Arts & Entertainment
Prospect Park Piano Man
Mark Glicksman shows off some very impressive skills at a pop-up piano near the Prospect Park Carousel earlier this summer.
Call him the Prospect Park Piano Man.
Brooklynite Mark Glicksman made good use of one of the annual pop-up pianos on June 2.
The piano is part of an annual project by Sing for Hope, a nonprofit that installs 88 pop-up pianos in public spaces across the city. This year the pianos were in residence between June 2-15.
The idea, Sing for Hope cofounders Camille Zamora and Monica Yunus, told Patch in 2011, is multi-faceted: the project brings art and music to all sorts of neighborhoods around the city, many of them arts-starved, but it also acts as a sort of “urban recycling” project, taking dying and discarded pianos, breathing new life into them, and then donating the now-functional (and pretty) pianos to schools and hospitals after the project is over.
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“It's not about creating the next generation of performing artists—although that would be great,” said Yunus, a professional opera singer. “Its about really making sure that kids, especially with all the art [funding] cuts, that they have a time and a creative outlet for their expression."
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