Facebook: Gig Finder?

"The online social networking site helped a Switzerland-based artist manager who was vacationing in Israel track down a New York pianist performing in Colorado and book him for a concert in Colombia."

I'm surprised Facebook has been used for this sort of thing before now. link

Scenes from a Piano Drop

Obligatory YouTube clip of the 2009 Piano Drop at MIT.



Best quote: "“This is much more exciting,” said MIT sophomore Teresa Gomez as she rifled through the piano’s broken parts on the ground. “The guts are all out.”"

Deets

London International Piano Competition - Semi Finalists announced

And those to make thus far are:

    * Andrejs  Osokins, Latvia
    * Stephanie  Proot, Belgium
    * Ishay  Shaer, Israel
    * Alessandro  Taverna, Italy
    * Hwan-Hee  Yoo, Korea
    * Behzod  Abduraimov, Uzbekistan
    * Ran  Dank, Israel
    * Sasha  Grynyuk, Ukraine
    * Sofya  Gulyak, Russia

Some worthwhile thoughts about the "politics" of competitions can be found Jessica Duchen's splendid blog. Link.  Some compeitions are better than others.  There's definitely lots of room for reform and improvement. Worth checking out it is the

10,000 Musicians Against Corruption in Music Competitions

Muscial Wonder House

I came across a fascinating Flicker stream - "The Musical Wonder House" -

A wonderful museum of music machines, from grand player pianos to automatons, to coin-operated stereopticons.  The photos are pure eye candy for music lovers.

It's today's web pick. Give 'em some bloggy goodness. Link

Teenager Builds World's Largest Piano

mad props to our man Hucbald at the mighty blog "A Monk's Musical Musings" for pointing the way to this news story about a teen in New Zealand who has built what's being called "the world's largest piano".

He started building it at the age of 16 and finished it this year (four years later). It is a monster! Twice the size of the modern concert grand. It is nearly 19 feet long. Yikes! This surpasses the Challen which lumbered in at 11.5 feet in length.  85% of it is built from recycled materials.

video of said monster is found here. read more about it here.

Piano Hybrids Coming Soon

For about 15K USD you can enjoy sometime in May the latest from Yamaha: the Avant Grand. Billed as a blending of old and new, digital and acoustic, the new piano sports some fancy features. It's the new synergy.

"acoustic and electronic pianos have been developed separately by different departments at Yamaha, but the company became convinced that a synergistic effect can be produced by leveraging the strengths of the two departments."

 But what I though most interesting was this nugget: "According to Yamaha, the number of users who do not discriminate acoustic and digital pianos from each other is increasing. Such users sometimes prefer an electronic piano even though they have enough budget and space." Wow. I guess that shouldn't surprise me, but it does.


a bit more description of the instrument



 Yamaha developed a special keyboard operation mechanism for the new piano. Each key has two sensors that contactlessly detect a key stroke and its strength when producing sound. One of the sensors is attached to a key while the other is located on a component provided in place of a hammer of a grand piano.
The pedals can be used just like those of a grand piano.... Skilled players delicately change their pedaling to have desired expression in their play. Yamaha improved the mechanism to duplicate the feelings of a grand piano.

Something to keep your eye open for next time your on piano store crawl

Photos and deets found here.

video clip found here.

Roll Your Own Postmodern

Just scroll down this blog and start clicking on any three youtube videos. let them play simultaneously. nice.

keyboard excercises

This is just how blogging ought to be done

New Uses for Old Pianos

Don't send that clunker to the landfill just yet!

I am genuinely inspired and pleased by these clever re-purposed old pianos.


Check it out.

Dog Accompanies Himself

Geesh.