Ready for a summer jam session? Just hit the streets of the Salt Lake City area!

Deseret Industries and the Mundi Project—an organization that seeks to inspire youth and provide open access to pianos and music education—have partnered to place five beautifully painted pianos on Utah streets for the second summer in a row. These pianos were all in the twilight of their lives, and we’re excited to give them a new life and a new purpose by placing them on the streets.

The pianos have been painted by local community members, and each one has its own special look. Here are the locations you can go to find a piano to play:

The McCarthey Plaza on Regent Street at the Eccles Center

(146 Regent Street, Salt Lake City, Utah 84111)

This piano was painted by a group of refugee children through the Refugee 4-H Program at the Utah Refugee Education and Training Center. Group members added their own individual touch, and together, the piano is a beautiful, collaborative piece.

The Bountiful Davis Arts Center

(90 N Main St, Bountiful, UT 84010)

This piano is the first to be placed outside of Salt Lake City. The artwork was created by a Northridge High School senior, Tayana Jorgensen. Her inspiration for the piece? To make it seem like viewers are looking into a fish tank.

Jorgensen took art classes throughout junior high and high school, but this was her first time painting a 3-D object. “I’ve done murals, but I’ve never painted anything like a piano before,” she said.

Painting the piano helped Jorgensen stretch her artistic abilities. She explained: “Now that I’ve painted a piano, I’m excited to try other things. It really opened a lot of doors to painting other things and thinking about art in a less traditional way.”

The Chase Home Museum in Liberty Park

(1150 South Constitution Drive, Salt Lake City, UT 84105)

The Chase Home Museum in Liberty Park welcomes back to their porch a piano from last year, painted by local artist Tracy Williams. Her artwork was inspired by her father, who passed away a few weeks before she painted the piano. He always encouraged her creativity when she was growing up. Read more about her painting experience here.

Abravanel Hall

(123 West South Temple, Salt Lake City, UT 84101)

This location features a piano painted by the public at the Utah Arts Festival in 2017. During the arts festival, people of all ages stopped by to help paint the piano. Two faculty members from the Visual Art Institute, Bruce Robertson and Shelley Redford-Young, guided the collaborative painting process.

The Leonardo Museum

(209 E 500 S, Salt Lake City, UT 84111)

At this year’s Utah Arts Festival, the public had the opportunity to paint another piano—this lovely baby grand, which has found a home at the Leonardo Museum. The artwork was created by people of all ages and skill levels, and they left their own unique mark on the piano.

What’s Happening to the Pianos from Last Year?

Last year, we placed four pianos around Salt Lake City. A few of them are finding their way back to the streets (at the Chase Home Museum and Abravanel Hall). The other pianos are no longer playable, but they won’t be thrown away. The Mundi Project and the Leonardo Museum are working together to find new uses for the pianos, including using pieces of the old pianos to create new works of art, such as jewelry or an exploded 3-D piano exhibit. The pianos may also be used in the Leonardo’s Tech Take-Apart program, where the community can join an engineer in dissembling the pianos and learning about how they work. These programs take place on occasional Saturdays.

Visit all the pianos and share your piano experience using #PeoplesPianoProject and #DeseretIndustries.

Thank you to the Utah Division of Arts and Museums; the Salt Lake City Arts Council; the Salt Lake County Zoo, Arts and Parks program; and the Visual Art Institute for their support.