The Guardian
The Guardian, 29 April 2024
The task of loading once-loved but now unwanted pianos into a van and carting them off to the recycling centre is a disheartening and melancholy one. So a music shop in Bath that scraps as many as 300 redundant and unfixable pianos a year has launched a project to repurpose the thousands of parts that make up each instrument into pieces of art.
The Piano Shop Bath is inviting artists to take their pick for free from the varied materials that make up each piano – wood, cast iron, brass, felt, copper, steel wires and so on – and turn them into pieces that can then be hung in its showroom.
A first selection of works that has been produced in the “Played and Remade” initiative goes on display at the shop and on its website this week.
BBC
BBC, 3 May, 2024
A family-owned piano business is finding creative ways to make use of discarded instruments by turning them into art. Played and Remade is the brainchild of Jon Kelly, owner of The Piano Shop Bath. He says the Somerset business is asked to scrap between 150 and 300 unwanted pianos a year, each of them destined for rubbish dumps. But the shop, which has previously worked with the band Coldplay on repurposing instruments, is offering the discarded pianos to artists for free so that they can turn them into works of art… The team at the shop has worked with Coldplay more than once, collaborating with the band on a bespoke piano for their Everyday Life tour, and also making the piano lead singer Chris Martin played at the live-streamed Glastonbury 2021. Mr Kelly said throwing pianos away did a "disservice" to the skills involved in making them in the first place and was a "needless waste" of materials such as rare woods, cast iron, brass, felt and copper.
BATH LIFE
Bath Life Magazine, 26 April, 2024
Music Into Art - Key Moments
How The Piano Shop Bath is helping make art from ‘landfill’ pianos.
A pioneering creative project has been set up to save redundant pianos from being scrapped. Played and Remade is the brainchild of Jon Kelly, owner of The Piano Shop Bath on the London Road, who uses unwanted and end of life pianos to make artworks…
Among the artists contributing to the first collection are Clare Burnett, ex-President of the Royal Society of Sculptors; illustrator Andy Council; and The Piano Shop’s own artist and piano technician Marc Hackworthy.
RYAN ADAMS
Ryan Adams Instagram, 16 October, 2024
Ryan Adams, Musician. Instagram 1.4million followers.
Ryan Adams shared an image of Marc Hackworthy’s Crow sculpture on his Instagram page with the caption:
Came across @playedandremade who recycle piano parts to combine music and art with a message of sustainability.
Old pianos, quirkily full of their own soft ghosts make my heart go thump thump. Thank you to this wonderful company rescuing pianos from the woodpile. It was an honor playing them. XO DRA.
BATH MAGAZINE
The Bath Magazine, April 2024.
The first artworks to result from a pioneering creative project set up to save redundant pianos from being scrapped as landfill will go on public view and on sale in central Bath on 1 May.
The Played and Remade initiative is the idea of Jon Kelly, owner of Bath’s long-established The Piano Shop Bath and builds on the store’s record of working with creative artists.
Jon says that he has to scrap around 150-300 unwanted and unfixable pianos a year. But he sees this as a disservice to the time and skills involved in making a piano, and a needless waste of the many materials used in the manufacture of each instrument, including native and exotic woods, cast iron, brass, felt, copper and steel wires. His solution is to offer artists, craftworkers and furniture designers their free pick of these resources for creative re-use, exhibition and sale via the shop.