Hello MMD readers,  The second season of Player-Piano concerts started
on Saturday, May 25, 2002, at Searsport Shores Camping, the same
scenic resort on Penobscot Bay where I gave 10 musicales last year.

In order to focus on my player roll business (about 100 miles south) it
was decided to have six events this year, with the dates being selected
for the peak activity, again at the oceanside campground in their
spacious recreation hall which faces old growth pines and the sea.

This time, I prepared some three-panel flyers to advertise the concerts
beyond the camping community.  Also, three different programs were to
be given twice, allowing repeat visitors the opportunity to experience
a different side of the virtuoso Pianola.  These are the scheduled
dates, along their respective musical presentations:

Saturday, May 25: An "American Ragtime" Spectacular!  Saturday, June
15: George Gershwin & Friends: An 'Art Deco' Evening; Thursday, July
11: The Classical Pianola -- Music for Player-Piano; Monday, July 22:
An "American Ragtime" Spectacular!  Monday, August 5: George Gershwin
& Friends - An 'Art Deco' Evening; Sunday, September 1: The Classical
Pianola - Music for Player-Piano.  (All concerts begin at 7:00 p.m.)

The first musicale, this past Saturday, was an artistic success from
start to finish.  We had a large audience seated in a semi-circle
around the 1929 Story & Clark Reprotone upright which had been tuned
a day before.  The tone of the instrument was exceptional, featuring
a singing treble soaring above a robust bass sonority, a balance which
reminds me of the Baldwin Howard/Hamilton uprights from the 1930s.
(I still wonder if Story & Clark sold their templates for this
late-design piano line to Baldwin, since the instrument has so much
in common with their later uprights.)  The staccato effects have never
been better, thanks to a dual coating of Schaff's alcohol-graphite
solution on the striking rods prior to towing the Reprotone up the
Maine Coast, from its home in our Boothbay storage building.

Beyond my Interpretive Arrangements of compositions by Scott Joplin,
James Scott, Joseph Lamb, Glenn Jenks, Adeline Shepherd and David T.
Roberts (Roberto Clemente), I also featured 3 exceptional rolls by
other sources.  These were Jenks' Roulette Rag by Eric Bernhoft of
Upright & Grand Rolls, Robin Pratt's reissue of Glamourous Night
('35) by Ivor Novello and the W. Creary Woods AudioGraphic roll of
Mendelssohn's Fingal's Cave Overture, a Duo-Art roll marketed under the
"Ganz & Hutcheson".  (The latter was certainly not Ragtime but, due to
the enthusiasm of the Searsport Shores audience, it seemed appropriate
to play music which related to the sea, only a short distance from the
player roll recital.)  The show closed with Kevin Sanders' sparkling
Ragged Edges, my staccato arrangement which suggests stringed
instruments, the composer being part of the Et Cetera String Band,
based in Missouri.

A musician from Bangor came to this first concert, having remembered
me from my days with Masanobu Ikemiya and the Arcady Music Festival
programs, a decade ago.  (This was a result of his subscribing to our
Newsletter, which gave the dates for our Searsport Shores
presentations.)

June 15th represents the next concert in the series, and everybody
in the area is welcome to attend.  We also offer a free copy of the
brochure, mentioned above, which gives titles of selected rolls, along
with some additional historical information about the music.  If you
would like us to mail you one of these flyers, send us a self-addressed,
stamped envelope.  (If you are outside of the United States, just send
the addressed envelope, and we'll donate the postage.)

While these Pianola concerts feature virtuoso arrangements of mine, for
about 95% of the scheduled programs, we will continue performing a few
rolls, which meet our standards for "holding an audience" - in the
future.  Among the titles to be presented are Otto Cesana's Negro
Heaven ('33), a Symphonette, and one of few Duo-Art rolls which
explored the musical potential of a player action.  Some Howard Lutter
(era) rolls, released by Robin Pratt under his Artists' Choice label,
will be on the bill as well; these imaginative Welte-Licensee rolls
also "hold their own" by today's performance standards.  The Reprotone
plays full-scale 88-Note rolls in 5 keys and 'reproducing' arrangements
in 3 keys, making it the ideal instrument to use in a public situation,
as there is no need to keep a roll of plastic tape (for the tracker
bar) on hand.  One merely flips a switch in the spoolbox, to select the
performance mode.

If these concerts are of interest to you, the printed brochures should
provide a few minutes of interesting reading.

Regards,
Douglas Henderson - Artcraft Music Rolls
Wiscasset, Maine 04578 USA
http://www.wiscasset.net/artcraft/

PS: You might want to check out our latest Newsletter, which
focuses on AudioGraphic Rolls and the Aeolian Visuola, complete
with a linked companion page that features 15 detailed illustrations.
http://www.wiscasset.net/artcraft/issue11.htm  That issue will give
you a good idea of the visual aspect of the Mendelssohn Duo-Art roll,
performed on the May 25th concert.