Tampa Tunes' public pianos fill the streets with music

 A few years back, Josh Holton was on a business trip in Atlanta and he was surprised and delighted to find that his hotel had a beautiful grand piano in the lobby.
Delight turned to disappointment when Holton, an accomplished pianist, tried to play it. 

“Eight to 10 of the keys had broken hammers, and the rest of the keys sound really perfect,” Hilton says. “I was like, ‘I can’t play a full song in this with 10 broken keys,’ so I Googled ‘Where can I find a public piano in Atlanta?’”

  

That’s how Holton discovered Play Me Again Piano, an Atlanta nonprofit that has placed 88 pianos around the city.
There had been a couple of similar projects around the Tampa Bay area, on a much smaller scale, but none had lasted.

“When I got back to Florida after the pandemic I noticed that there were no pianos at all,” Holton says.

With inspiration and guidance from the Play Me Again people in Atlanta, Holton founded a similar nonprofit in Tampa. In the past year, Holton’s Tampa Tunes has placed about a dozen pianos around Tampa, many of them outdoors. They’re available for anyone, from professionals to beginners who don’t know their A-flat from a hole in the ground, to play, anytime, for free. Some of the more competent pianists use the pianos to practice, or even to collect tips while they entertain passers-by. Kids who may never have had the chance to play a real piano before try to pick out tunes. Or just bang away and make some joyful noise.

 

“When I was a kid, I loved going to playgrounds,” Holton says. “Tampa has no shortage of slides and swing sets. I think it should be the same with pianos. I’d love it if we could have just as many pianos as swing sets, so people come to expect it.”


Provided by Tampa TunesTampa Tunes' first painted piano, “Abundance” by artist Carlos Pons, was unveiled in early 2024 at 1920 Ybor. 
 There’s more to Holton’s vision than just giving people a chance to play. He enlists local artists to paint some of the pianos. The first of the painted pianos, titled “Abundance” and created by Carlos Pons, was unveiled early this year outside of music venue 1920 Ybor. 


So besides filling the streets with music, Tampa Tunes is dotting the streets with colorful artwork.



“When people think of public art, they think of murals,” Holton says. “But these pianos are public art, and they transform the space in the same way that murals do. We’re going to maintain these pianos, make them landmarks.”


Several of the pianos are at outdoor and indoor locations around Ybor, including one at Hillsborough Community College. There’s now a piano at Centre Gallery, the student-run art exhibition space on the second floor of the Marshall Center at the University of South Florida. There are plans for two at the Gasparilla Music Festival in February. Eventually, Holton said he’d like to install seven pianos in downtown Tampa, one in each of the seven official downtown neighborhoods.

For more information and a map of piano locations, go to Tampa Tunes