“What colour do you see?” That’s what Precious Renee Tucker asked the crowd while playing different compositions at her Piano Anatomy class at the Telfar store in New York. I closed my eyes and saw deep blue and magenta. One song even turned from forest green into brown. I’d seen the experimental pianist play before on Instagram – in one of her now-signature videos where she plays on four keyboards at once – but hearing Tucker play in person is nothing short of spiritual. Those colours and that performance, which happened back in December 2025, lingered with me until early March, when I spoke to Tucker on the phone. 

Based in Arkansas, Tucker was working as a server and piano teacher just months before going viral on Instagram and TikTok. Since then, she’s been back and forth to New York City, to play at Solange Knowles’ Saint Heron book event and Telfar’s intimate show. Online, she’s adored by almost anyone who encounters her piano playing, including Amaarae, keiyaA and Kelela. But she’s still a working piano teacher. “I always encourage my students to trust their instincts and, a lot of the time, we just end up talking about piano,” she says. “I love classical music, but I just wonder if we’re including the full archive of all of the music that has ever been documented.” If her students do something a little bit outside of the norm, she simply tells them perhaps they’re channelling something we “lost the archive to”.

Tucker’s approach to teaching would surprise no one who has listened to her effortlessly blend classical performance with Witch House, or even free jazz. Experimenting with the piano came naturally to her. “When I was around two or three, I just gravitated to it,” she says. Even before getting lessons, Tucker’s parents always knew that she had a consistent connection with the piano. The small white toy keyboard in her videos is the first keyboard she ever had. “At one point, I almost did ballet, but my parents are very Christian, so they always had the mentality of letting God show them who I was or what I needed to be doing,” she says. They booked her lessons and loaned a keyboard that a choir member had been gifted. “I didn’t know how much of a luxury it was to have my very first piano teacher be a Black woman who played gospel, but could play as classical as well,” she adds. 

Tucker speaks of all the teachers in her life fondly. Like the directors of her school band, where she played the clarinet. “Our band directors really made us feel like we were invincible and we could play anything,” she says. “There would always be something new in our folders that looked a little bit too hard, but they’d encourage us to take risks.” In high school, Tucker says band meant everything to her. Also, the orchestra, where she played the cello. While every instrument seems to interest Tucker, she recalls her days of clarinet like an affair. “I cheated on piano with clarinet, because I still had this relationship with piano for a while,” she says. “But also, I was always watching SpongeBob and trying to figure out what Squidward was doing. Why does he love this wind instrument so much?” 

“I’ve been exploring the concept of non-duality, and the idea of infinity is so relieving because maybe that’s how many emotions I’m allowed to feel. Maybe that’s how many times I’m allowed to make a mistake. Maybe that’s how many chances for miracles there are”

Growing up as an only child in a predominantly white area, Tucker says she always felt like the external world had limits. She was uncomfortable with the idea of being “too much”. “It just kind of seemed like I would reach max capacity, whether that be for emotional freedom or expression,” she says. “But I would never run out of it with myself, and I would never run out of it through piano. That’s the only time where I felt like I could be completely honest.” Through piano, Tucker remained hopeful that there was more than she could conceive at the time. “I’ve been exploring the concept of non-duality, and the idea of infinity is so relieving because maybe that’s how many emotions I’m allowed to feel,” she adds. “Maybe that’s how many times I’m allowed to make a mistake. Maybe that’s how many chances for miracles there are.”

There’s a working theory that Tucker is still exploring: our bodies, as “ancient machinery”, hold onto history and memory that can be reactivated when you play the instruments that other humans have played for hundreds of years. It could perhaps explain why young creatives seem to be becoming interested in instruments again, although outside of their classical setting. In recent years, there have been reimagined violin cases coming out from brands like Vaquera and harpists playing at fashion week parties. “Maybe the newest aspiration is to not have enough time to be on Instagram because you’re busy having an experience,” says Tucker. Over time, she’s used the piano not only as a tool of expression, but as a tool of communication to either her past or future self, or perhaps a separate realm. “When I play, it’s very subconscious for me – I just get the data out,” she says.

An astrophysicist at her core (she’s an Aquarius and Interstellar is her favourite movie at the moment), Tucker tells me she doesn’t know why music is the realm she operates within. It’s something that still puzzles her. “I always tried to resist it, but I was introduced to piano in such a spiritual context, where everyone came together to have an experience,” she says. “I was so drawn to the energy source of the church, which, from my perspective, was the pianos.” These days, she’s still inspired by gospel, but also EDM, metal, “everything Solange does”, and the weather in Tornado Alley. “I don’t mean to romanticise tornadoes, but I've been really inspired by weather lately, because it’s some of the first data that we get from new planets,” Tucker says. “I’m trying to score what kind of music is making up the wind on Venus.” 

In the future, Tucker wants to get her PhD in planetary science and contribute to scientific research. She also wouldn’t mind retiring as a mathematician. But her relationship with the piano will, of course, still continue. “I just want to practice more,” she says. “I’m taking my own advice when it comes to bravery and risk tolerance that I teach my piano students, so they can see me test out the experiment in real time.” Near the end of our conversation, she showed me her iPhone homescreen. It was a photo of Saturn. “I think my Saturn return is coming, but I have always loved Saturn,” she says. When I asked why, she started listing the spectacular colours and the hexagonal storm at the top. Then, she stopped and added, “I mean, I hope everyone there is okay.”