Anatomy of the Piano - Will Pickvance

The eerily beautiful Anatomy Lecture Theatre at Summerhall has hosted the dissection of animals since the Victorian era, but this summer it is the arena for another kind of dissection: that of the curious mind of Will Pickvance, whose lifelong love of the piano has led him to some strange notions about how it works. Pickvance once longed to be “spaceman” with a rocket, he says, but Father Christmas had other ideas. The excitingly large wrapped present he received one December morning turned out to be more apt for traversing scales than light years.

Since then, Pickvance has clearly developed a huge amount of musical skill, which he demonstrates by moving fluidly between boogie woogie, jazz, Russian waltz and myriad other styles on the rather shonky upright Yamaha that takes centre stage with him for the show. But more importantly, he’s built up a sort of whimsical philosophy called “Pianocity,” a complex belief system about the relationship between himself, his instrument, his audience and the outside world. Pickvance sees the instrument as a sort of animal, its “skin” protecting it from such dangers as “toddler invasions”, its “teeth” being an oddly intimate point of contact between itself and its many human suitors.

Pickvance demonstrates all this with charmingly sincere enthusiasm and a collection of faux-naïve, sometimes very funny ink drawings which are shown on the hall’s projector screen as he plays. Those with a low tolerance of whimsy will be left wanting to see more guts, but for others this is a pleasing look at the surface of a distinctly odd musical and comic brain.