Easter at the Piano Mill 2025

Made of Wood | 10th Anniversary Special

Sunday 20 April 2025

Celebrating the tenth year of The Piano Mill, artistic director Vanessa Tomlinson curated Made of Wood. Set in a forest of Eucalyptus Obliqua on the top of the eastern escarpment of the Great Dividing Range, the Piano Mill itself is made of wood, surrounded by wood. Pianos are made of wood – birch, fir, oak, spruce; guitars are made of wood – mahogany, ash, walnut, maple; a marimba is made of wood – rosewood.

All this wood was once a tree, grown somewhere, as part of an ecosystem, a home for animals, insects, birds and fungi. At some point the tree was felled, moved, cut into pieces, dried, milled, sold. At another point it was purchased, sanded, heated, bent, shaped. Still later an instrument builder chose a specific piece of wood to craft into a specific instrument – drawn by particular qualities of the wood. Other wood instruments you may encounter today include violin, contrabass, recorder, yidaki / didgeridoo, and log drums.

The forest is literally sonic potential, and this year you heard it transformed into milled planks of Eucalyptus Obliqua played as a percussion instrument; you heard wind, string, and percussive wood revealing rhythm, tone and resonance; and you heard performers perspectives about wood on live radio, as longtime ABC radio host Stephen Adams broadcast from the Imaginary Radio. And throughout the afternoon you heard the forest itself – as the tress and the communities they support sonically contribute to our 10th anniversary celebration – Made of Wood.