Piano Room was a reprieve, a transporting mid-morning performance in a carefully curated space. Presented as part of Brisbane Music Festival, it meditated on the interconnectedness of the natural and man-made worlds through soundscapes and music, and the internal world through poetry.
Piano Room was performed at Fourth Wall Arts on Queen Street, an intimate inner-city venue that was made even more atmospheric by the addition of leafy plants and soft lighting woven around them. These ambient elements were designed by Tiffany Beckwith-Skinner.
Conceived and composed by Corrina Bonshek for pianist Roger Cui, Piano Room was co-created and written by actor-playwright Merlynn Tong, who performed her spoken word poetry via a pre-recorded reading. The majority of the works in the programme were composed by Bonshek, with titles like Gentle Nature, Floating in the Void, and Whispers Collide, but also included Franz Liszt’s Transcendental Étude No. 12 in B♭ minor, “Chasse-neige”. There were also several Footsteps Interludes, in which the audience was encouraged to make eye contact with someone sitting in a different area of the room and swap seats with them. This allowed us to experience the performance from different angles, both visually and aurally.
Speakers positioned at each corner of the room added to the sense of being surrounded by the sound. With a single row of chairs in the venue, angled towards the piano in the centre, the audience was only ever a few metres from the artists. There were also cushions and blankets near the piano, and Bonshek invited the audience to sit or lie down on the floor if they wished to experience the sound that way.
Composer and sound artist Corrina Bonshek welcomed and guided the audience through the performance from behind the sound desk, addressing us as “fellow travellers”, with Roger Cui seated at the piano. Intertwined with the piano were the sounds of the outside world, including trams, footsteps on the street, falling rain, and the rustle of a bird taking flight. While the early pieces were slow and Cui seemed to savour each note, the pace quickened as the soundscapes began to evoke the city and even extended towards dance music underlying the piano, before circling back gently to the natural world.
Piano Room enfolded audiences and allowed for a stillness and contemplation that was both peaceful and refreshing.
Piano Room was performed at Fourth Wall Arts, Brisbane City, on 26 October 2024
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