A Pianola Party
By John Phillips
Hi everybody; here is a completely non-technical contribution. It's the end of the academic year here in Australia and all our physics students at the University of Tasmania have just finished their exams. So Beryl and I invited any 2nd and 3rd year and any higher degree physics students that were interested to come round to our place last Thursday evening for a pianola party. This wasn't quite as foolhardy a gesture as it would have been had I worked at U.C. or M.I.T.; ours is a small university! In fact twenty or so students turned up and so did a few of the staff.
I knew there were some talented musicians among the students so I'd passed the word round that we like to hear some real playing as well as piano rolls. One of our students is a very dedicated pianist as well as being a brilliant student. Last year he won a $20,000 Uni of Tas scholarship and as he lives at home and didn't desperately need the money to see him through his undergraduate career, he spent the lot on a grand piano! There were a couple of other students nearly as capable as he as well as a guitarist and in fact I would say that two-thirds of the evening was spent NOT listening to pianola rolls.
For me the highlight of the evening was a violin solo by a first year student (what was he doing there?). He played the Meditation from "Thais" by Massenet and about halfway through I realised that out of my 400 or so Recordo rolls I had just one violin accompaniment roll and sure enough it was Meditation from "Thais". It turned out to be the same arrangement as he was playing, so we had it all over again, this time with piano accompaniment. I had to admire how he managed, with no rehearsal at all, to keep up with the Gulbransen. Of course it was Mme Sturkow-Ryder who recorded the roll and she was a very experienced accompanist.
So we had a lot of fun and I'm sure a few of our guests had never seen a player before. One young lady told me that after she has finished her science degree she has a burning ambition to do a piano tuner's course.
The only problem is what am I to do with all the beer that these incredibly sensible young people didn't drink? Don't bother to send in suggestions.
John Phillips
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(Message sent Mon 2 Dec 1996, 02:51:49 GMT, from time zone GMT+1100.) |
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