Flower Piano co-founder Dean Mermell is spot on when he says about the upcoming annual outdoor festival, “If I could completely describe it in words, it wouldn’t be as special, would it?”
Mermell might be speaking a truth applicable to all live performances. Even a superior home stereo system will never replicate the spontaneity and joy of experiencing music in community with other people, let alone the magical moments that occur at this festival, which this year runs Sept. 13–22.
Held in San Francisco Botanical Garden, Flower Piano is led by Mermell and Mauro Ffortissimo, co-founders of Sunset Piano, and presented by the Gardens of Golden Gate Park. Across the Botanical Garden’s 55 acres, a dozen pianos serve as launchpads for scheduled professional and community-partner performances. But impromptu playing is also highly encouraged, with anyone attending able to amble up to a keyboard and plunk out a few notes — or an entire concerto.
“At the very first Flower Piano in 2015, we didn’t even have a printed program,” Mermell recalls. “We got a tiny grant and put 12 terrible pianos in the garden to see how it would go.”
Around that same time, Mermell happened to see a video clip of Steve Nieve, the pianist for singer-songwriter Elvis Costello, playing a piano in a garden. “I just wrote to Steve on Facebook about Flower Piano, and he immediately wrote me back. They were going to be in town doing a Steely Dan show, and he said he’d check us out. He came and played for two hours. It was magnificent.”
This year’s roster of artists is no less impressive. Appearing in the Flower Piano Lounge, the one ticketed venue (with perks such as food, beverages, and lounge seating) at the otherwise free festival, will be members of the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra (Sept. 13), Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers (Sept. 14), and Martin Luther McCoy and the Robin Hodge Williams Gospel Choir (Sept. 21), among others. A special opening-night event on Sept. 12 will showcase the Afro-Cuban charanga ensemble Orquesta La Moderna Tradición.
Returning favorites — pianists Tammy Hall, Sarah Cahill, and Kev Choice are a few of them — lend what Mermell says is “a family-reunion feel” to the festival and blend with the new artists appearing every year.
“The process of curating takes months,” he says. “We try not to turn anyone away who wants to play and is really good and adds something. There are a lot of established people who play Chopin very well or Rhapsody in Blue, but what we seek, and sometimes are lucky enough to have, is people we find at random during past Flower Pianos. We just wander around and come upon someone who’s great. We ask them to come the next year because they have something to offer.”
Last year, Mermell was blown away by one such player he hopes will return. “He was this guy with a huge mane of frizzy hair, and he was wearing a hippie-dippie-style outfit. He was just rifling through the most difficult Russian pieces. He was playing Sergei Rachmaninoff’s [Piano Concerto] No. 2, some Tchaikovsky, other stuff I can’t remember, but it was marvelous. I never got back to talk to him, but it was typical of what happens. I hope he shows up this year so I can offer him a spot.”
Mermell doesn’t want to play favorites but shares several highlights on the schedule, such as Kennedy Verrett’s Soundcheck, commissioned by Sunset Piano. Mermell describes an earlier iteration of the work that he experienced at Joshua Tree National Park: “Kennedy had musicians scattered throughout, all playing one composition. They were far enough apart that they could barely hear each other. As an audience member, you had to hike around and experience each musician one at a time. I was fascinated by how people orbited through the space.”
Hunter Noack will bring In a Landscape, a similar project, to Flower Piano as well. “He’s performed at the Botanical Garden before, but this is the first time we’ve had him for Flower Piano,” Mermell says. “This will be a straight-up piano concert. I’m drawn to his approach to integrating the natural world into his piano music. Anyone who does that is ripe for Flower Piano. I don’t know if I can describe it, but my sense is that he feels the weather and references the landscape with his choices. He’s clearly in touch with the rhythm of the natural world.”
Christian Tumalan, of Pacific Mambo Orchestra, will perform on Sept. 15. Mermell describes Tumalan’s music as “mind-blowing high-level Latin jazz” delivered by an “always dynamic performer. Sometimes I hear a little Keith Jarrett, then a little Chick Corea, but it’s still Latin jazz. And he’s so happy when he plays, it’s contagious. He channels the joy of music while still being a technical performer. He comes from a place of wanting to connect, wanting to make people happy.”
Which brings the conversation full circle. At Flower Piano, music, nature, and people enter into a kind of communion. It’s fun, familiar, focused, and also filled with surprises.
