Security guard secretly recorded playing piano

TORONTO – A video of a security guard playing the piano at the National Library of Parliament in Georgia has been viewed millions of times after a visitor secretly recorded him playing and shared the video widely.

The unidentified visitor records the burly security guard’s performance while standing behind him. The video ends shortly before the song does and, according to the YouTube video, he did not know he was being recorded and just “played very emotionally.”

The video was originally uploaded to YouTube named “You are more than a guard at the library” and provides a beautiful reminder not to judge people by their appearances.

It was shared widely by Georgian media and has since gone viral, being viewed over a million times and written about by media around the world.
Read more here

Jordan Kitt’s Music provides the Yamaha DCFX concert grand piano for Chick Corea at the Kennedy Center

chickcorea

Herbie Hancock (left) and Chick Corea perform head-to-head at The Kennedy Center on Friday. Sitting between them: a combined 34 Grammys. (Kyle Gustafson/For The Washington Post)

If ovations were cherry blossoms, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock would have been up to their knees in petals at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall on Friday night. Yet, as pleased as they were with the resounding response, there were moments during the nearly two-hour, sold-out performance when the jazz-piano legends seemed to find even greater delight in each other’s company and in the playful gamesmanship that ensued.

It’s been nearly 40 years since the release of “An Evening With Herbie Hancock & Chick Corea: In Concert,” a landmark compilation of live tracks that still serves as a template for the duo’s live performances. Friday night’s concert, presented by Washington Performing Arts, reminded listeners time and again that some jazz virtuosos seem destined to share the stage. At one point, in fact, the pianists marveled at how their careers initially interlocked a half-century ago. First, in the early 1960s, Hancock replaced Corea in Mongo Santamaria’s band; then, several years later, Corea replaced Hancock in Miles Davis’s group.

These days, Corea, 73, and Hancock, who turned 75 on Sunday, are all about mutual admiration, and their engaging camaraderie onstage couldn’t be more evident. How best to elicit a smile, a laugh or, better yet, a startled expression from a distinguished peer? Some surefire maneuvering — and outmaneuvering — came into play Friday night. Tumultuous crescendos surged forward, only to stop on a dime. A solitary note hovered near the end of a coda, toying with listener expectations and thwarting a timely resolution. Countless countermelodies surfaced in myriad forms, snugly fitting into place like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.  Read more here

or find out more about Yamaha pianos here…

Yamaha C6X Silent Grand Piano debuts at AMP, powered by Strathmore

Yamaha C6X SHStrathmore recently selected a new Yamaha C6X Silent Series grand piano, not only due to its extraordinary tone and touch, but also for it’s connectivity features that extend its capabilities far beyond that of a regular acoustic piano.

With a natural touch and powerful, forceful presence, CX Series pianos possess a wealth of reverberation, taking in the nuances of a player’s intentions and reflecting them in the depth and projection of the music itself. Silent functionality has been added to this C6X. This is an SH-type Silent piano™ featuring a CFX sound source.

For tickets click here…

Piano mysteriously appears in Santa Monica Mountains

TOPANGA, Calif., March 27 (UPI) — A musical mystery is unfolding in California’s Santa Monica Mountains as a piano appeared without explanation at a lookout point 2 miles from the nearest road.

Hikers and news helicopters captured images and video Thursday showing the piano, estimated to weigh at least 300 to 400 pounds, that was apparently placed late Wednesday or early Thursday at the Topanga Lookout, which is accessible by a 2-mile hike from the nearest road.

The piano was placed on the site of an old fire tower, which famously also once hosted a couch of similarly mysterious origins.
Read more here…

American University Piano Sale

AU front 3-15

American University announces a unique opportunity:  Grand, upright and digital pianos used throughout the past academic season are being replaced, and current models are being offered on a first-come basis by appointment during a two day event.

These instruments from Yamaha are typically less than two years old, have been professionally maintained at American University’s Katzen Center for the Performing Arts, and are typically in very good to excellent condition.  Each includes the original factory warranty.

To avoid academic interruption and ensure each piano is tuned and prepared for private acquisition, the event will be held off campus at Jordan Kitt’s Music in Rockville, MD and Fairfax, VA.  Each piano is available in the order of appointments received.

The event is by appointment only on Friday and Saturday, March 13 and 14, and will be open to the general public on Sunday, March 15 from noon to 5pm.

To participate, please call the American University Piano Appointment Desk at (844) 711-3010 or visit www.aupiano.org

Danger: Falling Pianos

via MIT News Magazine

In the fall of 1972, Alvin “Todd” Moser ’75 hit on the perfect subject for his final project for Doc Edgerton’s 6.714 Strobe Photography Lab. A large contingent of fellow Baker House residents was plotting to throw a piano off the roof of the dorm, onto Amherst Alley. “I thought it would be really cool to film it in slow motion,” says Moser. “It would fall down very gradually, and you would see every little thing pop off of it when it hit.”

The ringleader of this clandestine operation, Charlie Bruno ’74, had “often expressed the dream of dropping a piano off the roof,” Moser recalls. Bruno, a self-described “high school wimp turned hacker,” was legendary for his antics—streaking, water fights, kicking in the dorm elevator’s door (and then carrying dorm mates’ things up the stairs during repairs to make amends). “He came to MIT pretty much as a total introvert and somehow blossomed into the most amazing extrovert I ever saw,” Moser recalls.

The chance came when Jon Kass ’74 decided to leave Baker and offered Bruno his upright piano. The drop became “almost a house-wide project,” according to a Tech article written just after the event, and took about four weeks to plan. “Being engineers, everybody got involved and made a regular project out of the whole thing,” says Moser. Aside from the allure of wanton destruction, it provided an engineering challenge and an opportunity to conduct experiments. “It’s going to be a 6.08 problem set done in experimental form,” explained a student on a tape recording made just before the drop. Another student’s rationale: “To prove that there’s gravity.”

On the appointed day, October 24, a group of students took the piano to the sixth floor in the elevator, lugged it up the stairs to the roof, and adorned it with graffiti (including “IHTFP” and “Danger: Falling Objects”). Others were on crowd-control duty as spectators gathered below.  Read more here…

Or find out how to repair a piano (though probably not from that height) visit here

Simone Dinnerstein & the Annapolis Symphony at Strathmore

Annapolis Symphony Orchestra with Simone Dinnerstein, piano
Presented by Strathmore
Sunday, March 1, 2015 at 3:00 PM
Music Center at Strathmore

The acclaimed Annapolis Symphony has won the hearts of Maryland’s capital city, and rave reviews for its performances. They are joined at Strathmore by a pianist who leaped to fame with her historic recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, hailed for her “wonderfully expressive interpretation” (NPR) and the “majestic originality of her vision” (The Independent, UK). This not-to-be-missed program includes works by English poet and composer Arthur Bax, Richard Strauss, and Ravel.

This concert will run approximately 100 minutes with intermission.

Program:
BAX
RAVEL
R. STRAUSS The Garden of Fand
Concerto for Piano in G Major
Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life), TrV 190, Op. 40

Get Ticket Information Here!