Author Archives: PJ Ottenritter

Ace Ugai

Piano Technician’s Guild holds annual DC Chapter meeting at Jordan Kitt’s Music

On Monday, March 12th the Piano Technician’s Guild held their annual meeting at the Jordan Kitt’s Music Showroom and Music Education Center in Rockville, Maryland.

The event featured Yamaha Concert and Artist Master Technician Ace Ugai and a fine Yamaha CFX Concert Grand. Ace called his class: “A Master’s Approach to Performance Preparation.”

Ace Ugai and action removed from a Yamaha CFX concert grand piano.

In his words, a master of the craft must include consideration of the room acoustics ,tuning and action regulation specifically tailored for those conditions. The class identified the sounds and effects to look for, and demonstrated how to listen, evaluate and manipulate all of those facets.

Robin Olson

Mr. Ugai and PTG DC Chapter President Robin Olson

The Piano Technicians Guild, Inc. is the largest non-profit organization serving piano tuners, technicians, and craftsmen throughout the world. Formed in 1957 by the merger of the American Society of Piano Technicians and the National Association of Piano Tuners, the Guild was organized to promote the highest possible service and technical standards among piano tuners and technicians.

The Washington DC Chapter was the first chapter in the Piano Technicians Guild (PTG). We have approximately 70 members in our chapter and over half of our members are Registered Piano Technicians. A Registered Piano Technician (RPT) is a piano technician who has passed a series of rigorous tests given by the PTG.

Learn more about the PTG here…

Towson University

Towson University Keyboard Day

On Friday, March 16th, Towson University is proud to present Keyboard Day from 8:30am – 5:00pm
The day will include events such as:
• A Piano Masterclass with Eva Mengelkoch, Christopher Dillon, and Yoon-Wha Roh
• Organ and harpsichord workshops with Profs. Marc Bellassai
• Introduction to extended piano techniques
and much more.

for more information and to register, visit here!

Piano Cake

A Piano Cake Recipe!

What better way to celebrate the purchase of a new piano than with a piano cake? Although we can’t personally vouch for the taste until we’ve made one ourselves, here are the basic ingredients and instructions from Tastemade. See the instructional video on their website here.

For the chocolate cake:

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

2/3 cup cocoa powder

1 1/2 cups butter, softened at room temperature

4 large eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 cup sour cream, room temperature

For the chocolate chip meringue:

6 large egg whites

2 cups superfine sugar

1 cup mini chocolate chips

For the chocolate buttercream:

1 1/2 cups butter, softened at room temperature

4 cups powdered sugar

1 1/2 cups cocoa powder

2/3 cup whole milk

1 tablespoon vanilla

1 teaspoon salt

For the chocolate ganache:

2 cups dark chocolate chips

1 cup heavy cream

2 tablespoons coconut oil

For the decoration:

16 white chocolate Kit Kats

10 milk chocolate Kit Kats

Instructions

Make the chocolate cake: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and line a 13 by 9 inch pan with baking spray and parchment paper.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cocoa. Using a hand mixer, blend the butter, eggs and vanilla into the dry mix. Fold in the sour cream. Pour into prepared pan and bake for 25 to 30 minutes until fragrant and a toothpick comes out clean from the center of the cake. Set aside to cool.

Make the chocolate chip meringue: Turn the oven to 250 degrees, and line a quarter sheet pan with baking spray and parchment paper. In a large bowl, whip egg whites and sugar until stiff peaks form, approximately 10 minutes. Gently fold in mini chocolate chips and pour into prepared pan. Smooth out to create an even layer. Bake for 10 minutes, and then turn the oven down to 200 degrees and bake until stiff, approximately 4 hours. Turn the oven off and allow the meringue to set and cool completely in the oven.

Make the chocolate buttercream: In a large bowl, whip softened butter and powdered sugar together with a hand mixer. Add in cocoa powder and milk and mix until smooth. Add in vanilla and salt and set aside.

Make the chocolate ganache: Set chocolate chips in a medium-sized bowl, and heat the cream to a near boil. Pour cream over chocolate and whisk to combine. Add coconut oil, and divide ganache into two bowls. Refrigerate one to set and leave the other at room temperature.

Assemble the cake: Cut baked chocolate cake in half. Place one of the cakes on a large platter. Cover with one cup of chocolate buttercream and top with the meringue layer. Top with another cup of buttercream and finish with the remaining cake layer. Cover the entire cake with the remaining buttercream and set in the refrigerator to chill for approximately 30 minutes. Remove from fridge and pour the room temperature ganache over the top of the cake. Carefully drip ganache down every side of the cake for a dramatic effect. Place the chilled ganache in a piping bag and create a border around the bottom of the cake. Place the white chocolate Kit Kats across the middle of the cake, keeping them together in fours. Break up the milk chocolate Kit Kats and place them on top of the white Kit Kats, mimicking piano keys. Serve immediately. Cake will keep up to 4 days covered.

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Firefighter piano

Firefighter calms with piano after emergency call

A firefighter from Monroe, Washington helped calm residents after a stressful night of emergency calls – with a serenade on their vintage piano.

Greg and Meagan Bennett were home when one of their carbon monoxide alarms went off. They checked the batteries and the alarm stopped. But two hours later, the other alarm sounded, so the couple called for help.

An emergency crew arrived, but found conflicting readings from the alarms and decided to call for backup. Meagan says a second crew responded to their home, and all of the excitement proved too much for the couple’s dogs. She took them outside while 5 firefighters and EMTs kept working inside her home.

As the emergency call was finally wrapping up, firefighter Bryan Kerr inquired about the couple’s piano, which was a family heirloom from 1920. He asked if he could try playing it, then surprised everyone with a snippet from Coldplay’s “Clocks.” Greg recorded video so he could show Meagan when she returned with the dogs.

She tells KING 5: “It started out as a super stressful, annoying situation and this just really made our night. It was awesome!”
read more here…

Kyle Thomas

Deaf man is amazingly self taught on the piano

via the Hamilton County Times

Does Kyle Thomas know how beautifully he plays the piano?
He’s been told.
The Noblesville resident can hear the piano. But he can’t tell if it’s in tune.
He can hear the volume, but he can’t distinguish the pitches.
Thomas, who was born deaf, has played the piano since he was 12.
“I taught myself,” said Thomas, 41, who can distinguish between high and low, loud and soft, fast and slow.
Just like learning any new skill, playing the piano takes practice to do well. “It’s easy for me now, after all of these years,” said Thomas, who has developed a technique and understanding of what goes into the music, structure and theory.
He plays so beautifully that he’s often sought after for local community theaters.
“It is amazing that he can play when he basically cannot hear the music,” said Jan Jamison, director of Westfield Playhouse’s production, “33 Variations,” on stage weekends through Feb. 18. The play, interestingly, goes back and forth examining the creative process between Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Diabelli Variations” and the journey of a musicologist who has ALS, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, to discover why Beethoven, who while growing deaf, was compelled to write 33 variations on a simple theme.
“I looked at Beethoven’s music and decided it would be a worthy challenge,” said Thomas, whose livelihood is warehouse work at the Amazon fulfillment center in Whitestown. “I would consider several of the variations to be among the most difficult pieces I’ve played.”

During Westfield’s play rehearsals, I watched and listened as Thomas sat at the baby-grand piano in his borrowed black tuxedo with tails, loud crazy-patterned socks and long, thick beard that he’s he’s been growing for a year.
He played the variations throughout the play as they were mentioned.
But how does he do it? “With my hearing aids on, I do hear the piano, just in a different way,” he said. While hearing aids don’t correct hearing loss in the way that eyeglasses correct vision,” he said, “For me, they amplify sounds but don’t necessarily help in clarifying them.”
He said, “So I have to rely on visual cues in addition to what I’m able to hear.”
During his play rehearsals, he develops a sense of timing and learns exactly what to listen and look for, he said.
“If I make a mistake, I know it mostly in a visual or physical sense. My fingers may slip, or my timing is off, or I know that what I’m playing doesn’t match what i’m reading on the sheet music. So I correct things to the best of my ability.”
Thomas said neither of his parents are deaf nor is he aware of any family history of deafness. When he was a baby, his parents noticed that he wasn’t responding to auditory stimuli, and doctors confirmed that he was indeed deaf. His mom actually taught at Indiana School for the Deaf but said her son didn’t show any interest in learning to sign as a child. So he was put into Washington Township Schools in Marion County. At school, he used hearing aids and other assistive-listening devices.
Looking back, he’s always been performing in some way. As a kid, he acted out fairy tales, put on magic shows and participated in the usual school programs.
As for learning the piano, both sets of grandparents had pianos in their homes, so he “did the usual banging on the keys.” And he said, “My childhood friends usually spoke of music lessons as being boring.” But it wasn’t until he saw the movie, “Great Balls of Fire!” in 1989 that he thought, “Wow, I wish I could play like that.” He started teaching himself, used old lessons books from his grandparents, then took lessons from his church organist.
A turning point in his life occurred his freshman year at North Central High School, where he was cast, in 1991, in the play, “Children of a Lesser God,” about a deaf student and her teacher, and he began to learn American Sign Language beyond the basics. Then, he played in his first musical, “The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd.” From that point on, he was involved in so many shows that he lost count.
He was on stage in most shows, acting and, if it was a musical, dancing and lip-syncing. And then he started getting asked to play the piano in shows.
Read the full article here

3D Printed Robot Accompanies on the Keyboard

Watch out Chopin: a Polish university student has programmed a robot to play the piano. The musical robot, which pushes piano keys using pronged 3D printed fingers, was developed specifically to accompany its creator while he plays the violin.

The student behind the project, Wojciech Świtała, was inspired to program the 3D printed robot as part of his master’s thesis project at the AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow.

Through the project, Świtała found a creative (not to mention, entertaining) way of combining his studies in the faculty of electrical engineering, automatics, computer science and biomedical engineering with his passion for playing music.

While the piano-playing robot admittedly does not have the musical chops of a human pianist (or perhaps even a relative novice), the robot is capable of carrying a tune and provides a nice, simple piano accompaniment.

The robot itself is based on one of Mitsubishi’s robotic arms, which Świtała equipped with a 3D printed hand (more of a prong) and programmed to play certain melodies on the piano. That’s right, the robot doesn’t just play one series of keys, as it can actually be “taught” different sequences.

Świtała explains that users simply have to click virtual piano keys in a computer program and the sequence will be saved and sent to the 3D printed robot, which will then “learn” the melody and can play it back when placed in front of a keyboard.

Of course, because the robot isn’t equipped with a set of ten fingers—like most pianists are—it is quite limited in terms of its musical capabilities. What the two-pronged robotic arm can do is play two keys at once, and press them in good time. In the video demonstration, you can even see the 3D printed bot hit a cymbal!

Świtała admits that the robot is in its early stages and that there are still some significant kinks to work out in its operation. For one, the sound of the robot’s motor is not ideal for producing music (unless you’re specifically looking for a technological buzzing), and the robotic arm is still quite slow.

Read the full article here at 3ders.org

Or learn how to play a lot better than the robot by going here…

Aric harding piano

Pastor plays the piano in a flooded home…

A man whose story and video went viral after he was captured playing a piano in his flooded Texas home has a new piano.

Aric Harding of Friendswood, Texas, returned to the waist-deep floodwaters in his family’s home after Hurricane Harvey in August to get some of his children’s belongings. His home was one of 350,000 destroyed by the rising waters.

He said he stopped at the piano, which belonged to one of his sons, and had a friend record him as he played it.
The Harding family’s home was flooded by Hurricane Harvey in August.

“For us, it’s a piece of music being this universal language for everyone. It’s always been a big part of my life. My family’s always been very musical,” he told ABC Houston station KTRK-TV. “From the moment we get up in the morning to the moment we go to sleep, we’ve got music going on in our house.”

At that moment, Harding said, he hoped the video would lift his children’s spirits and show his son his beloved instrument was still working.

“It was kind of the first time for me that I had sat down and been still, you know since the storm. And so it was, it was an unintentional special moment,” Harding said.

He then posted the video online with a Bible verse about having hope. The video circulated on social media, eventually reaching Grammy-nominated singer Vanessa Carlton, who then asked how she could get the family a new piano.

Harding said the family had to get rid of the old piano — with its rusty strings and broken bass board — after it was destroyed in the floodwaters.

“She [Carlton] literally just calls me one morning like, ‘Hey, this is Vanessa,'” Harding told KTRK. “To have that kind of generosity, you know, to come about, that’s just one piece of the generosity that has happened not only for us but for other people in this area.”
PHOTO: Aric Harding poses with his family. Harding said that playing the piano and music in general was a big part of his life and his familys.Aric Harding
Aric Harding poses with his family. Harding said that playing the piano and music in general was a big part of his life and his family’s.

Harding, a father of seven, received the new piano Saturday. Having a piano back in the house was a big deal, especially for his son Rylor, who is back practicing, Harding said.

“Just being blessed to even have the chance to own one of these is amazing,” Rylor said.

Others have also donated pianos to the family, so Harding and his father plan to get them to residents who lost theirs in the area, as well as piano students.

“Hopefully, we can keep passing this forward a little bit,” he said.

read more here at abc news…

Strathmore

Jordan Kitt’s Music helps Strathmore introduce more than 12,000 students to classical music

National Philharmonic welcomes more than 10,000 second graders to the Music Center at Strathmore during the annual Strathmore Student Concerts from now through Thursday, Nov. 16. The purpose of the program is to expose every Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) 2nd grader to a live performance of classical music.

The students learn about classical music and prepare for the concert hall experience during the month of October.

For many young people in Montgomery County, the National Philharmonic is their first exposure to classical music. The orchestra was a founding partner in the annual Strathmore Student Concerts, a hallmark education initiative that welcomes every Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) 2nd grader to the Music Center concert hall for a live performance. The National Philharmonic, Strathmore, and Montgomery County Public Schools are shaking up the annual concerts with a new conductor, new repertoire, and new vision to better serve students.

National Philharmonic Associate Conductor Victoria Gau is now at the helm. She worked closely with key partners and educators to create an experience that aligns with evolving MCPS curricular goals. Gau wanted students to leave the concerts with a better understanding of how they process music and how it can elicit specific emotional responses. The lively new format explores rhythm, dynamics, tempo, and musical texture—foundational elements of the concert experience that can make a piece feel happy or sad, serious or lighthearted, contemplative or full of unbridled excitement.

To reinforce these touchpoints, Gau selected music that bridges the classical canon and new works, demonstrating that classical music is evolving. Works by Beethoven and Brahms are paired with compositions by American composers Leonard Bernstein and Jennifer Higdon, and music by Mexican composer Arturo Marquez. Gau was also conscious to include gender and ethnic diversity to reflect demographics in the County and show that anyone can enjoy and be a part of classical music.

The concert also includes a new commission from Bethesda-based composer Charlie Barnett, Second Grade Second Line, a short participatory work that introduces different sections of the orchestra—woodwinds, brass, percussion, strings, and keyboard.

Students are engaged through call and response, clapping, and percussive music-making from the audience—National Philharmonic musicians even get in on the fun from stage.

Gau has maintained a relationship with National Philharmonic since 2005 and joined National Philharmonic’s conducting staff in 2010. Gau is in demand nationally as a youth orchestra festival conductor. She is also Artistic Director and Conductor of the Takoma Ensemble and Capital City Symphony, where she has written and performed annual family concerts for 20 seasons.

The 2nd grader student concerts represent a $185,000 investment in public education, with sponsorship provided by The Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, GEICO, and Jordan Kitt’s Music.

via Mongtomery Community Media.  Read more here…

Adaptive Music Lessons

Adaptive music lessons give kids a place to be themselves

via NPR

The benefits of music on individuals with autism are widely known. Improved focus, advances in speech and language, and better motor skills. But sometimes it’s about the growth that you can’t quantify in numbers.

On a Tuesday night in a sleepy plaza in Penfield, the Music Education Center is buzzing. Kids are in the waiting room, parents are catching up and students are practicing anything from trombone to piano.

Noah Svokos is a curly haired 13 year old who has been taking piano lessons for 5 years at the center.

The facility is open to anyone but they have a focus on adaptive music lessons, for individuals with disabilities.

Noah’s dad Tony Svokos brought him to class, and said over the years he’s seen his sons confidence grow, his memory get sharper, and he can remember notes and song titles and adapt these skills to his day to day life. Tony says places like this center are essential.

“Like it or not, there is a bit of a stigma still when it comes to special needs kids, kids who have autism. Thankfully, the awareness is growing and there are a lot more programs now. Even at his school he’s got integrated classrooms.”

A lot of Noah’s classmates have grown up around kids with autism Tony says, so they don’t treat them any differently.

“But there are a lot of other places out there who have no contact with kids like this. And it can be nerve wracking sending your kid to a place like that where you’re not sure if they’re going to be accepted, you’re not sure if their insecurities are going to get really, really magnified by negative experiences.”

The music education center started in 2004, co-owner Sarah Jamison tells me. As a graduate of the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam, she never really pictured her career going down this path, but the students kept her coming back.

“It really brings a lot of light into their lives. There’s a lot of other things they might be struggling with in school or at home and music ends up being something that they’re really good at and that they can be proud of and show off to their friends and family. And that’s probably the best thing about our job is just seeing that.”

Read more here!

The 2017 William J. McCormick Teacher Grant Awards

This past Saturday, October 14th, Jordan Kitt’s Music presented the William J. McCormick Jr. Teacher Grant Awards to four area teachers. These grants are designed for the continuing music education of the teacher, or as a scholarship opportunity for a student in need.

The awards were presented at the annual MSMTA Conference at the University of Maryland this past weekend, and recipients were:


Sylvie Beaudoin

 


Immanuela Gruenberg

 


Matthew Palumbo

 


Alice Shiu announcing the award for Bonnie Pausic (in absentia)

The award is funded by Jordan Kitt’s Music as a way to help foster the continuance of excellence in music education in the Washington Metropolitan area, and is named after the modern founder of Jordan Kitt’s Music, William J. McCormick Jr.