Live on the Streets of Santa Barbara, Pianos on State Are Ready to Play

Vibrantly colorful musical works of art popped up all over State Street, Downtown Santa Barbara and beyond (including Stearns Wharf and the Santa Barbara Airport) this morning. Pianos on State is back and celebrating its 15th year of community collaboration, spontaneous music, and original art.

Selected regional artists were hard at work painting these piano masterpieces the weekend of September 28 at the Community Arts Workshop, and we celebrated their efforts last night with a lovely kickoff party where we were introduced to all of the artists and serenaded by musicians from Notes4Notes and Sharlae Jenkins’s music students.

The 2024 Pianos on State Artists include: Alaina Murphy, Alejandra Campos – AYC Artistry, Anne Burdette, Charmaine Winston of Charmed Life Designs, Daniel Sharp, Domonic Dean Breaux, Irene Ramirez – orangeladybird, John Khus, Katelyn Killoran, Monika Petroczy, Omepache, Rebecca Elias, and Scott Ryker artist at Santa Barbara Art Works.

In honor of the program’s 15th anniversary, five teachers from Music Teachers’s Association of California Santa Barbara Chapter — Sharlae Jenkins, Leana Movillion,  Kacey Link, Kathryn Imani, and Susan Lansing Weller — will be hosting student performances at the pianos throughout the Pianos on State program. See pianosonstate.com/15thanniversary for the performance schedule.

Another favorite tradition and sister program, Masq(p)arade! —  a performance progressive where performers don festive masks — is now in its fourth year and will take place on October 18 at 5:30 p.m. For more information and the participant list see masqparade.org.

As Casey Caldwell of the Community Arts Workshop, explained at the kickoff,  “there is so much that goes into this project, so many people without whom it would not happen, from the sponsors to the artists, to the piano tuners, to the piano movers, to the musicians who are about to play all these pianos, to all of the organizers who play a very special role. … Let me give a few examples. So the pianos roll down here on Thursday morning. They all roll in within a very tight time window, because the piano tuners are coming at one o’clock. So the piano movers get them all here at exactly the right time. Then the piano tuners show up. They all donate their time. By the way, they all get tuned and repaired, and the smoothie from last year gets removed from the keys, and they get sort of de-gummed and repaired and fixed.

“And then all the piano tuners leave, and then the painters show up promptly at 10 a.m. on Friday morning. And a few of them are like, ‘Oh no. How am I going to handle this?’ Because there’s something that they didn’t expect. Because pianos always come in very unexpected different shapes and sizes, and some of them have strange things attached to them. And so they all get painted in three days, and then we clean up very quickly, and then have all you wonderful people here, and then they will be picked up again tomorrow morning, where the piano installers from the Santa Barbara Office of Arts and Culture will install them on the sculpture pads and and then the Independent will tell everyone about it, and on and on. … The Santa Barbara Education Foundation children’s creative project arranges for all these wonderful performances from students. So you kind of get the picture of all these people that come in and really make this, this beautiful community project happen.”

Pianos on State is a collaborative project organized by: The Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative, The Santa Barbara Bowl Foundation, The Santa Barbara County Office of Arts & Culture, City of Santa Barbara, Children’s Creative Project, The Santa Barbara Education Foundation, and Downtown Santa Barbara. For more information and updates see pianosonstate.com.