Salt Lake City bicyclist dreams of pedaling and playing his piano bike across Europe

Eric Rich, the man behind the Pedaled Piano project, calls himself a compulsive imaginator, and it fits. And his imagination has resulted in a more than decade-long interest in combining his love of piano with his bicycles.

Rich is a self-taught pianist who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah where he works as a carpenter, roofer and visual artist. When he decided to start busking at the local farmers market in 2010, he wasn’t lucky enough to be able to strap a guitar to his back and pedal down the street. A piano is a bit more problematic. Enter the pedaled piano project.

“I very purposefully didn’t have a car, and with the market being two miles away I had to think how I was going to transport my piano to the market,” Rich says. “I picked up a free piano on Craigslist, rigged up an incredibly low-geared bike from our local bicycle collective and dropped both of them off at my brothers shop who welds and he fabricated a custom trailer built around the piano and bike.”

It wasn’t easy, but Rich says it was worth it.

“The smiles and excitement during transportation and the joy people felt hearing piano music in unexpected places solidified the piano-bike’s place in my heart,” he says.

 

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The Evolution of the Dream

Years later, Rich took to Kickstarter and crowdsourced enough funds to build an even better version of the piano bike reimagined as a tall bike. And it is something to behold.

And, the piano tall bike has been Rich’s ride of choice for his busking adventures since then. But, being the compulsive imaginator that he is, Rich was ready for more.

Playing piano under the share of trees in a park sparked a new vision.

“As my fingers moved across the keyboard and the gentle mountain air gusted over my sweaty shirtless back I was imbued with a vision of riding my piano, not just locally as I’d always done, but traveled long distances cross country,” he says. “The entire ride down the canyon I was invigorated with this dream of composing in the wild and performing in random downtown alleyways, moving me and my piano across borders.”

Yes, Rich wants to pedal his piano across Europe.

The next piano bike dream

In 2019, Rich flew to Europe to secure the two most important pieces of his new project: The piano and the bike.

After spending a month in David Klavins piano workshop in Vác, a small city outside of Budapest, and meeting Mario, the CEO of GLEAM at Eurobike, then again at their headquarters in Vienna, things were in motion and Rich was well on his way to building the first cross-country and human-powered pianobike.

Of course, the world took a very serious time-out right about this time, and the piano bike European tour was put on hold.

“As soon as I got back from that trip in the winter, I booked a flight for March 17, 2020 to attach the piano and bike and get it packaged to ship to the starting point of my trip in Norway. That was the plan anyway,” Rich explains. “I made the difficult decision not to go just two days before my flight into Paris. The day after my decision, France imposed a lockdown and banned travel.”

The road to realizing this ambitious pedaled piano project has been fraught with challenges. From factory closures to bankruptcies, Eric found himself navigating a complex web of setbacks. Undeterred, he joined forces with Guillaume, a skilled craftsman, and Kyle, a composites engineer. Yet, financial constraints and the intricacies of the project tested their dedication.

As the project faced uncertainties and shifts in personnel, Eric kept his vision alive. The design evolved, incorporating a tilting cargo trike with a sidecar attachment for the piano. Plans for assembly in France took shape, only to face more obstacles. Despite these challenges, Eric remains undeterred, seeking a balance between the creative vision and the pragmatic demands of turning dreams into reality.

“Passion projects are great, they can bring some of the most creative, innovative and fun ideas into being, but without the ability to pay people for their time, and given the slow nature of this work, it can be difficult to sustain investment from others,” Rich says.

A Crescendo in the Making

Looking forward, Eric is navigating the complexities of the sidecar design for his piano bike, while simultaneously seeking collaborators to finalize the piano’s lightweight yet robust structure. With a vision fueled by passion, Eric eagerly anticipates the day when the carbon fibre plate is transformed into tangible piano components, ready to embark on a musical journey across borders.

“On the bike side of things I’m currently figuring out how this sidecar design is going to pan out,” Rich says. “There’s a lot more considerations to take into account than I originally thought with that design, but since my recent trip to the International Cargo Bike Festival in Amsterdam I’ve become convinced that this is going to be the best approach.”

The Pedaled Piano project, with its twists and turns, epitomizes the resilience required to turn a passion project into a reality. As the symphony on wheels continues to evolve, one cannot help but be captivated by the harmony of creativity and determination that defines this audacious musical endeavor.