(2013) Dimensions variable. Altered 103-year-old upright grand piano, blown glass, performance.
Almost Middle ‘C,’ is a one-note piano made by cutting away every part of a 103 year old upright grand piano except for a single key and the mechanical apparatus that connects it to the strings when the note is pressed. A wine glass, hand-made to resonate close to the frequency of middle C, dangles from the three strings that previously produced the note.
This work is representative of my longtime interest in music as a discipline - in particular, its qualities of equivocality and virtuosity. At the middle of a piano keyboard, when a key is pressed, it hits three strings to make a single note. One string is slightly flat, one is dead-on, and another is slightly sharp. The combination of these three imperfect pitches is more pleasing to the human ear than a single, exact note. The hand-made wine glass replacing the three strings in the instrument was made to resonate as closely as possible to a perfect middle 'C.'
