Yamaha Education News

How do they do that? Jamie Cullum's amazing exploding piano trick

Pictured here: The exploding Yamaha piano taking pride of place on the cover of Jamie Cullum's superb new album, The Pursuit.

Jamie Cullum's new record The Pursuit has been attracting critical acclaim and remains high in the UK charts following its November launch. When Jamie's creative director Marc Silver approached Yamaha to discuss how the album design, videos, website, imagery and promotions could create maximum and lasting impact the idea of exploding a piano was hatched!

Throughout his career Jamie has repeatedly chosen Yamaha pianos for his recordings and professional appearances and we are delighted to have been able to support him with the current album. It is a finely balanced mix, covering pop, jazz-influenced pop, R&B and jazz, taking jazz principles but exploring their application to a more mainstream rock and pop approach. There are some delightful tracks, with my personal favourites being the straightforward poppy single, I'm All Over It Now and the moody and rather more wistful cover of If I Ruled the World. His voice is far more mature than his years and his piano playing, as expected, sublime.

We were therefore delighted to learn that Jamie is a guest director for the Cheltenham Jazz Festival in April 2010, where the Yamaha Jazz Experience competition finals will also take place.

Clearly the idea of exploding a piano isn't one that Yamaha is asked for every day. And certainly it caused our piano specialists some understable initial concern (and some of them may have been left with a permanent nervous twitch)! More than 18 months of planning would culminate in just four 3-second explosions. We managed to find a C3 grand piano for the project that was beyond repair and also supplied hundreds of piano components, including keys, hammers, shanks and strings, all deployed to dramatic effect in the final nail-biting blast. In all, four replica pianos were blown up, the shells of which were fractured with an explosive cord resembling something out of a Bond film. Charges were wired up, and cables run to a detonation block. The button was pushed, the cord shattered the replica cabinet, followed instantly by a whole series of secondary explosions, precisely controlled to the milli-second to ensure the overall 'shape' of the explosion was correct. All the internal workings of the piano were then catapulted through the fractured cabinet structure, using an air mortar to create a ball of shrapnel moving through the air. Legs and keyboard were both on separate charges and the film was shot at 1000 frames per second, or 40 times slower than real time.

In all, six motion and still cameras were situated behind 2-inch thick armoured glass! All personnel cleared the area, with the exception of the poor detonations expert, who had drawn the shortest straw. No-one was injured but severe damage was caused to the doors of the studio, with the film-makers stating that the doors resembled a porcupine at the end of the process.

Jamie Cullum detonated piano number four and you can enjoy the dramatic results in the comfort of your own laptop by visiting YouTube.

We are delighted that once again we'll be supplying a top-end Yamaha grand piano for Jamie to play at the 2010 Cheltenham Jazz Festival (but only if he promises not to blow this one up!)

by DJPR & Bill C Martin

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(posted: December 2009)