CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Inside the octagonal walls of the Historic Grace AME Zion Church in Uptown Charlotte, a creation designed across an ocean fills the room with music.
The Pianodrome, an amphitheater made by upcycling old pianos, is a featured art installation during the multi-week Charlotte SHOUT! festival celebrating innovation.
The creation comes from a Scotland-based team working to reimagine how people view the lifespans of objects, including pianos.
"We're just completely surrounded by waste, and overconsumption," Matt Wright, a creative producer and co-director with Pianodrome, told WCNC Charlotte. "For us, it's very important that what we're doing is we're taking the material which is being discarded and repurposing it and turning it into something which has new meaning and new life to it."
While the Pianodrome in Charlotte is the first in the country, it's the third Pianodrome from the team.
The team spent about seven years bringing the first Pianodrome to life for its 2018 debut in Edinburgh, inspired by Wright and Tim Vincent-Smith's experience performing in their band and seeking performance spaces that mimicked the engaging amphitheater experience.
After the success of the first Pianodrome, the team kept going.
The Charlotte Pianodrome was years in the making, then last January the Pianodrome team ventured out to the Queen City and worked with a team of builders for about three months to bring it to life.
"Everything in this hundred-seater amphitheater is made -- down to the screws that it's stuck together with -- the pianos have been unscrewed and then cut and turned and then screwed back together again," Vincent-Smith, co-director and designer behind Pianodrome, said. "It's a very impressive space. But I don't want that impressiveness to be a sort of untouchable thing."
Vincent-Smith noted that despite all the efforts the team has to reduce waste and commit to upcycling, it's not a perfect endeavor. Taking the transatlantic flights to get the crew and the Pianodrome pieces out to Charlotte created the equivalent weight in CO2 as the entire Pianodrome's weight, he said.
"We're keen to be transparent about that, but we feel it's very important to bring our work to a wider audience," Vincent-Smith said. "You never know who is going to connect with the idea and what sort of way, so we live in hope."
There are three playable pianos embedded into Charlotte's Pianodrome, and another piano in the center. Vincent-Smith and Wright both note the "fabulous" acoustics of the Historic Grace AME Zion Church, saying they hope people feel called to sit for a while and play.
Throughout Charlotte SHOUT!, the Charlotte Piano Teachers Forum has coordinated having piano teachers present professional and amateur musicians alike in music experiences for the public to enjoy and participate in.
Wright was able to attend Charlotte SHOUT! last year during Pianodrome Charlotte's debut, and saw people engage with the Pianodrome.
"It was really heartwarming to see how people were approaching the use of the Pianodrome in a different context with different ideas," Wright said.
Thursday night, Brittney Spencer, one of the artists recently featured on Beyoncé's "BLACKBIIRD," will perform an intimate show at the Pianodrome as Charlotte SHOUT! approaches its final days.
Vincent-Smith said he views the Pianodrome as a "catalyst" for bringing people together through music and innovative ideas.
"I consider it to be a sculpture, really an interactive sculpture at base, and I consider the people who pass through the Pianodrome to be a part of the sculpture, in fact, the most important part," Vincent-Smith said.
Charlotte SHOUT! runs through Sunday, April 14, though both Wright and Vincent-Smith said they hope the Pianodrome becomes a part of the community year-round.
Contact Emma Korynta at ekorynta@wcnc.com and follow her on X.