Piano burning
Several contemporary musicians, including Annea Lockwood, Yōsuke Yamashita, and Diego Stocco, have composed for and performed on pianos which have been deliberately set alight.
In The Phantom in Focus: A Navigator's Eye on Britain's Cold War Warrior, David Gledhill recounts a combat training exercise in Germany during the Cold War where Jaguar pilots from RAF Wildenrath and RAF Bruggen had the task of destroying a piano placed on Nordhorn Ridge with a single practice bomb.
According to the New Zealand Herald, a piano-playing pilot in the Royal Air Force during World War II played to his fellow airmen each time one of their number had been killed.
[1] At Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, the 4th Fighter Wing burns a piano each year in commemoration of the Battle of Britain.
[7][8] On 26 August 2023, the Ukrainian Air Force held a piano burning ceremony for three pilots killed in the line of duty day earlier.
One of the dead, Major Andrii Pilshchykov, had been an advocate for incorporating NATO standards and traditions into Ukraine, including the burning of pianos to honor fallen pilots.
🫡✈️🇺🇦 @PvK_Center_UA @KpsZSU pic.twitter.com/jxK9KBt4Bx On 27 August 2023, the Ukrainian Air Force held a burial and a piano burning ceremony for Denys Kyryliuk [uk], a pilot in the 831st Tactical Aviation Brigade, who was killed in the line of duty on 28 March 2023 in Chernihiv Oblast.
[15][16] This piano burning also commemorated Stepan Chobanu [uk] and Oleksandr Oksanchenko, two other pilots of the 831st TBA, who were killed in action in the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
His 2003 Burning Questions, a radiophonic work commissioned by ABC Radio National, explored the "cultural politics of auto-destructive music" and included the sounds of a burning baby grand piano (with a microphone placed inside), the observers' reactions, and Hannan playing Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata on the piano immediately prior to setting it alight.
The burning for Piano Flamboyant took place on the roof of Arman's atelier in Nice and was filmed for a documentary by Gérard Patris which was later broadcast on French national television.
As with his other burnt instrument works, which also included violins, cellos, and guitars, the charred remains were then mounted on panels or enclosed in plexiglas.
[32][33] Douglas Gordon's 2012 video installation The End of Civilisation was centred on a burning grand piano placed in the isolated landscape of Cumbria on the border between Scotland and England.
After its premiere at the Tyne Theatre and Opera House in July 2012, The End of Civilisation was shown at the London 2012 Festival and toured as part of a Douglas Gordon retrospective in Tel Aviv followed by screenings in Venice, New York, and Berlin.
Andrii Pilshchykov, a Ukrainian Air Force fighter pilot who died in an accident, was commemorated in a piano burning ceremony in August 2023.
Gail Peck, a Retired Colonel in the United States Air Force, was memorialized with a piano burning in November 2024 near Las Vegas, Nevada.
