If you come across a piano in Toronto during the next few weeks where there wasn’t one before, you can play it. It’s yours.

Pianos will be spread across the city as part of an art installation celebrating the start of the three-year countdown to the 2015 Pan American Games.

“Play Me, I’m Yours” is a project started in 2008 by British artist Luke Jerram. It involved distributing 15 pianos across Birmingham, England, over three weeks. An estimated 140,000 people played or listened to music from the pianos, the project’s website says. It has since spread to cities such as Sao Paulo, London, New York and Sydney.

It occurred to Don Shipley, the 2015 Pan Am Games creative director of arts, culture and festivals, to give the project a Pan Am twist. That meant finding 41 pianos and recruiting 41 local artists with connections to each participating Pan Am country to paint them.

The result will be bright and colourful pianos in diverse locations such as Pearson Airport, the CN Tower, the Distillery District and even on a Toronto Island ferry (that one’s a player piano, which is slated to have Barry Manilow on loop).

Shipley said “Play Me, I’m Yours” differs from other visual art installations, such as the hundreds of moose that invaded Toronto in 2000, in that “this one actually engages people.”

“It’s really just a great thing to come across a piano in the middle of a street corner.”

It wasn’t easy to find Toronto artists with affiliations to each country, Shipley said. Organisers spent weeks contacting embassies and consulates, and scouring the local arts community for suitable candidates.

“We went through every source we could,” Shipley said. The artists were given free reign, other than a request that their work reflect the culture of their respective countries and that they “think outside the box.”

It was no small feat to collect pianos, some as old as 100 years, which still sound good. That fell to Robert Lowrey’s Piano Experts on Eglinton Ave. E., which also hosted the painters in its second-floor workshop.

The collection started with about a dozen suitable pianos and Lowrey found the others through every avenue he knew: from technicians to movers, and even browsing Kijiji and Facebook.

“We wanted these pianos to be the best ones that have ever been at one of these ‘Play Me, I’m Yours’ things,” he said. “It was a challenge. . . . We literally filled a dumpster full of rejects.”

All of the pianos are upright except for one: the Canadian entry is a baby grand. It was painted by, artist Lee Claremont, who arrived on Sunday, from her home in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley. She was born and raised in Ontario but has lived out West for 40 years.

Claremont, who is Mohawk and Irish, and whose grandmother was born and raised on the Grand River Six Nations reserve, said the accessibility and artistic freedom drew her to the project.

“Just envision in your mind these pianos sitting all over Toronto and people playing them. Kids, even if they can’t play them, pounding away on them . . . it’s just wonderful.”

The significance of representing Canada is “very hard to put into words,” she said.

“It’s a big responsibility. I’m so honoured,” she said. “I don’t know how to play the piano, but I wish I did,” she added with a laugh.

Before they are trucked across the city, the pianos will be shown off at a concert to celebrate the three-year countdown at David Pecaut Square at Metro Hall the evening of July 10.

The project costs about $250,000, organisers said. The pianos will remain in their spots until the end of July. Each piano will have a spotter to ensure its wellbeing, who will cover it with a tarp at night.

Shipley hopes to unveil the pianos later in other locations and perhaps eventually auction them off, with the proceeds benefiting youth sport in Canada.

But in the meantime, it’s up to Torontonians to make the most of a chance at impromptu outdoor concerts.

“I think you’ll come across people who will play great classical or great jazz, or who just can’t resist playing ‘Heart and Soul’ or something they learned as a kid,” Shipley said.

For more on this story go to:

http://www.thestar.com/living/article/1223199–play-me-i-m-yours-puts-41-pianos-across-city-of-toronto