Is Your Piano Gathering Dust?
May 19, 2005
If you’re like most busy adults, you barely have enough time to make dinner let alone sit down at the piano and play.
But it’s a problem that’s easily fixed. A new website by Quiescence Music has been developed to help beginning adults learn how to create their own unique piano music from scratch. The lessons function like a step-by-step art lesson where all that’s needed is to know a few simple chords and the scale you’re playing in.
According to Edward Weiss, creator of the site, most people simply don’t want to spend years learning how to read music. They want to be able to create something beautiful on their own. The problem has always been one of perception. Most people believe they must spend hard hours learning scales, arpeggios, and boring exercises.
Article Link (PR Leap)
Quiescence Music
First Vietnamese entrants to international piano competition
May 18, 2005
In the two years that Oradell resident Buono has supervised the Bradshaw & Buono International Piano Competition, he’s received entry forms from students all over the globe: Macedonia, Russia, China, Japan, Korea, every corner of the United States.
But Vietnam? That floored him.
“It was very exciting to receive it,” Buono says. “We were just thrilled.”
The three students from the Ho Chi Minh City Conservatory, who will participate in finals on Wednesday and Thursday in New York, are believed to be the first Vietnamese piano students to ever participate in an American competition
Link (NorthJersey.com)
Cullum refuses to play Queen’s inferior piano
May 18, 2005
British jazz prodigy JAMIE CULLUM was thrilled to be invited to play British royal QUEEN ELIZABETH II’s golden piano - but had to jettison the impromptu performance because the antique was in such bad condition.
Link (contactmusic.com)
Piano at its meditative peak: Andre Watts
May 18, 2005
In 1963, Andr?© Watts substituted at the last moment for Glenn Gould in a New York Philharmonic concert conducted by Leonard Bernstein. The vehicle was the high-octane Liszt E-flat Concerto, and Watts rose swiftly to national prominence and has remained there for the past 40 years.
While he has always been known more for the Romantic, bravura repertoire than his introspective side, Watts’ programs in recent years have been pointedly, even militantly, reticent, as was the case Saturday night at Tilles.
Link Newsday.com
Grand Finale: Bev Ratajak
May 18, 2005
After spending about two-thirds of her life as a church organist, one has to wonder if Bev Ratajak will be able to keep her fingers and toes from twitching and wiggling to the beat of the music after she retires next week and begins sitting in a pew alongside everyone else.
For the past 30 years, Ratajak has ascended to the organ bench at the center of the sanctuary at First United Methodist Church nearly every Sunday to play the classical hymns and anthems she loves so much. This weekend, that career comes to an end.
Link (Corvallis Gazette-Times)
Ben Folds an iconoclastic musician in world of pop
May 18, 2005
If there’s one thing pianist-singer Ben Folds detests, it’s poseurs in the music industry who care more about how they look on TV than about honing their craft.
“I hate a performance that is about the performer,” said Folds, who was a rising star in the 1990s and often compared to Elton John and Billy Joel. “I think it’s a disease of my generation ‚Äě it’s all about the cameras.”
“I’m a stickler for technique and craft and that’s been my rebellion, to a certain extent, against the other people in my generation,” he said.
Link (stuff.co.nz)
Duke Ellington: Piano Four Hands
May 18, 2005
Cheerfully diving into the jazz world again, Analekta is pleased to introduce an eagerly-awaited CD by the brilliant Duo Campion-Vachon, simply entitled Duke Ellington. More than thirty years after his death in 1974, Ellington pianist, composer, arranger, and bandleader - remains one of jazz’s most enduring legends. A great many of his works, like the ones on this recording arranged for piano four hands, have become jazz standards, pieces that successive generations of jazz musicians assimilate and remake in their own image or interpret as faithfully as possible to the originals.
Link (eJazzNews)
Christian Tamburr: Move Self Produced 2004
May 18, 2005
“Blues For Jo” A blistering piano solo by Oscar Perez sets the table for
Christian Tamburr’s dynamic vibe message. This tune gets off the ground
in a hurry. The timing by all is exact and the ideas run rampart in this
penning by Tamburr. This piece is the hallmark of this album.
Link (eJazzNews)
Concert grand piano donated to Fine Arts Center
May 18, 2005
It started with a phone call and a secret meeting witnessed only by a dog and the people involved.
Soon, a large object at least nine feet long will be carefully placed into storage until it can be moved to its permanent home on the main stage of Safford’s proposed Fine Arts Center.
Link (Eastern Arizona Courier)
Summer never grows old
May 18, 2005
Arturo en el Barco is Ang?©lica Negr??n, a composer living in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Ang?©lica creates graceful, enchanting acoustic-electro that reminds of one’s innocent times.. Every note flowing from her piano is tinged with childhood; eager curiousity and playful naive charm surrounds and is Ang?©lica’s spirit.
Link (Lost in Sound)
