Pianomobile

piano mobile

Take an old wheelchair, cut it in two parts and widen it. Mount a platform on top.
Put a keyboard on top with two enthousiast pianists. Use for: mobile piano accompagnement for street music

Edwin Dertien did the electronic part (Kunst en Muziekwerk), Wout zweers did the construction.

Tried first by the Gonnagles as a platform for an electric piano to use on streeet gigs.Later the wooden fake piano around was added it that makes it much more theatrical and interesting to look at. Wouter Munsterman provided the ugliest lamp shade that he could find. He played several times. Geert Meuffels (Captain Krimson) also frequently playeds the piano.

This wheelchairpiano performed later (amongst others) at Proefeet in Enschede (YouTube), in the HEMA, during the Night of Enschede, in the Sinterklaasperformances of the music school and the RABO theater Hengelo, and in Rood Verlangen's theatershow.

The piano was also spotted at Kunst in het Volkspark, at carnival in 's Hertogenbosch, in Amsterdam, downtown Enschede, at the Frankenstein Festival, Grenswerk 2009 and 2010, various demo's, a more commercial use in an advertisement campain in 2014 and another one in 2015 and in the Sint en Pieten show of the Rabo theater Hengelo. IN 2016 we performed at Amsterdam and at 'sHertogenbosch and in 2017 we held more performances.

It is still running at 2024, with the new keyboard, the support frame has been stretched a bit to make it safer, it was a challenge to ride a speedbump or a ramp. No pianist likes a wheely. And we can now also carry singers behind the pianist chair. As we did at LTM, landgoed Twente Marathon. Or kids that jump on at MakerFair Eindhoven, now:Maker Days Eindhoven.

Frequently Frank Deiman uses it, usually connected with Balkonfestival Enschede and WEEF 2025 Enschede (preview). It still is a lot of fun to work with it.

The pianomobiel was provided with an 88-key keyboard, that performed better than the old one. This new one was too wide however, so we cut off the lowest 3 keys, glued the whole thing together again and played on. We often likes\d to shock pianists by casually telling them that we sawed off a couple of keys. And again, in 2023, much later, the keyboard, after playing in the rain and other misuses, had to be replaced. The present one(2024) is a midi keyboard with nicely balanced keys and we use a pianomodule and a separate amplifier. Next step, because running it on batteries and a 220V converter is not ideal,it is being changed to run on a battery = 12 V. That means a new amplifier and adapters for the keyboard and painomodule, but that works better and causes less noise.

wout zweers geert meuffels pianomobiel