Even when said obsession involves a relatively bulky object with many moving parts.

For Sydney artist Ken Unsworth, the grand piano has long been the vehicle for his artistic musings, and not just because of the sound it makes.

His large-scale installations have often involved a piano turned inside out, gutted and adorned with anachronistic objects, including angels, flowers, straw and mice.

His latest work, Smokestack Piano, involves forms made of blown glass, and from its temporary digs in the Canberra Glassworks' iconic smokestack, will form part of the Canberra International Music Festival.

"I've had a bit of a mania about grand pianos," he told Fairfax Media this week.

"This one is part of a series where I was using glass-blown forms, and even though I'd done the drawings a long, long time ago I could never realise it because the technical aspects of blowing those forms was beyond the capacity of most glass workers."

Then he discovered the skilled artists working at Canberra Glassworks, and his vision was finally realised.

"I provided them with profiles of the forms and they tried to approximate that as much as they could," he said.

"Glass asserts itself and you don't have much control over it at certain stages, so I had to accommodate to what they were able to produce. It all worked out for the best…"

Luckily for Canberrans, Unsworth is a longtime friend of the festival's artistic director Roland Peelman, who, upon seeing the work, insisted that it form part of the festival's eclectic program.

The work will be showcased during intimate performances by Peelman and other musicians during the festival.

"He [Peelman] had this idea of putting it in the smokestack, so that led me to think well, I'll add smoke to it. So at a certain point of time, smoke comes out of the piano," he said.

The piano will be accompanied by a series of works by the artists who helped Unsworth, including Tom Rowney, Matthew Curtis, Harriet Schwarzrock and John White.

For information on performance times and bookings, visit cimf.org.au or canberraglassworks.com.

The Canberra International Music Festival runs until May 8.