Fundação de Serralves and Porto Pianofest are joining forces to present the iconic installation Piano Garden by Annea Lockwood. This marks an expansion of the festival, exploring other forms of artistic expression beyond the traditional concert and recital format.

The installation will be inaugurated on August 9th, during the festival's 11th edition. The opening event will feature a brief musical moment of sonic exploration of the pianos, followed by a Green Ribbon-cutting.

Annea Lockwood
Piano Garden (1969–1970)

A major figure in experimental music and sound art, Annea Lockwood is one of the artists who has most profoundly explored the transformation of how we listen to sound, our relationship with nature, and the very act of composing. A pioneer of sound sculpture and expanded composition, her work challenges the conventions of the Western musical tradition.

Among her most striking works is the Piano Transplants series, begun in 1968, which takes the piano — the quintessential instrument of Western classical music — as its starting point to question its symbolic and material status. The term "transplants" refers directly to the impact of the first heart transplants performed at the time, particularly that of Christiaan Barnard in 1967. Lockwood appropriates this idea to imagine "transplanting" irrecoverable pianos into new ecosystems, where they cease to be instruments and become sonic bodies in permanent transformation.

Created in 1969, Piano Garden is one of the central works in this historic series. Its score instructs: "Dig a sloping trench and slip an upright piano in sideways so that it is half interred […] Plant fast growing trees and creepers around the piano. Do not protect against weather and leave the piano there forever." Partially buried, the piano is given over to the action of vegetation, weather, insects, and animals, establishing an ongoing dialogue with non-human processes. The work invites a radically different kind of listening, one in which growth, erosion, and decay become part of the composition itself. Presented in contexts such as documenta 14 (Kassel), the Monash University Museum of Art (Melbourne), and numerous international festivals and exhibitions, Piano Garden remains a landmark work in the history of sound art and a major reference point in contemporary creation.

Annea Lockwood (Aotearoa/New Zealand, 1939) is one of the essential figures of contemporary experimental music and a pioneer of sound sculpture and multimedia composition. Based in the United States since 1973, she has developed, over more than six decades, a singular body of work centered on deep listening to natural phenomena, exploring sound as living matter and its relationship to the body, landscape, and environment. From the iconic Fluxus-inspired Piano Transplants — in which pianos are burned, submerged, or buried — to her celebrated Sound Maps of the Hudson, Danube, and Housatonic rivers, her work challenges the boundaries between composition, installation, performance, and sound art. Among her most recent works are Becoming Air, created with Nate Wooley; Into the Vanishing Point, a reflection on the global disappearance of insect populations; and Wild Energy, created with Bob Bielecki, a permanent installation dedicated to the planet's geophysical forces and infra- and ultrasonic sounds. Honored with the SEAMUS Lifetime Achievement Award (2020), Annea Lockwood continues to affirm herself as one of the most influential and visionary voices in international sound creation, inspiring successive generations of composers and artists.