88 Pianists

In 2019 we set an unbreakable World Record for the most people to play one piano.  There are 88 notes on the piano - so we had 88 pianists!

The performance, which opened the CIRP General Assembly at the Birmingham International Convention Centre and marked Leonardo da Vinci's 500th anniversary, was the culmination of a two-year national STEM outreach programme. Working with early career engineers at 12 UK universities, and the incredible outreach team of Birmingham Conservatoire, we invited Key Stage 2 children from 40 primary schools across the UK to invent eight-metre long finger extenders, so all the performers could stand in two semi-circles around the piano. 

Adults can solve this problem easily: you need a long cable and a lever.  Boring.  instead, we received over 2,000 unique designs, solving the problem properly: a giraffe bending over to lick the piano, hamsters running across an ironing board, slamming a door, flying doritos, a rabbit fired from a cannon...

Chris Cleaver designed and built the interface between piano and the mechanisms, 20 of us assembled the machine on stage in the two days before the performance. Martin Riley created a special piece for us, and under the watchful eye of Julian Lloyd Webber we set the unbreakable world record on 19 August 2019.