Player Piano Concerts
By Terry Smythe
The recent discussion about the Player Piano Concert in St. Louis based upon a device built by Craig Brougher brought back some memories. If I'm not mistaken, the music director for that concert was Newton Wayland using one of Bill Singleton's restorations. I participated with him in 3 other similar concerts, all with the Rhapsody in Blue roll p/b George Gershwin.
As far as I know, Newt still has the device which I fitted into a 7' Steinway (Trudy & Bill Maier) for use with the Minnesota Philharmonic(?) Orchestra, again with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra using my own 6' Mason Duo-Art, and then again with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. For that last one in Calgary, I loaded my Mason into a U-Haul and hauled it all the way out there from Winnipeg (800 miles); an adventure that basically turned out to be a self-inflicted wound. He has since invited me to do another with the same piano in another western Canadian city which I declined.
The device used, which may be the one built by Craig, was basically a small switch on the podium, connected to a pouch interrupting the vacuum to the wind motor. The piano was placed immediately alongside New so that he could see both his music score and the Duo-Art spool box at a brief sideways glance. While I sweated out the performance offstage, he controlled stop/start. All 3 concerts, 3 days each, went off without a hitch and were well received. Newt arranged lighting such that the only light in the hall was a spotlight on the empty bench, orchestra basically working only with small lamps on their music stands.
I never did know then who built the interrupter device, but it did work just fine, and I believe Newt still has it, although I understand he has not done the Gershwin concert in recent years. Too hard to find a suitable piano in the target cities where he travels.
On a much smaller scale I've done a couple of "Legendary Master of the Piano - Live Performance" concerts on the 320 seat Muriel Richardson auditorium in the Winnipeg Art Gallery, proceeds to the Gallery. The first one was with only my Mason Duo-Art, and the second was with both it and Steck Ampico A/B. Both concerts were well attended: 250+.
Both concerts were a mix or visual and audio. The visual was a collection of 35 mm slides of anecdotal pictures of the legendary masters as illustrated and reported in the news magazine of the day - Musical America. The entertainment package was a mix of anecdotal stories about the artists, accompanied by these repro photos, each ending with a photo of the artist seated at a grand piano (from the roll catalogs) which was displayed throughout a roll performance. During each roll performance, I exited behind the curtain leaving the piano alone on stage with a single spotlight on the empty bench.
By chance the auditorium is constructed somewhat like a diamond, with the stage diagonal across a corner. The control booth was in an opposing corner equipped with a powerful projector capable of throwing a mammoth image on the wall alongside the stage. The auditorium has a screen, but is mounted above and in front of the stage, not suitable for an event where both a "screen" and a stage are needed simultaneously.
I have in mind to do a couple more of these concerts, but the critical ingredient is those hard-to-find back issues of Musical America. Very, very few issues are ever found up here in Canada, so if anyone knows of a collection of these somewhere that I might acquire or borrow, I would appreciate hearing about it.
Anybody else done a somewhat similar approach for a player piano concert?
Regards,
Terry Smythe smythe@mts.net
55 Rowand Avenue smythe@freenet.mb.ca
Winnipeg, MB, R3J 2N6, Canada (204) 832-3982
http://www.winnipeg.freenet.mb.ca/~smythe
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(Message sent Fri 21 Mar 1997, 17:26:14 GMT, from time zone GMT-0500.) |
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