via stylistic or recording and postproduction means. Instead, these aspects are expanded into the real physical space so that the listeners are immersed within a virtual new instrument whose aural size is only bounded by the extremities of the concert hall. This is now the piano heard through a sonic magnifying glass so that the listener embarks into an Alice in Wonderland-like acoustic journey.
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