Piano Guy sets challenge: learn piano in 3 1/2 hours

Scott “The Piano Guy” Houston, who presents a weekly piano show on US TV stations across the country, believes that any adult with some basic musical knowledge and the motivation can learn to play popular tunes on the piano in 3 1/2 hours.

Houston is not talking about turning out concert pianists, capable of playing Bach or Rachmaninoff. But he is certain that someone with relatively little piano knowledge can sit down at the ivories after his workshop and work out a popular tune – maybe Norah Jones’ “Don’t Know Why,” John Lennon’s “Imagine” or “The Girl from Ipanema.”

“A big part of this is getting someone to participate, and getting adults to realize that this is not some unscalable mountain. You’ve just got to sit down and get going,” Houston said.

Granted, this is coming from a former motivational speaker. Houston started out about five years ago using his music workshops and speeches as a way to motivate people overall.

Read the full article and interview: Piano Guy challenge: Learn in 3 1/2 hours

Duke Ellington recordings reviewed by All About Jazz

April 29th marks the 107th anniversary of Edward Kennedy Ellington’s birth and in May he will have been gone for 32 years. Yet we have still not come to terms with the magnitude of Duke’s legacy not only to 20th Century music but to the very idea of jazz itself. Too many take reductionist approaches to Ellington, ones that emphasize one or another aspect of his accomplishments without considering the totality. They fall into such traps as “the Duke’s instrument was his orchestra� or “Ellington reached his creative peak in the late ‘30s and early ‘40s� or “the Ellington band was in decline in the years before the Newport Jazz Festival in 1956�. What these statements ignore are such important facts as Ellington’s towering importance as a jazz pianist, his singular achievement of meeting a payroll 52 weeks a year for over four decades and his incredible fecundity as a composer in the last decades of his life, most significantly after the death of his musical alter ego Billy Strayhorn

Read: Duke Ellington: The Piano Player, The Treasury Shows, The Complete Gus Wildi Recordings

Robert Rich has joy of music after serious accident

Last year, Robert Rich, musician and composer with over two dozen albums, had an accident that severed the ulnar artery and several tendons in his wrist.

In an interview with SFGate.com, he talks about his music, how he works around the new limitations his injury forced upon him, his joy of life and of music, his musical influences (including Indonesian music), his synthesizers, family, and much more.

An interesting read: Plugged in to the Joy of Ambient Music

Joel Martin fuses classical and jazz piano

Purists may try to keep classical and jazz music separate, but composer-pianist Joel Martin thinks differently.

“To me it’s all just music and I don’t see them as that different,” he said. “I don’t know why we have to create these divisions and categories.”

Martin is an award-winning concert and jazz pianist. The idea of his show “Jazzical” came when he realised that he would start playing jazz riffs whilst rehearsing classical music.

“All those old composers would constantly improvise on their works when they played them,” he said. “It’s just a continuation of making music. We can only imagine what some Bach or Beethoven pieces would sound like if jazz and African rhythms had been introduced to Europe back in the 1600s.”

He has been a soloist with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Delaware Symphony.

“My mind set is to think of what would interest a 12-year-old,” he said. “If you don’t get his attention in two or three minutes, you’ve lost him. So I pick song-oriented pieces.”

Read the full article: For composer-pianist, ‘It’s all just music’

Yundi Li gives phenomenal performance: review

24-year-old Chinese pianist Yundi Li gave a virtuoso performance last month in Toronto, to which he received a standing ovation.

At age 18, Li was the first person in 15 years to win first prize in the prestigious Chopin International Piano Competition in Poland.

This man is also a player with personality, much like superstars of yore like Vladimir Horowitz and Arthur Rubinstein. Like those 20th-century legends, Li imprints the music he plays with a personal esthetic that may not necessarily be true to the original score or to mainstream style.

In the case of last night’s program of crowd-pleasing dazzlers by Mozart, Schumann and Liszt, Li grabbed great handfuls of notes and shaped them into his own artworks with an iron will and breathtaking virtuosity.

But many of the results were odd, even off-putting.
In the case of Mozart’s popular Piano Sonata No. 10 in C Major, K.330, Li overlaid the Classical-era purity of sound with a Romantic sensibility. This made for a sweetness that became downright saccharine in the slower second movement.

Read the full review: Young pianist’s technique magical

Judge equally at home on piano bench

The Indianapolis Star has an interesting article about Superior Court Judge Mark Stoner’s love of the piano, and how it helped him to supplement his income through law school and as a young lawyer.

He keeps a practice piano in his office, next to his judicial chambers. It includes a synthesiser, four-track recorder, and a harpsichord.

According to the Mozart effect, classical music training boosts young people’s IQs. Perhaps as an extension of that theory, Judge Stoner finds he does better on the bench with the help of some music.

“The piano was a present to myself when I came on the bench,” he said. “It gives me a chance for something to do and relax when a jury is deliberating, or it gives me some relief if I get mad at the lawyers.”

Read the full article: Judge also enjoys sitting on piano bench

Jonathan Biss signed by EMI Classics

EMI Classics has signed 25-year-old American pianist Jonathan Biss to a two-year exclusive contract, the company announced.

His first CD under the contract, an all-Schumann recital consisting of the Fantasie in C, Arabeske in C, and Kreisleriana, will be released in the U.S. in January 2007. EMI released Biss’s recording debut, which featured Beethoven and Schumann, on its “Debut” Series in April 2004.

Biss is a third generation musician in a family that includes his cellist grandmother Raya Garbousova, for whom Samuel Barber composed his Cello Concerto, and his parents, violinist Miriam Fried and violist and violinist Paul Biss. Biss began studying piano at age six; he continued at Indiana University with Evelyne Brancart and at the Curtis Institute with Leon Fleisher.

Read the full article: EMI Classics Signs Pianist Jonathan Biss

Synth pioneer Dave Smith to feature in podcast

Dave Smith is an American audio engineer who arguably played as large a part as Bob Moog in the development of the modern synthesizer. Smith’s Sequential Circuits created many revered synths, including the Prophet 5 (above right), the first microprocessor-based synth. Smith also proposed the MIDI standard in 1981, which has been incorporated into nearly every synth in the last 25 years.

No Island Media, a digital media production company specializing in short-form reality programmes for and about creative professionals, plans to produce a documentary about Dave Smith and tutorials for the PolyEvolver keyboard.

Read the full article: New Documentary, Podcast, to Feature Synth Pioneer Dave Smith

Condoleezza Rice: the private pianist

The New York Times has profiled and interviewed Condoleezza Rice and her proficiency as an amateur classical pianist, including her weekly chamber music sessions with friends.

It’s an interesting private side.

Read the full article: Condoleezza Rice on Piano

Leon Fleisher can finally perform with both hands again

For nearly 40 years, Leon Fleisher has been unable to play piano with his right hand due to focal dystonia, a neurological disorder. Then about two years ago he found a successful treatment and began performing again with both hands.

The 77-year-old pianist does not play with the marksmanship or tonal consistency documented in the string of great recordings he made four decades ago. But, as he showed Wednesday night at the University of Richmond, Fleisher compensates for age and long disability by making every note and gesture count.

Read the full review: After recovery, pianist makes each note count

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