A 60-minute performance by Andy Ingamells and Jessica Cooper
“Andy isn’t a pianist. A video diary runs throughout the performance, showing him confronting his anxieties and vulnerabilities as he battles with the instrument and his own musical shortcomings. Watch and listen as Andy struggles with himself and the piano in increasingly difficult circumstances, playing the best he can as the music stutters to its sticky conclusion.” – Description by Cork Fringe
“As close to a perfect gesamtkunstwerk as I have seen. A meditation on contemporary composition, piano recitals, video diaries, social media and narcissism.”
Seán Clancy, composer
“It takes courage to perform a piece like this and no little creativity to conjure it up in the first place … It’s doubtful anyone who was there is likely to forget in a hurry the sight of red adhesive paste gradually filling the wonky see-through piano on stage.”
Pádraig O’Connor, Tripe and Drisheen
In 2011 Jessica Cooper and I created Piano Recital in Birmingham: an hour-long show in which I tried to play the piano as best I could while Jessica gradually filled it with red paint and wallpaper paste. The previous year we had refurbished an old piano that someone was throwing out, and painted it gold because, well because gold is nice. (We then did a show where we sang classics while getting drunk on ginger wine). I had always wanted to do a piano destruction piece, and thought this would be the perfect opportunity seeing as the piano was old, cheap and barely stayed in tune. Jessica suggested making it into a performance that was less aggressive/cliché than a conventional piano destruction. The programme of pieces comprises works that I thought I would be able to play with my limited pianistic ability, and I also took some lessons with Fumiko Miyachi in an attempt to improve. The performance was stitched together by a video diary that is in some way inspired by Tehching Hsieh’s One Year Performance 1980–1981 (Time Clock Piece).
After that first performance in 2011 we took the piece to Wunderbar Festival in Newcastle where we performed in the NewBridge Project gallery. The piece then returned to Birmingham for Frontiers Festival in 2014, this time with Maya Verlaak pouring the buckets of wallpaper paste. The old Birmingham Conservatoire was scheduled for demolition in June 2017, and it was decided that Piano Recital would be revived as the final performance to take place in the building. This time Lucy Morton mixed the buckets and Oli Clark filmed. Since then the piece has been performed at the Royal Irish Academy of Music (with Jane Hackett of Kirkos) and Cork Fringe (with Benjamin Burns).
Featuring:
Souvenirs d’enfance: V. Blokken (1966) by Louis Andriessen
Short piano pieces by Andy Ingamells
Waltz (1970) by Howard Skempton
New Street Counterpoint (2009) by Andy Ingamells
x(aN7 int3gR)4 h3nR7 flNYt (1961) by lA’m()nt3 Y()üng
Piano Piece No. 13 (Carpenter’s Piece) (1962) by George Maciunas
Performances
5 April 2011, Birmingham Conservatoire
3 November 2011, The Newbridge Project, Newcastle
2 April 2014, Frontiers Festival, Birmingham
20 June 2017, CODA Festival, Birmingham
5 January 2019, Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin
11 May 2025, Theatre Development Centre, Cork
Score
Andy Ingamells 