Documenting India’s grand old acoustic pianos, one key at a time

Mirra Kannan documents India's old pianos, uncovering hidden treasures and engaging with technicians, as part of Resonant Legacies.

An old acoustic piano, according to Mirra Kannan, is a time capsule. Beneath its dusty lid and in between its keys, one can find “little treasures” that will offer insights into its past. “These may be old newspapers, a coin or signs of restoration of its previous technicians,” she says. The 29-year-old, who is now based in Edinburgh, Scotland, has been documenting India’s old acoustic pianos as part of her undertaking called Resonant Legacies. It is part of Paraa, her initiative that is an ‘exploration of sound‘. She was in Chennai, her hometown, earlier this year, and has so far documented 15 pianos.

Mirra is fascinated by the instrument. She calls herself “a conservator of buildings on weekdays, and conservator of pianos on weekends”. Her tryst with pianos started a little over three years ago when she went to Scotland for her Master’s in Architectural Conservation. It was there that she came across the Pianodrome, an amphitheatre made entirely of up-cycled pianos. Set up by bandmates Tim Vincent-Smith and Matt Wright, the space and its many ancient pianos set Mirra’s life journey on a new path.   

Mirra went on to apprentice under Benjamin Treuhaft, a piano tuner and technician, who introduced her to the nuances of the intricate craft of piano tuning. Opening up an old piano and seeing its mechanics and architecture took Mirra back to her childhood when she would observe ‘Rao uncle’ (Chennai’s popular piano tuner S Venkateswara Rao), bent at work over her piano at her Chennai home.

For the first time, Mirra got the opportunity to not just observe a technician at work, but to tune a piano herself. “In 2023, I got to practise on the 100 odd pianos at an abandoned shopping centre where people had given them up for adoption,” she recalls. Mirra’s interactions with these ancient pianos got her interested in the history of the instruments back home in India. “This led me to think about the piano tuners of India,” she says, adding that India’s Colonial legacy has left behind several such old instruments that are living, breathing beings that not just resonate with music, but history as well.

Thus began Mirra’s journey to India to document pianos and also meet their technicians. “Talking to the technicians, understanding their journey and experiences with different pianos blew my mind,” says Mirra, who visited Musee Musical in Chennai, Mistry & Co in Mumbai and Braganza & Co in Kolkata. These conversations, she says, showed her that the men saw their work as something “beyond a seemingly menial task of repairing an object”.

In Chennai, Mirra has documented pianos at the Taj Connemara, Musée Musical, and the KM Music Conservatory as part of the Pianos of Madras leg of her journey. In February this year, she was introduced to a 111-year-old Steinway grand piano at KM, and helped clean and tune it. “AR Rahman commented on my Instagram post about this piano!” she says.

Mirra’s documentation involves taking several photos of the instrument. “I note down the brand, its serial number, and if I’m allowed to interact with it, I play something and record it,” she says. She feels that there are several old pianos in India, particularly in hill stations such as Kodaikanal and Darjeeling, and hopes to visit sometime again this year to see them.