Interactive Flower Piano Festival Celebrates Tenth Anniversary with Mayor Lurie

The Gardens of Golden Gate Park launched Flower Piano’s tenth anniversary celebration on September 12 with a VIP evening featuring Grammy-winning pianist Christian Tumalan and his Montuno Swing ensemble. San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie and First Lady Becca Prowda were among the local luminaries who joined the festivities in the San Francisco Botanical Garden. Flower Piano, the Bay Area’s beloved interactive music festival, runs through September 21, and invites visitors to discover 12 pianos strategically placed across the 55-acre living museum. Throughout the event run, scheduled performances blend with open piano play time, creating a musical collage reflecting diverse musical genres and cultures in the final days before the autumnal equinox.

San Francisco Recreation & Park General Manager Phil Ginsburg and Gardens of Golden Gate Park CEO Stephanie Linder celebrated alongside the city’s music lovers for an evening that honored both the festival’s milestone anniversary and its evolution from musician Mauro Ffortissimo’s covert 2013 piano placement on Half Moon Bay bluffs. The Sunset Piano co-founders’ impromptu musical experiment has grown into the Bay Area’s most ambitious temporary piano installation, transforming San Francisco Botanical Garden into an interactive concert venue where professional musicians and curious visitors alike create spontaneous musical moments, all while surrounded by the Garden’s 8,000 plant species from around the world. This year’s celebration perfectly captures the Gardens of Golden Gate Park’s mission to connect people to plants, the planet and each other.