Two years ago, Dr Sarah Nicolls — a world-class concert pianist specialising in new music — launched First Light Pianos (FLP), a venture designed to bring the acoustic piano into the 21st century, making a product which was lightweight and space-saving without compromising on performance.
Some 600,000 acoustic pianos are sold each year as traditional grand pianos of varying sizes, or upright pianos. As we all know, these are heavy, difficult to manoeuvre, and often require a lot of space to accommodate.
While I wouldn’t call them “outdated”, FLP’s mission is to create a vertical grand piano without compromising on sound quality — something they argue is lost in the digital piano age.
The first time you see the prototype “Inside-Out Piano” — which was built around a decade ago — you may be rather taken aback, so used to seeing the standard grand for centuries. There’s something harp-like about its outline, all the mechanism is on show, it rises well above the height of most humans.
FLP has worked with Atelier One, internationally-renowned structural engineers, and Atlas Composite Technologies, able to manufacture complex composite components for high-end applications.
Another side to FLP is that the audience (and the pianist) can see the whole inside during a performance.
And, perhaps not surprisingly, some of the design was borne out of more experimental piano compositions, where one is required to manipulate the innards of the piano rather than simply playing the keys.
The FLP is a straight-strung piano, with all the strings running in parallel, which is nowadays quite unusual — most pianos have cross stringing. The dampers and hammers are behind the strings, making it easy to touch the strings in their entirety.
The vertical nature also makes the playing experience more immersive.
The biggest challenge is to make the instrument lightweight. The total tension across the whole piano’s strings is around 20 tons (over 20,000kg) and traditionally are held by cast iron. Looking at using strong, modern materials such as carbon fibre is the goal.
There’s an ideological goal in this, too — in a world increasingly dominated by AI, this reimagines the piano and brings it to a new audience for creative composition and expression.
FLP is not currently a production instrument — work is ongoing and there is opportunity for investment.
