A new public art project created to promote music in the five boroughs this summer is already off key in the Bronx.

Two of the four Bronx pianos in the new, “Play Me, I’m Yours,” arts program — one at Fordham Plaza and another at Sackerah Woods Playground in Van Cortlandt Park — were seriously damaged by overzealous young Beethovens within the first week of the exhibit.

On Sunday at Fordham Plaza, the piano was completed locked up. A concession stand employee said, “The guy only comes around on weekdays. He keeps it locked because someone broke some of the keys.”

“Some of the keys are missing and some are already pressed down and don’t make any sound,” the employee said, as an unrelated free concert was being held in the plaza.

Meanwhile, further north, at Sackerah Woods, children continued to bang away on a piano already suffering from significant damage and lacking a chair. “They broke it,” said a Parks Department employee who didn’t want to be identified. “They broke the keys by playing it too hard… and they broke its legs and smashed its chair.”

Chris Herbert, the director of advancement at Sing for Hope, the nonprofit running the “Play Me, I’m Yours” public art project, said, “We had heard reports about Fordham for sure, but Van Cortlandt Park was a little more difficult to get data on all the time.”

Herbert said he was sad to hear about the damage, but that, from what he had heard, the piano at the Bronx’s Joyce Kilmer Park was doing “fine.” “With something like this,” Herbert said, “there’s going to be some wear and tear on the pianos from time to time, but we have technicians going out and servicing the pianos.”

“The goal of the project is art accessibility,” he added. “The main purpose is that art is our universal right and should be open to everybody, and by putting pianos in public spaces, it [not only] encourages people to engage with the arts, but also with each other to create community and civic pride.”

The pianos are available for public playing and punishment at 60 locations in the five boroughs and will run until July 5, ending with a free outdoor concert at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park.

The fourth Bronx piano is located at the Grand Concourse and East 149th Street.

Ed. Note: For more information on the project, contact Sing for Hope at (212) 966-5955 or visit their web site at: www.Singforhope.org.    
 

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.