PianOcean: a piano on a boat at the waterfront

The Nova Scotia Arts Council's summer piano tour has a simple, striking premise: place a piano in an outdoor spot and let the landscape do half the work. This year it's called PianOcean, and the Halifax stop was the one that really leaned into the name. Over three evenings in mid-July, the waterfront turned into a concert hall, and the stage was a boat.

Marieke Huysmans Berthou is the person behind it all. She's a pianist, composer, singer and sailor from Saint-Brieuc in Brittany, and she's been combining music and sailing since her teens. Back in 2013 she bought a boat, spent two years in Sète cutting a hole in the rear deck to fit a piano and building a lifting system to get it in and out, and launched the Pianocean project a decade ago. Since then she's played in ports around the world and recorded nine albums in a studio built right on board. Her boat, the Lady Flow, has taken her through the Mediterranean, Ireland, Scotland, the Azores and the Canary Islands, and it's now working its way through the Caribbean.

In Halifax, the event was billed as 'Pianocean - A piano by Sail - Concert on the Waterfront', and it lived up to the description. The piano sat on the deck of the Lady Flow, and the music was played directly from the boat, with the performance taking in the sea, distant coastlines and the people she meets along the way. It blended original compositions with poetry and storytelling, and the whole thing was free, all-ages and held at the Steps by the Sea. It's the kind of setup that only works when the setting is part of the show, and a floating piano on the Halifax waterfront fits the bill.

The Halifax dates were part of a wider tour that's been moving across the province. It opened in Lunenburg on July 11 and 12, then landed in Halifax for three nights, before heading to Iona on July 26 and St. Peters at the end of the month, with a stop at the St. Peters Marina on July 31 and another at the St. Peters Canal on August 2. The tour wraps up in Baddeck on August 5 and 8, so there's still a bit of it left if you're willing to drive.

It's worth knowing what this tour is building on. Last year's edition put pianos in some of the most photographed spots in the province, from the Cabot Trail to Peggy's Cove and the Annapolis Valley, so the tradition of pairing a piano with a view is well established here. Whether you're catching a performance on a boat or on a cliffside, the idea is the same: let the place you're standing in shape how the music sounds.

One last thing for anyone following the tour: Halifax sits in Mi'kma'ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi'kmaq people, which is a good reminder of whose land you're standing on when you stop to listen.