Pianodrome finds a new home in St Oswald's Centre in Bruntsfield

Few venues in Edinburgh are quite as distinctive as the Pianodrome. The community interest company creates playable sculptures and performance spaces entirely from upcycled, disused pianos, and it has now settled into a new home at St Oswald's Centre in Bruntsfield.

The centrepiece is a 100-seat amphitheatre built from hundreds of piano parts, right down to the screws. The structure itself works as a resonant musical instrument. In Bruntsfield, the original five-wedge Grand Pianodrome now sits among the stone pillars and stained glass of the former St Oswald's church, which came into community ownership in 2020 with help from the Scottish Land Fund.

Pianodrome describes its work as a radical reimagining of the piano in today's throwaway culture. Working with a network of makers, artists, performers and volunteers, the team designs, builds and installs its sculptures, then uses the spaces for festivals, one-off events and educational projects. Past projects have included a residency at the Old Royal High School and piano trails at Ocean Terminal in Leith and in Leeds.

S!nk are engaged in an ambitious project to record original soundtracks for classic silent films, and the Pianodrome's resonant wooden structure makes an unusual and fitting studio for that work.

The Bruntsfield hub opens on Fridays and Saturdays from 10am to 5pm, with evening shows. In April, it hosted something special: a live recording by multi-instrumentalist group S!nk of a brand new soundtrack to Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 silent classic Battleship Potemkin, performed in front of an invited audience. The Edinburgh Reporter described the evening as tense and absorbing, with the audience thanked afterwards for their ears and their attention. The group returned in May with a new live score for Nanook of the North.

Considerable work has gone into the building since it opened, and the team are clearly committed to the space for the long term. Pianodrome Granton also remains open, with an Adopt a Piano showroom on Saturdays and monthly Pianosharing sessions.

It is a project that turns unwanted instruments into something the whole community can play.

Pianodrome Bruntsfield is at St Oswald's Centre, 41 Montpelier Park, and upcoming events are listed on the Pianodrome website.