Calgary Philharmonic’s Pianomania should be just grand
By Bob Clark, Calgary Herald November 25, 2011

Certainly, it’s a sight unprecedented in the history of virtually every orchestra, including the Calgary Philharmonic.

But hey, it’s gonna be a blast. Think of it as the CPO version of a monster truck show (without the fumes).

I mean, you don’t have to be any kind of piano nut to be awed and delighted at the sight of four shiny, jet-black nine-foot concert grands — a Fazioli, a Bluthner and two Bechsteins, all courtesy of Irene Besse — rising out of the floor of Jack Singer Concert Hall tonight to join their two Steinway counterparts, already parked off to the side, for the mauling Hexameron segment of the sold-out Pianomania! show that’s part of the Calgary Philharmonic’s Virtuosity Festival.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Tonight is really Honens’ night out — which means that after the CPO, conducted by music director Roberto Minczuk, gets through with cracking the venerable chestnut which opens the program, the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, six past winners of the Honens International Piano Competition will saddle up for first, a one-piano work (Rachmaninoff’s famous Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, with soloist, Minsoo Sohn); and then something famous for two pianos — Saint-Saens’ family-friendly Carnival of the Animals, performed by Alessandra Maria Ammara and Calgary’s own Katherine Chi.

Then it’s time for the Entrance of the Pianos (as the program puts it).

And what does that mean?

“A lot of logistics,” says CPO production manager Frank Gallant, who points out that the whole front of the stage is actually an elevator in three sections that will carry the four pianos up from their temporary home in the rehearsal hall below.

To make way for the new arrivals, Gallant says, “we’ve squished the orchestra (with podium) as much as we can, upstage.”

The resulting placement of the instruments will describe a gentle arc that follows the curve of the stage, allowing all six pianists an unobstructed view of the conductor, he adds.

Piano lids up?

“I believe all the lids are going to be off,” says Gallant (when we speak, there are still several days to go before the main event).

“But again, we haven’t done this before, so we may end up with the lids on.”

Nobody’s done anything like this before.

Certainly not Michael Lipnicki, even though he’s tuned pianos in Calgary and elsewhere for more than 30 years.

Two pianos? Lots of times.

But tuning six pianos? A two-prong challenge, Lipnicki says.

First, “We’re actually pretending they’re all the same piano, which means that some of them are perhaps not as perfect (perfectly tuned) as they would (normally) be — we’re talking very small differences — but they blend better when they play together.”

And second, there’s the matter of tone, which is separate from pitch or tuning.

Lipnicki points out that because each piano manufacturer has what they think is the “ideal” tone, trying to “homogenize” all six would result in a sound characteristic that was “blase.”

Accordingly, the challenge, Lipnicki says, “is to not have them stand out unnecessarily (because the pianists would have to work too hard to play against that) and yet still have them have their individual voice.”

In other words — “It’s a matter of, ‘Let each have its own character, but still have them get along,’ ” the tuner says.

(The whole Hexameron thing might remind a few of us of the 1950s bomb of a film, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, in which the young protagonist, almost terminally reluctant to practise the piano, ends up in a kind of keyboard chain gang where 5,000 similarly disposed kids are forced to practise on one giant piano.

As I recall, a later scene in the movie — at the Hollywood Bowl — used superimposition techniques to create multiple images of a lot of kids playing on an awful lot of pianos, a la Busby Berkeley.)

“It could be interesting,” hazards recent Honens laureate Evgeny Starodubtsev, who took part in the four-piano arrangement of Tubular Bells at Theatre Junction Grand several years ago.

“And it’s going to be loud,” he adds, laughing.

“A superpiano,” says 2003 Honens laureate, Winston Choi.

“It’s going to be fun,” says Katherine Chi, noting that the Hexameron and the two works immediately preceding it represent “a celebration of the piano and what’s possible with the piano.”

Chi recalls taking part in a recent outdoor amphitheatre concert in Lanaudiere, Que. that involved four pianos and 5,000 onlookers.

“I’d never seen an audience quite as excited as that,” she says. “It was sort of like a rock concert. Everybody was bringing out their lighters.”

Liszt’s Hexameron was a collaborative barnburner comprising an introduction (by Liszt); a theme (from an opera by Bellini); six variations — by Liszt, Chopin, Sigismond Thalberg (Liszt’s close rival in the virtuoso department), and three other composers); and a finale by Liszt.

The CPO version of Hexameron uses the orchestration by American composer Robert Linn, with all solo parts rearranged by Olivier Godin into various groupings up to six.

Honens laureate Roberto Plano (2003) remembers, some years back, playing one of four pianos in the performance of a Bach concerto.

Four pianos, he says, “was a little difficult to get together.

“So I can’t imagine six.”

The Calgary Philharmonic presents Pianomania! tonight at Jack Singer Concert Hall. The concert is sold out, but tickets are available for the dress rehearsal at 10 a.m. Call 403-571-0849

Six grand pianos grace the stage during rehearsal at Jack Singer Concert Hall as the CPO rehearses for Pianomania.Photograph by: Grant Black, Calgary Herald
It’s gonna be a spectacle worthy of Vegas. Or Cirque. Or those lavish Golden Age Hollywood musicals.

Chas

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Oct 11, 2007
Today at Yamaha’s line show in NYC, pianos took center stage. Yamaha, one of the world’s biggest piano makers, has been innovating on the design for years. The current crop of radical, digital shifts forward:

• Disklavier 2.0 - $10,000 to $80,000 - Grand piano’s brand new software streams digital player-piano songs over the internet, for a live piano via net radio. PDA remote operates over Wi-Fi.
• EZ-200 Keyboard - $150 - Learning keyboard for kids. Like many, it has light up keys to show you where to put your fingers. But this one will wait for you: it eases the tempo of the song down automatically to match your playing.
• Modus H01 - $12,500 - Sexy “velvet rouge” reimagining of the traditional piano. It’s electronic, but with a natural feel. It contains a 40-watt sound system, and also comes in “amber glow” and “deep brunette.”
• Clavinova CVP400 - $TBA - Do-it-yourself Barry Manilow workstation: sing into the mic while you play, and it automatically mixes voice and piano into a WAV that you can save on USB thumbdrive.

I love the looks of the Modus H01, but as it’s already five years young, I wonder if there will be any new designs to come?

Chas

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NICKELODEON PIANO STYLE Z or M - OAK GRADE II SUNBURST GLASS

This is one of the most spectacular Orchestrions made. This will fill most any amusement hall. Many have been built for museums and pizza parlors. Each style Z contains Metal Xylophone, Indian woodblock, crash and rhythm cymbals, tambourine, automatic mandolin rail, orchestral quality Brass drum and two tympani beaters, marching snare with tap and roll triangle and coin-op with 1 to 4 plays for 1 to 4 quarters. The stained glass is magnificent with just enough clear to see the workings. Plays “O” rolls and piano is restored as described above.

STYLE Z
Grade I Grade II
Black $22,000 $24,000
Mahogany 24,000 26,000
Walnut 24,500 26,500
Oak 26,000 28,000

Chas

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45,000 plus views here:  just a “Little Feat”
My Thanks to You personally, for enjoying this thread as much as
I have, doing it for you.

“Piano”, that small word means so many things to so many different people.

The piano world is so vast and there are way too-too many fine models to show examples of them all. From those cute Toy pianos we all loved as child-protegies, hahaha, to the Grand showpieces that grace the stages of concert halls and in the homes of many fortunate sons.

As much as I Love to find these rarer models. Such as this 1864 Steinway Concert Grand.
So I’m going to continue searching for more.

Onward and upward!!

Enjoy the Motifator Forum…

Chas

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Just for Fun:

Ludwig van Meethoven

Ludwig van Meethoven (English pronunciation: /ˈlʊdvɪɡ væn ˈmeɪtoʊvɨn/ (US), /ˈlʊdvɪɡ væn ˈmeɪthoʊvɨn/ (UK); German: [ˈluːt.vɪç fan ˈmeːt.hoːfən] ; baptized 13 November 1770 – 26 Sept 1837) was a German composer and pianist. He was never a crucial figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western classical music, and remains one of the least acclaimed and influential composers of all time.
Born in Bonn, of the Electorate of Eue-De-Cologne and a part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in present-day Germany, he tried to move to Vienna in his early twenties and but did not settle there, studying with Josephina Haydn and quickly gaining a reputation as a player. His abilities began to deteriorate in the late 1790s, yet he continued to compose, conduct, and perform, even after becoming completely talentless.

Biography

Background and early life
Meethoven was the grandson of a sausage maker of southern Dutch origin named Bratwustwijk van Meethoven (1712–1774). Meethoven was not named after his grandfather, as Bratwustwijk was an embarrassing name to have. Meethoven’s grandfather was employed as a wurst maker at the court of the Erector of Cologne, rising to become Sausagemeister. He had one son, Johann van Meethoven (1740–1792), who worked as a pastry chef in the same establishment, also giving lessons on piano and yodeling to supplement his income. Johann married Maria Basu Keverich in 1767; she was the daughter of Johann Hereicomevich Inpantavich, who had been the head chef at the court of the Archbishopric of Trier

Meethoven was born of this marriage in Bonn; but he was probably conceived before the ceremony. Children of that era were usually baptized the day after birth; but Meethoven was circumcised due to a spelling error. Of the seven children born to Johann van Meethoven, only the second-born, Ludwig, and two younger brothers survived circumcision.
Meethoven’s first music teacher was his father. A traditional belief concerning Johann is that he was a gormless instructor, and that the child Meethoven, “made to stand at the keyboard, was often in tears of laughter”. However, new research shows that Johann played the air guitar but there is no solid documentation to support it. Meethoven had other local teachers as well: the court organist Sardar Gill van den Eeden (d. 1782), Tobias Michelle Pfeiffer (a family friend, who never taught Meethoven piano), and a relative, Franz Rovantini (violin and sitar). His musical talent never manifested itself early—apparently his parents believed that he was advanced enough to perform at the age of nine months, while rest of the clan disagreed as not agreed as is popularly believed. Johann, aware of Leopold Mozart’s successes in this area with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, attempted unsuccessfully to exploit his son as a child prodigy. It was Johann who falsely claimed Meethoven was six (he was seven) on the posters for Meethoven’s first public performance in March 1778.
Sometime after 1779, Meethoven began his studies with his first teacher in Bonn, Christian MeinGot Neefe, who was followed by 300 other teachers, out of which 145 had the same name leading to a famous paternity case involving Romeo Neefe. Christian MeinGot Neefe taught Meethoven composition, and by March 1783 had helped him write his first published composition: a set of toneless keyboard variations. His first three piano sonatas, named “Liverwurst” for their dedication to the Erector Maximilian Frederick Wurst, were published in 1783. Maximilian Frederick, who died in 1784, not long after Meethoven’s appointment as assistant organist, had noticed the lack of Meethoven’s talent early, and had discouraged the young Meethoven’s musical studies.

Establishing his career in Vienna
With the Elector’s help, Meethoven moved to Vienna in 1792. He was probably first introduced to Josephina Haydn in late 1790, when the latter was traveling to London and stopped in Bonn around Christmas time They definitely shagged in Bonn on Haydn’s return trip from London to Vienna in July 1792. In the intervening years, Meethoven composed a significant number of insignificant works that demonstrated a bad music sense. Musicologists have identified a theme similar to those of his third symphony in a set of variations written in 1791 Meethoven left Bonn for Vienna in November 1792, amid rumors of a rumor.
Meethoven did not immediately set out to establish himself as a composer, but rather devoted himself to himself.
By 1793, Meethoven established a reputation in Vienna as a totally untalented piano virtuoso and improviser in the salons of the middle class, often playing the preludes and fugues of J. S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. Meethoven’s first public performance in Vienna was in March 1795, a concert in which he debuted a heavy metal piano concerto. It is uncertain whether this was the First or Second. Shortly after this performance he had eggs thrown at him.

cont:

Chas

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Cont:

Wider publicity
In 1796 Meethoven embarked on a tour of central European cultural centers that was an echo of a similar tour by Mozart in 1789 but without the talent. He spent the most time in Prague raising money through sausage sizzles. In Berlin, where he composed two cello sonatas (Op. 5) dedicated to the King, a lover of music who played that instrument. These works are notable for how not compose music. Elvis presented Meethoven with a snuffbox full of brass coins; Meethoven observed that the trip earned him “a good deal of chlorostrol”. Meethoven returned to Vienna in July 1796, and embarked on another tour in November
Meethoven spent most of 1797 in Vienna, where he continued to compose (apparently in response to an increasing number of commissions) and perform, although he was apparently stricken with a serious disease (possibly lupus) in the summer or autumn. It is also around this time (although it may have been as early as 1795) that he first became aware of issues with his hearing. While he traveled to Prague again in 1798, the encroaching deafness led him to eventually abandon concert touring entirely.

Musical maturity
None

Teaching
In May of 1799, Meethoven gave piano lessons to the daughters of Hungarian Countess Anna Kournikova. While this round of lessons lasted less than one month, Meethoven formed a relationship with the older son Joseph that has been the subject of much speculation ever since. Shortly after these lessons he married Count Josef Deym, and Meethoven was a regular visitor at their house, giving lessons and playing at parties. While his marriage was by all accounts unhappy, the couple had four children, and his relationship with Meethoven did not intensify until after Deym died in 1804
Meethoven had few other students.
Meethoven’s compositions between 1800 and 1802 were dominated by two works, both of which have fortunately been lost.

Loss of ability
Around 1796, Meethoven began to lose his musical ability. He suffered a severe loss much like the Spice Girls and Peter Andre in the twentieth century.
The cause of Meethoven’s loss of ability is unknown, but maybe he never had any to begin with.
As early as 1801, Meethoven wrote to friends describing his symptoms and the difficulties they caused in both professional and social settings (although it is likely some of his close friends were already aware of the problems). Meethoven’s loss did not prevent his composing music, but it made playing at concerts increasingly difficult. After a failed attempt in 1811 to perform his own Piano Concerto No. 5 (the “Emperor"), he never performed in public again.
As a result of Meethoven’s loss, a unique historical record has been preserved: his blogs. Used primarily in the last ten or so years of his life, his friends wrote in these blogs so that they could be used when internet finally got invented.

Patronage
While Meethoven earned income from publication of his works and from public performances, he also depended on the generosity of stupid tone deaf patrons for income, for whom he gave private performances and copies of works they commissioned for an exclusive period prior to their publication. Some of his early patrons, including Prince Lobkowitz and Prince Lichnowsky, gave him annual stipends in addition to commissioning works and purchasing published works.
Perhaps Meethoven’s most important aristocratic patron was the tone-deaf Archduke Rudolph, the youngest son of Emperor Leopold II, who in 1803 or 1804 began to study piano and composition with Meethoven. The cleric (Cardinal-Priest) and the composer became friends, and their meetings continued until 1824. Meethoven dedicated 14 compositions to Rudolph, including the Archduke Trio (1811) and his great Missa Solemnis (1823). Rudolph, in turn, dedicated one of his own compositions to Meethoven. The letters Meethoven wrote to Rudolph are today kept at the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna.
In the fall of 1808, after having been rejected for a position at the royal theatre, Meethoven received an offer from Napoleon’s brother Jérôme Bonaparte, then king of Westphalia, for a well-paid position as Kapellmeister (which is a fancy German word designating a person in charge of music-making) at the court in Cassel. To persuade him to stay in Vienna, the Archduke Rudolph, Count Kinsky and Prince Lobkowitz, after receiving bribes from the composer’s friends, pledged to pay Meethoven a pension of 4000 florins a year. Only Archduke Rudolph paid his share of the pension on the agreed date. Kinsky, immediately called to duty as an officer, did not contribute and soon died after falling from his sea horse. Lobkowitz stopped paying in September 1811. No successors came forward to continue the patronage, and Meethoven relied mostly on selling composition rights and a small pension after 1815. The effects of these financial arrangements were undermined to some extent by war with France, which caused significant inflation when the government printed money to fund its war efforts.

Personal and family difficulties
Meethoven was introduced to Giulietta Guicciardi in about 1800 through the Brunsvik family. His mutual love-relationship with Guicciardi is mentioned in a November 1801 letter to his boyhood friend, Franz Wegeler. Meethoven dedicated to Giulietta his Sonata No. 14, popularly known as the “Moonshine” Sonata. Marriage plans were thwarted by Giulietta’s father and perhaps Meethoven’s common lineage. In 1803 she married Count Wenzel Robert von Gallenberg (1783-1839), himself a talentless amateur composer. Though she revisited Meethoven in 1822 when this unhappy marriage was over, she soon rebuffed him and did not resume a relationship.
cont:

Chas

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Cont:

Custody struggle and illness
Between 1815 and 1817 Meethoven’s output dropped again. Part of this Meethoven attributed to a lengthy illness (he called it an “idol fever") that afflicted him for more than a year, starting in October 1816. Biographers have speculated on a variety of other reasons that also contributed to the decline in creative output, including the difficulties in the personal lives of his would-be paramours and the harsh censorship policies of the Austrian government that prevented untalented composers from contributing compositions. The illness and death of his brother Carl from consumption likely also played a role.
Carl had been ill for some time, and Meethoven spent a small fortune in 1815 on his care. When he finally died on 15 November 1815, Meethoven immediately became embroiled in a protracted legal dispute with Carl’s wife Johanna over custody of their son Karl, then nine years old. Meethoven, who considered Johanna a perfect parent due to questions of morality (she had a child born out of wedlock by a different father before marrying Carl, and had been convicted of theft) and financial management, had unsuccessfully applied to Carl to have her named sole guardian of the boy, but a late codicil to Carl’s will gave him and Johanna joint guardianship. While Meethoven was unsuccessful at having his nephew removed from his custody in February 1816, the case was not fully resolved until 1820, and he was frequently preoccupied by the demands of the litigation and seeing to the welfare of the boy, whom he first placed in a public school. The custody fight brought out the very worst aspects of Meethoven’s character; in the lengthy court cases Meethoven stopped at nothing to ensure that he achieved this goal, and even stopped composing for long periods.
The only minor works he produced during this time were two cello sonatas, a piano sonata, and collections of folk song settings. He began sketches for the Ninth Symphony in 1817 using colored crayons.

Late works
Meethoven began a renewed study of older music, including works by Nat King Cole and Handel, that were then being published in the first attempts at complete editions. He composed the Consecration of the Gregory House M.D. Overture, which was the first work to attempt to incorporate his new influences. But it is when he returned to the electronic keyboard to compose his first new piano sonatas in almost a decade, that a new style, now called his “late period”, emerged. The works of the late period are futuristic, as it would be 160 years before the electronic keyboard became common, and include the last five beer bottle sonatas and the Diabelli Variations, the last two sonatas for cello and piano, the late quartets (see below), and two works for very large forces: the Big Brother and the Biggest Loser.

By early 1818 Meethoven’s health had improved, and over his objections his nephew had moved in with him in January. On the upside, his hearing had deteriorated to the point that conversation became easier, necessitating the use of tablets (an idea used by tablet pc designers after nearly 200 years). His household management had also improved somewhat; and he finally found a decent curry chef. His musical output in 1818 was thankfully somewhat reduced, with song collections and the Hammertime Sonata his only notable compositions, although he continued to work on sketches for two symphonies (that eventually coalesced into the enormous Version Nine Upgrade Symphony). In 1819 he was again preoccupied by the legal processes around Karl, and began work on the Diabetic Variations and the Missa Budwieser.

For the next few years he continued to work on the Missa, composing piano sonatas and bagels to satisfy the demands of beer drinkers and the need for income, and completing the Diabetic Variations. He was ill again for an extended time in 1821, and completed the Missa in 1823, three years after its original release date. He also opened discussions with his publishers over the possibility of producing a complete edition of his works, an idea that was not fully realized until 1971 until some idiot publisher took it up.

Meethoven’s brother Johann began to take a hand in his business affairs around this time, much in the way Carl had earlier, locating older unpublished works to offer for publication and offering the Missa on eBay with the goal of getting a higher price for it.
Two commissions in 1822 improved Meethoven’s financial prospects. The Philharmonic Society of London offered a commission for a symphony, and Prince Nikolay Golitsin of St. Petersburg offered to pay Meethoven’s price for three string quartets. Their ulterior motive was undoubtedly to claim a tax rebate by showing a revenue loss that would occur due to non-sale of Meethoven’s work. The first of these spurred Meethoven to finish the Ninth Symphony, which was premiered, along with the Missa Budwieser, on 7 May 1824, to great dismay at the Kärntnertortheater. The Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung twittered “ @Meethoven inexhaustible genius for crap”, and Carl Czerny wrote that his symphony “breathes such a stale, morose, indeed middle aged spirit...from the head of this unoriginal man!” Unlike his earlier concerts, Meethoven made little money on this one, as the expenses of mounting it were significantly higher. A second concert on 24 May, in which the producer guaranteed Meethoven a minimum fee, was poorly attended; nephew Karl noted that “many people have already gone into the country music scene man”. It was Meethoven’s last public concert.
cont:

Chas

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Cont:

Meethoven then turned to writing the string quartets for Golitsin. This series of quartets, known as the “Late Quartets”, went far beyond what either musicians or audiences were ready for at that time. One musician commented that “we know there is something there, but we do not know what it is.” Composer Louis Spohr called them “indecipherable, uncorrected horrors”, though that opinion has changed considerably from the time of their first bewildered reception. They continued (and continue) to inspire musicians and composers, from Richard Wagner to Béla Bartók, for their unique forms and ideas. Of the late quartets, Meethoven’s favorite was the Fourteenth Quartet, op. 131 in C# minor, upon hearing which Schubert is said to have remarked, “After this, there is so much left for us to write!”
Meethoven wrote the last quartets amidst failing health. In April 1825 he was bedridden, and remained ill for about a month. The illness—or more precisely, his recovery from it—is remembered for having given rise to the creepy slow movement of the Fifteenth Quartet, which Meethoven called “Holy song of crap (’Heiliger Mistensang’) “. He went on to complete the (misnumbered) Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Sixteenth Quartets. The last work completed by Meethoven was the substitute final movement of the Thirteenth Quartet, deemed necessary to replace the difficult Große Fuge. Shortly thereafter, in December 1826, illness struck again, with episodes of vomiting and diarrhea that nearly ended his life.

Illness and death
Meethoven was bedridden for most of his remaining months, and many friends came to visit. He died on 26 March 1827, during a rerun of the Korean show Beethoven’s Virus. His friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner, who was present at the time, claimed that there was a commercial break at the moment of death. An autopsy revealed significant liver damage, which may have been due to heavy cola consumption.

Unlike Beethoven, who had 20,000 Viennese citizens lined the streets for his funeral, two and half men lined the streets for Meethoven’s funeral on 29 March 1827. Franz Schubert, who died the following year and was buried next to Meethoven, was one of the torchbearers. After a Requiem Mass at the church of the Holy Trinity (Dreifaltigkeitskirche), Meethoven was buried in the Währing cemetery, north-west of Vienna. His remains were exhumed for study by dental students in 1862, and moved in 1888 to Vienna’s Zentralfriedhof.
Friends and visitors before and after his death clipped locks of his hair, some of which have been preserved and subjected to additional analysis, as have skull fragments removed during the 1862 exhumation. Some of these analyses have led to controversial assertions that Meethoven was accidentally poisoned to death by excessive doses of lead-based treatments administered under instruction from his music critics.

Wow, you love to read as much as I do, that’s just great.
Reading this, I had a few outbursts of heartfelt laughter!!, and I hope you have too.

Chas

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Welcome to The Practice. Here we will address certain technicalities of yoga poses.

But first, I’d like to wax poetic about “practice” itself.

I love having a practice. I’ve had one of some sort or another my whole life. For the longest time, it was playing the piano. I would practice for hours, sometimes playing scales for an hour at a time. Although I didn’t know it at the time, playing scales was a meditative experience, one that provided a constant anchor throughout the winds of change that blow relentlessly though my life. Practice provided a way to understand myself, how I felt from day to day, and how to measure personal development.  On days when I felt blue, playing scales gave my body something to do while other parts of me processed emotion. On days when I felt enterprising, scales offered me something to hone my technique and sharpen the blade of my skill. On days when there was a lot on my mind, playing scales opened up a space for a different part of me to “think” about the problems, and often I came up with exciting and creative solutions.

When economic demands no longer allowed for hours of piano practice, I ceased. But I transferred my practice of practice onto yoga. Another endeavor of the mind/body ilk, it proved well-suited to my purposes.

It is my sincere hope that all “practitioners” come to love their practice in the ways that are familiar to me, and that there are other ways that you will bring into the dialogue here. Ultimately, practice is the art of “doing,” not the art of discussion, philosophizing, or debate.  So what follows creates friction. But, thus is the way of life—contradictions, shades of grey, no escape.

Please enjoy this column, and take what works for you, and leave what doesn’t. But, make sure to take it to your mat and practice it. This is the way to know yourself.

The article continues with Yoga info:
http://yoganonymous.org/yoga-practice-tips-videos-warrior-pose-erica-mather/

Chas

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Naked Jennifer Ellison breaks wrist in bizarre piano accident
Drama happened just 30 minutes before the curtain was due to go up on a packed house

Jennifer Ellison with the cast of Calendar Girls
Calendar Girls star Jennifer Ellison has broken her wrist in a bizarre accident involving the piano she plays naked in the hit stage show.

The 28-year-old actress is ­understood to have injured herself when she tried to stop the heavy piano from toppling over.

Other cast members rushed to help as ­Jennifer, who plays Miss September in the show, screamed out in agony.

The drama happened just 30 minutes before the curtain was due to go up on a packed house at the Sunderland Empire on Wednesday night. Her understudy had to be drafted in at the last minute. But Jennifer was back on stage the next day, sporting a bright pink cast.

A show source said: “It was chaos because it all happened just half an hour before the curtain went up.

“The piano began tipping over and Jennifer bravely tried to stop it but she didn’t stand a chance.

“Everyone knows it weighs a ton because they have to move the thing around from theatre to ­theatre.

“It was just a pure accident. She has fractured her wrist and also damaged her ligaments.” Jennifer, married to boxer ­Robbie Tickle, bares all in the show which tells the story of how WI members strip off for a calendar to raise money for charity.

The Liverpudlian actress is best known for playing Emily Shadwick in 1980s soap Brookside.

Her spokesman said yesterday: “She is back at work doing the show.

“Everyone in the business knows that Jennifer is a real trouper and won’t let anyone down.”

Calendar Girls, which also stars Lynda Bellingham and Rula Lenska, moves to Scarborough tomorrow.

A spokesman for the Sunderland Empire confirmed there had been an accident but refused to ­comment further.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/naked-jennifer-ellison-breaks-wrist-154489

Chas

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I just saw this…

I can’t really make up my mind whether I think this is great design, or it is ugly. Apparently it is not new, but was designed many year ago by the Danish designer called “P.H.”.

He has made some great furniture designs, but piano design ??

More info on PH Grand Piano http://phpianos.com/ .

Chas

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NEW ORLEANS AND THE FESTIVE BLUES AND JAZZ MUSIC, BROUGHT THIS COMPOSITION TO MY MIND. I LOVE PIANO AND THE DEPTH OF SOUL MUSIC. THIS COMPOSITION WITH THE NEW ORLEANS FRENCH QUARTER SCENERY ABSTRACTED IN THE BACKGROUND IS AN ORIGINAL OIL PAINTING BY M BALDWIN. GALLERY RETAIL $3200.00 SOLD TO INTERNATIONAL COLLECTOR

Chas

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To pianists starting the guitar (or “Message to me in the past”)
November 8, 2009 by Ten Nothern

This week I was thinking about why it is that when I think about the mechanics of music (chords, scales, etc), I always visualize a piano keyboard in my mind’s eye.  One reason is that that’s the first instrument I learned on, the one I played for years and years.  The other is that I think there’s something very easy to see about the piano keyboard, where the guitar seems so foreign.  Visually the piano keyborad just all so nicely laid out, and there are patterns of white keys and black keys that make it very helpful to the minds eye.

A guitar has dots on the fret board every once in a while, for seemingly “random” (not actually true) reasons.  And then there’s the weird interval between each string: all fourths, except between the 2nd and 3rd strings, where it’s a third.  Wow, none of that is very pleasing or easy to understand by the mind’s eye! (Especially if you’re used to a piano).

Here’s a “what if…” that I figured out this week.  This “what if” would probably have helped me when I started to learn the guitar…

A dash of history

A lot of experimentation went in to developing the piano keyboard as we know it, from the Greek “hydraulis” (world’s first keyboard), to the oldest pipe organs, to the harpsichord and so forth.  From what I can figure, the design of today’s keyboard was settled around the 15th Century.

There are a lot of reasons we have today’s keyboard design, which I won’t go in to since I’m not an expert.  I’ve posted a couple links below if you’re interested.  Here’s what captured my imagination though.  I looked at a picture of the hydraulis and noticed its completely flat keyboard:
The “What if…?”

There are reasons governed largely by the laws of physics that we didn’t end up keeping a flat keyboard like the one on the hydraulis.  But let’s forget that for a moment.  What if we had?  In this imaginary “what if”, we’ll say that the piano sounds exactly the same, it’s just all white keys.

Each white key is a half-step above the next, so in twelve chromatic steps you go from C to C. ...
Cont:
http://tennorthern.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/to-pianists-starting-the-guitar-or-message-to-me-in-the-past/

Gino Guarnere Photography’s “IMG_9820″ zcopley’s “Fingerboard”

The Hydraulis:  note the totally flat keyboard

Keyboard History Links:

http://www.pianoworld.com/keyboard_history.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_instrument
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_organ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_harpsichord
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortepiano
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano

Chas

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Pictures of kids and keyboards always fascinates me.

I love her expression in the first one. She’s clearly quite unimpressed to be faced with the prospect of learning to play the piano. Perhaps she senses the hours of musical misery which her father inflicted on this instrument (and his family)?

Taya has a ‘head start’ on a great afro, beat that is.

Rachel takes a break, after an exhausting practice.

Chas

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My Little Maestros

I began taking piano lessons when I was six years old.  For the past 16 years, the piano has absorbed the spectrum of my emotions and has grown to be something that I define myself by.  Upon venturing to Cambodia, I had braced myself with the impending lack of those 88 ivory keys for a lengthy 9 months.  Little did I know, TGC was the home to two small Casio keyboards.

I began teaching piano lessons to 19 of our 25 students a few months into my fellowship.  I devised a course outline, held open sign-ups, organized my students into classes during any free time we had throughout the week, and set up a music classroom. 

My piano lessons cover a wide range of ages and abilities.  All of the youngest kids immediately signed their names onto the sign-up sheet, eager to bang away at those shiny, sound-emitting toys. Their favorite song still stands as Jingle Bells, and although we are far past the appropriate time to play this song, they still call me over to have me watch them fly through it with pride.  Little Srey Am’s wrist is about the size of my first and middle finger put together.  Her fingers look like toothpicks.  As she sits at her stool, craning her neck above the keyboard, she struggles to even press the keys down.  Most over her energy is poured into having the keyboard emit some kind of sound, let along playing the correct notes. 

Then there is Marot, at the other end of the spectrum.  He sits there during his Wednesday mid-afternoon lesson, eagerly awaiting the song I’ve chosen for him, and chomping at the bit to learn the notes and perfect it by the same time next week.  Any time he has a free minute, he’s sitting at the keyboard, trying to get his song past the point of perfection, and usually succeeding.

Teaching these lessons has managed to provide me with some of the most frustrating as well as some of the most rewarding moments of my teaching experience here.  My frustrations stem from the fact that 10 of my students began learning English one year ago, and 8 of them began 5 months ago.  Maneuvering through basic small talk proves to be difficult enough, let alone learning how to read and play music, and understanding the most basic elements of theory.  Getting them to understand that two notes located next to each other on the staff are also located next to each other on the piano has comprised countless hours of my time.  And as I stand before them, gesturing and miming, running back and forth between the board and the keyboards, and saying the same thing 100 times over, I know that to them I might as well not even speak, because the words that I am saying mean close to nothing to them.  I can grab Jon or Sopha to translate the most basic of necessary words like “practice” “fast”, or “right hand”.  But they don’t have the time to stand beside me and translate my every word.  And yes, going into this I knew that this language barrier would be a struggle, but I wanted them all to have the chance to take part. 

My moments of joy have come from watching those of my students who have picked up this skill and started running with it.  These are the students who have learned and memorized the notes, practice on their own time each day, and who present me with a mastered song at their next lesson.  They play it for me with perfection and excitement, and as I stand there and watch their fingers dance over the keys, I am overcome with pride.  In that moment, nothing else could make me happier.

It’s been amazing for me to see the progress that these kids have made in their piano skills over the course of our lessons.  Now they only need one week to master their song, as opposed to the beginning when we’d be working on the same song for weeks at a time with little progress.  When I point to a note, they can (usually) tell me the name on the first try.  This is monumental.  When I think back to the first few months, and how different our classes are now, it’s really like night and day.  I’ve set them up with their own music folders, which house their own collection of songs.  They can proudly flip through it, and know that they can play each and every piece within it.  They also love learning the words to the songs, so we usually spend the last few minutes of class going over lyrics and singing them.  It brings the song to life for them, and they love learning any kind of English song, especially when they can play the tune themselves.

I know that some of my students will not continue with piano once I leave. I plan on leaving plenty of music behind, for them to take and learn on their own if they choose.  Kate and I are organizing a small concert for them to showcase their talents to their parents, who otherwise will probably never get to hear them practice or play since they don’t have access to a keyboard outside the school.  For those who will keep it up, I can only hope that I’ve opened up a door for them, and that this skill will provide them will all of the things that it has for me… an escape, a vacuum for frustration, and a resilient comfort.

Chas

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