A broken piano sits in the sun in Dunn Meadow on February 7, 2018. The piano was there all day, but the piano burning event didn’t start until 5:30.

The hammers rise and fall as someone plays the piano in Dunn Meadow on Wednesday. Most of the keys still worked, but the piano was broken beyond repair.

Pianist Ross Martinie Eiler laughs as he improvises a song on the piano before the event starts. Onlookers were invited to sit down and play if they would like.

Ross Martinie Eiler, an experienced pianist, continues to entertain the crowd by improvising a piece before the piano is burned. The burning was expected to take about three hours, and it was around 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

Annea Lockwood addresses the crowd before the piano is burned. Lockwood has been creating art with broken pianos since 1968.

Annea Lockwood and Jon Vickers, IU Cinema founding director, light the piano on fire using lighter fluid, newspaper, and a lighter. Lockwood began recording the sounds of burning pianos in an attempt to record what fire sounded like.

Eiler plays “Great Balls of Fire” on the piano as it burns. Another crowd member improvised a song as the piano was on fire, but both pianists were pulled away before it became too dangerous.

Smoke quickly rises from the flaming piano in Dunn Meadow on February 7th. A live stream of the event was being shown on the big screen in Franklin Hall for those who couldn’t stand the cold.

Flames lap at the keys of the piano about half an hour into the event. Annea Lockwood overstrings the strings of the pianos she burns so that they will snap when the flames reach them.

The strings of the piano are revealed after the flames destroy the wooden back. Poems from 1968 were recited by members of the Writer’s Guild of Bloomington as the flames roared.

The fire grows as the entire piano is consumed by flames. The event was expected to take three hours but actually went much quicker.

The bench and the piano both collapse into a pile of flames and embers after burning for a little over an hour. The crowd had dwindled greatly from the beginning, but overall the event was a success.

If you drove down Indiana Avenue around 6 pm on February 7th, 2018, you would have seen what looked like a large crowd surrounding a campfire. A closer look, however, would have revealed the upright Henderson piano that was on fire in the middle of Dunn Meadow.

Composer Annea Lockwood set fire to a defunct piano as a part of Indiana University’s Wounded Galaxies: 1968 – Beneath the Paving Stones, the Beach festival. The Wounded Galaxies festival was designed to explore the intellectual and aesthetic legacy of 1968 on this, the 50th anniversary of the year 1968. Lockwood is known for her interesting art pieces involving pianos, such as burning pianos and her “piano garden,” where the instrument was planted in the ground and allowed to be reclaimed by nature.

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