Editor’s Note: The latest edition of the Norwood News is out now, and its our annual Year in Review issue–-a recap of the biggest stories that took place in 2011, in the Bronx and beyond. Over the next week or so, we’ll be rolling these top stories out here on Breaking Bronx. Enjoy, and a happy and healthy New Year to all of our readers!

The story of a community piano project in Williamsbridge Oval Park took so many twists and turns this past summer it felt like a roller coaster.

In June, the nonprofit group Sing for Hope placed a decorated “pop-up” piano for anyone to use in Oval Park as part of a project to inject music into the life of parks throughout the city. Later that month, the Norwood News and dozens of other news outlets reported the piano stolen after it disappeared.

Some were quick to call the stolen piano evidence of a neighborhood and a borough trending toward the dark side.

“This type of activity continues to give the Bronx a bad name and will make it difficult to bring any type of activity to parts of the Bronx that is not called Riverdale,” said a commenter on the Bronx News Network blog.

Later, as the resurgent Friends of Williamsbridge Oval Park volunteer group was searching for ways to replace the piano, the News discovered that the piano had not been stolen. In fact, Parks Department workers had mistaken the piano for trash and hauled it out of the park. (The agency soon apologized for its error.)

By then, the Friends group had already secured a new piano and was in the process of bringing it back to the park where it would be triumphantly painted by dozens of young local residents.

The story went from feel bad, to feel confused, to feel good in a matter of days.

“People are dying to have a reason to get involved and contribute to neighborhood cohesion,” said Elieen Markey, a member of Friends of the Oval. “There were people who came out of the woodwork to help.”

Later in the summer, however, before it could be shipped to a permanent home, the new/old/replacement piano was vandalized and rendered unplayable.