Vintage piano given Valentine's Day deadline

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /><h2 style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 18px; padding: 0px;">A musician has been ordered to remove the 90-year-old instrument from a bluff top in Half Moon Bay. After a last performance, he plans to burn the piano Sunday.</h2><div><img alt="Bluff-top piano" src="http://www.trbimg.com/img-511c5e81/turbine/la-1358485-me-0213-piano6-wjs.jpg-20130213/580/580x357" /></div><div><span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 12px;">Artist Mauro Ffortissimo plays the piano for a crowd in Half Moon Bay, Calif. City officials have given him until Thursday to remove the piano from its perch overlooking the ocean. </span><span class="credit" style="background-color: #f2f2f2; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 12px;">(<span class="photographer">Wally Skalij, Los Angeles Times</span> / <span class="dateMonth">February </span><span class="dateDay">14</span><span class="dateYear">, 2013</span>)</span><br /><div class="articlerail" style="background-color: white; clear: both; float: left; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 15px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 234px; z-index: 4;"><div class="articleRelates module" style="border: 1px solid rgb(231, 231, 231); margin: 0px 0px 30px; padding: 10px 10px 0px;"><ul style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><li class="newRelatedItem useBullet" style="clear: both; list-style: none outside none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px;"><a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-sunset-piano-photos-20130213,0,1743138.photogallery" style="clear: both; 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La Ganga, Los Angeles Times</span><div class="date" style="color: #930000; font-size: 11px; font-style: italic; margin-top: 3px; padding: 0px;"><span class="dateString" style="display: inline;">February 13, 2013</span><span class="dateTimeSeparator" style="border-left-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; color: white; display: inline; font-size: 10px; letter-spacing: -1px; margin-left: 6px;">, </span><span class="timeString" style="display: inline; text-transform: lowercase;">10:25 p.m.</span></div></div><div class="clear" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"></div></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px;"></span><div id="story-body-text" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.43; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;"><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">HALF MOON BAY, Calif. — The piano was delivered to its bluff-top perch under cover of fog nearly two weeks ago. It is scheduled to leave this coastal enclave in a burst of flames on Sunday.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">In between the fog and the fire, musician and sculptor Mauro Ffortissimo has been treating his neighbors to an illicit outdoor concert series grandly dubbed Sunset Piano. Chopin, Debussy, a tango or two. The performances are timed to end the moment the sun sinks below the horizon.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">He plays to cyclists and dog walkers, babies in strollers, his landlady in a folding chair, the charmed, the perplexed. Every night the battered baby grand has sounded just a little bit worse as the elements erode the aging, al fresco instrument. Every night, the audience has grown.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">Ffortissimo (not his real name, but you probably figured that out already) had hoped to serenade the residents of Half Moon Bay for a month. But it didn't take long for reality to intrude on the 50-year-old artist's well-laid plans.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">Two days after Ffortissimo and friends rolled the piano out to a scenic spit of city land, a code enforcement officer sent a warning via email. Someone had complained.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">No permit, no piano.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">The 90-year-old Estey "<em>appears</em> to be an unauthorized encroachment onto public property," wrote Lamonte Mack. If you can't prove the installation is authorized, he told Ffortissimo, "please remove the piano — and platform —<em>within 10 (ten) days</em>."</div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">That made the deadline Valentine's Day, an occasion to celebrate love, if not misplaced musical instruments.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">The artist legally known as Mauro Dinucci has taken the bad news in stride. Asked about the end of the piano during Tuesday night's crowded concert, he crowed: "Woo, hoo! Valentine's Day! Bring chocolate!" and promised that "before we burn this baby, we give it one last boat ride."</div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">Thursday will be the piano's last scheduled bluff-side concert along the Coastside Trail at the end of Kelly Avenue. Friday, Ffortissimo said, he has been invited to play the instrument at the Half Moon Bay Yacht Club.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">Saturday he'll give a sunset performance on the water, a nod to the piano's earlier owners who once sent it from California to Panama and back by sea. Sunday he plans to set the piano ablaze in the flower-strewn field behind his studio.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">"The idea of the burning," Ffortissimo said, "is a cremation, to liberate the piano from its physical form … I just hope it won't be a 'Spare the Air' day."</div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">Not everyone is as happy as Ffortissimo about the piano's upcoming freedom.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">Mayor Rick Kowalczyk, who has yet to hear the Sunset Piano himself, said he was trying to "see if I can't get something done in the short term to allow Mauro to stay." Kicking the Estey off of the bluff, he said, "feels a little bit like a child has a lemonade stand and the city shuts it down."</div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">On Tuesday evening, more than 100 music lovers gathered round as the sun — and the temperature — dropped. Two women danced together on the grass. Wine was sipped and beer chugged. Children ate cold pizza. Shorebirds glided by.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">Far away from Half Moon Bay, <a class="taxInlineTagLink" href="http://www.latimes.com/topic/politics/government/barack-obama-PEPLT007408.topic" id="PEPLT007408" style="color: #666666; text-decoration: none;" title="Barack Obama">President Obama</a> was preparing to give his <a class="taxInlineTagLink" href="http://www.latimes.com/topic/politics/government/state-of-the-union-address-EVGAP00063.topic" id="EVGAP00063" style="color: #666666; text-decoration: none;" title="State of the Union Address">State of the Union</a>address. Christopher Dorner was thought to be shooting it out with police.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">But here on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Susan Swanson of Redwood City poured white wine from a blue metal flask as Ffortissimo played Albinoni's "Adagio in G Minor." She'd read about the piano performance in the local newspaper, she said, "and it's the kind of news I like to read — good news.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">"This to me is everything," said the trying-to-retire office manager. "It's a perfect moment. Once in a lifetime maybe. It's so odd, isn't it?"</div></div></div></div>

Valentine's Day Vintage piano given Valentine's Day deadline

A musician has been ordered to remove the 90-year-old instrument from a bluff top in Half Moon Bay. After a last performance, he plans to bu...

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