Leilehua Lanzilotti

Liliʻuokalani’s Piano

Liliʻuokalani’s Piano is a new project which addresses issues of access, archive, music technology, through the development of new work.

The new virtual instrument, Liliʻuokalani’s Piano​, will be made with recordings from the sounds of the last Queen of Hawaiʻi's piano made from koa wood. The physical piano is currently housed at Washington Place, the Queen's last home. Because of its location and classification as a historical artifact, the piano is not accessible to most local Hawaiian musicians, let alone diaspora. Therefore, the project addresses this inequality through open-access virtual instrument development and archive creation.

Lanzilotti is the great-granddaughter of Samuel Wilder King and Pauline Nawahineokalaʻi Evans King, Native Hawaiians who lived in Washington Place during Samuel Wilder King’s time as the territorial governor of Hawaiʻi. In an interview about being the First Lady of Hawaiʻi and living in Washington Place, Mrs. King recounted, “Almost every day I came here with my mother to see the Queen who was one of her best friends. I played in the garden or ran around these rooms as though it were my home. My mother was an accomplished musician and often she would sit down at this old piano and play, and she and the Queen would sing together. Sometimes the Queen would play, or they would just sit and talk.”

The project makes the sound and story of this unique instrument available to Hawaiian diaspora and others outside of Hawaiʻi. It imagines that archive can be dynamic and living in the hands of engaged artists. Liliʻuokalani's Piano challenges the performing arts field to imagine virtual instruments that hold cultural significance in their communities as important just as much as their sound.

To launch the project, new works will be commissioned that integrate the virtual instrument into Ableton Live, Max MSP, and the Monome Norns, an open-source sound computer that uses Lua and SuperCollider. Open-source elements will be made publicly available as the project rolls out in the spring, giving access to diasporic Hawaiians and other musicians around the world to use the sound of Liliʻuokalani’s Piano in their own work.

Special projects, such as Liliʻuokalani’s Piano, are fiscally sponsored by Experimental Futures Corporation, a registered 501(c)(3) corporation. Donations are accepted free of product or service obligations. Donate here.