It’s safe to say that if you reach the age of 66 and you find yourself playing a piano that is on fire, either your life has turned out spectacularly well or it has turned out spectacularly poorly.

In the case of avant-garde jazz pianist Yōsuke Yamashita in 2008, it was more likely the first option. Yamashita has enjoyed a respected career of playing raucous and experimental jazz, having played with many accomplished Japanese musicians as well as western players like Cecil McBee, Joe Lovano, Bill Laswell, Albert Ayler, and Adelhard Roidinger.

In 1973 Kiyoshi Awazu asked Yamashita to play a burning piano for a short movie with the title of—you guessed it—Burning Piano. It’s unclear whether Yamashita qualifies as a Fluxus artist (not many have made that particular connection), but the emphasis on ephemerality and absurdity is reminiscent of Fluxus antics such as Nam June Paik’s remarkable Etude pour Piano, which culminated with Paik leaping into the audience to cut off the necktie of John Cage. Another Fluxus work, Piano Activities by Philip Corner, resulted in the total destruction of a piano in Wiesbaden in 1962 after Dick Higgins, George Maciunas, and others, faithfully following the score, which bid the musicians to “drop objects on” a piano and to “strike soundboard, pins, lid or drag various kinds of objects across them.”

Several years ago the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan, arranged for Yamashita to undertake a repeat of his 1973 burning piano recital. The event was held on March 8, 2008, at a beach in Ishikawa, Japan. It took less than 10 minutes for the piano to burn sufficiently that Yamashita’s banging on the keys had ceased to produce music. Yamashita donned a silver fireproof suit for the occasion, which had the effect of making the recital seem like a scene out of a 1970s sci-fi movie.

Yamashita commented:
 

I did not think I was risking my life, but I was almost suffocating from the smoke that was continuously getting into my eyes and nose. I had decided to keep on playing until the piano stopped making sounds, so though I did not mean it, but it ended up having a life-or-death battle between the piano and myself.

 
Here’s a full video of the performance:

 
A Japanese news report with English translation:

 
A very brief clip from Awazu’s 1973 short: