WHAT’S NEW?

1. Going to see my sister Erika get married in the Hudson Valley on June 12th…

2. Got a “magic shot” on Tuesday that perked me up and gave me hope for lessening the effect of RA symptoms on my day-to-day life….

3. SALA is leaping forward; we’re close to a deal with Harvard; We’re in the middle of offering the device to the Colburn School; the principals, David Stanwood, me, and Steve Hluchan will meet for two days in Boston after the wedding…

4. Tanya’s piece in the big Cambridge show was a hit; she’s got a beautiful piece as the main raffle prize for a Jewish World Watch fundraiser for the women of eastern Congo…

5. blazing-hot, award-winning film composers Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders are buying a piano for their new studio in the wilds of western Malibu; They’ve come to me for help…mmmm.

6. Currently doing work on the pianos of two luminous pros: Scott Dunn and Tamara Brooks…

7. Getting ready for the next concert, an evening affair: the CD release party for
“The Steinway Sessions,” the latest release from RUUT, an amazing and beautiful pianist/singer/songwriter; she fell in love with one of my pianos, and wrote and recorded the CD on it
(our 1953 fully custom-rebuilt D) at the Atelier with the help of Grammy-winning producer and engineer Frank Wolf (Black-eyed Peas, Elton John, Randy Newman, T-Bone Burnett, most Pixar films)
Go here to find out all about it….or here.

When are we going to take a vacation? In October, I guess….here. Yay.

…Where to start, where to start? Jeez. Life just keeps rolling and tumbling along, and I feel like the luckiest man on the face of the earth, in a weird way. Even though my hands don’t work that well, I’m not exactly fat with cash, and my right hip just wore out and had to be replaced—I’m surrounded by work I love, really excited about, a recession-proof business, and an unbelievable number of unique, authentic, loving, Golden Rule-living, generally optimistic and rockin’ human beings. Blessings coming out of my tookhes, as my putative father-in-law Leo Wolf would say….

—Tanya’s show in New York City was awesome, and led to an incredible connection with a leading sculpture critic and the honor of creating the “signature piece” for a very high-profile show at the Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts in May….more later on the Cambridge show….

—We installed SALA devices in two pianos: our luminous ‘53 “D” and a 1959 “B” from an amazing little recording studio in Orange County with a roster of famous jazz and classical clients (they come for the expertise of the owner/recording-mastering engineer.)
Here’s the email they sent us after the first session with the new SALA-fitted and custom-rebuilt action:

Hi David and Jenika,

Bryan Shaw
Digital Brothers Studio
Costa Mesa, CA
NOTE: Shaw had spent 12 years and $20K before us, trying to get the piano “right.”

The next artist to use the Digital Brothers’ “B,” a classical pianist from Italy, asked where this piano had been hiding, and suggested Bryan Shaw build a website dedicated to the piano!

When we took the SALA-equipped “D” to the regional PTG conference in Seattle in the first week of March, the reaction was electric. Many experienced master technician/rebuilders (Fenton Murray, Dale Erwin, and Doug Wood, to name three) played/heard the SALA-fied piano a while, then literally demanded to be considered as an eventual SALA dealer/installers….and we couldn’t get any better praise than that.

Now we’re back in L.A., happily working for our wonderful clientele; I sold a piano this past month (unusual deal, modest profit) and, as usual, gained a great client and a talented and successful marketing resource. We’re getting ready to show the SALA-fied “D” to the leaders of a very, very prestigious California music school in the next month….they’re highly intrigued, to say the least….MORE LATER.

Let’s see….we’re installing two SALA(Stanwood Adjustable Leverage Action; see my last blog entry) devices, one on a 1959 New York “B”(along with a new component-balanced action) from Digital Brothers Studio in Costa Mesa (south of L.A. in Orange County) and one in our rebuilt 1953 New York “D.” We’re hip deep in the final stages of marrying the device to the action on both instruments; I’ll report on players’ reactions in the next blog entry….my partner and soul mate, Tanya Ragir, had a very successful Manhattan gallery opening for her two latest pieces on the 7th of this month…we had a great time in New York City with my siblings, Kurt and Erika, and their families, both at the opening and at a later meal/get-together. Cool family is a deep joy…Tanya’s pieces were literally the stars of the show; the gallery was a sweet space, and a noted critic from ArtNews and Sculpture magazines was “knocked out” by Tanya’s work….mmmm….

We just found out we will have the honor of building a brand-new action and damper/pedal system for a very famous and legacy-filled piano: the 1908 New York Steinway “D” that has been in use on the film scoring stage at Warner Bros. Studios since the studio’s inception in the early 1920’s. It was completely remanufactured at the Steinway factory in New York City in 1961; they put in a wonderful soundboard, bridges, and pinblock, but the front of the piano was not so lucky: the mechanism is clunky, heavy, and
basically unusable for precise or quiet playing—but now that will all change; the piano will be reborn with a new, artisan-made, component-balanced, “stanwoodized” action and damper system. Quite the feather in DAP’s cap, and what nice people over at the Eastwood Scoring Stage—Rich and Jamie are total pros, and smart and nice to boot.

I’ll be in Calgary, Alberta this weekend (Jan. 23) teaching a day-long class to piano techs from the Great White North—it was a balmy 8 degrees Farenheit this AM, so you can bet I’ll bring my long-johns and a ski mask…

Well, it’s official:
Dr. Huddleston: David, you will not get off this planet without a new right hip.
David: Wow. Really? I appreciate your certitude.
Dr. H: Yup. And thank you. You just need to schedule it before the pain gets worse. After looking at your pictures, I’m amazed you’re walking without a cane or a walker.
David: Mmm. High pain threshold.

So: hip replacement surgery the first week of February; Dr. H says I’ll be walking in two days, and running in three weeks. We’ll see…..

The 2010 “Live at the Atelier” concert series is taking shape as we speak; I’ll have the schedule together in a couple weeks, and will publish it both here and on other parts of our website…stay tuned.

Busy as a one-armed paper-hanger; as a courtesan on a battleship; as a fireman in hell; as a gol-darned BEE—is how busy we’ve been at DAP; we sold a big piano, the Bosendorfer 225, to a very, very high-profile “industry” person who will immediately use it to record with; we’ve got seven restoration projects in various degrees of dismemberment and completion; we solved our neighborhood/concert/parking issue and had a luminous solo concert by Tamir Hendelman, literally the hottest young pianist in jazz right now; I entered into a formal collaboration with the inventor David Stanwood to bring his brilliant new device, the Stanwood Adjustable Leverage Action, or SALA, to investors, to life as a series of prototypes, and then as an artisanal company selling units as retrofits to concert halls, colleges, and conservatories, music teachers, and intelligent players, and to selected manufacturers as a factory-installed add-on.

What is the SALA, you ask? A brilliantly simple mechanical device that allows a pianist to change the resistance and feel of the action instantly, “on the fly,” through an incredibly wide range of what we call Balance Weights, with several twists of two unobtrusive, easy-to-operate thumbscrews.

In other words, three or four pianos in one. Or the illusion of it. The resistance changes. The TONE changes. Pianists comment that the “whole experience of the piano” changes—yet the key travel, aftertouch, letoff and drop are all exactly the same throughout the range of “touch” change.

Did I say brilliant? Wait ’til you see movies of serious players reacting to this device….it’s so cool.

Also, you heard it here first: get ready for the Phoenix brand piano, an artisanal hybrid from China, Germany, and the United States that will blow the doors off anything in its price range: a 5′8″ grand for $28,000(MSRP) and a 6′4″ grand for $36,000(MSRP)—in other words, any Kawai, or Yamaha, or Schimmel, or Petrof, or Walter. Of course this is just my OPINION. When a Phoenix piano comes to a venue near you sometime in 2010, do not fail to go check it out.
(note: the Phoenix piano is NOT a Steingraeber although it has the same bridge-agraffe system that
Steingraeber offers.)

Because practical experience always replaces belief. Always. Hearing and feeling the difference.

Anyway, I’m back, tanned, rested, and ready to go. More later.

He’s the #1 featured artist at the Atelier. Because he’s a fantastic musician, songwriter, melodist, and force of being. And DAP had the honor of providing Tamir with the Steingraeber 232 (7′7″) that he used to spectacular effect to record his debut album “Playground” with the legendary rhythm section of Jeff Hamilton and John Clayton. The record sounds fantastic in all artistic and technical realms; I’m thinkin’ Grammy nomination, perhaps….

Point is, people have caught on. Last week the CD was #16 on the jazzweek.com charts (currently the definitive list;) this week it’s #3. That’s worth an exclamation point!

And…we’re presenting Tamir Hendelman in a private, by-invitation-only solo concert and fundraiser for Upward Bound House
on Sunday, October 18—-LIVE at the ATELIER. Can you tell I’m excited?

Wow. I want one of these functional medicine guys as my main health practitioner. Dr. Marc Hyman has a splendid blog entry at Huffington Post to introduce you to the autoimmune disease pandemic the world is experiencing and how to deal with it personally. Investigate this stuff, read carefully, and listen closely. It could literally save your life or the life and health of a loved one.

I can’t tell you how many dozens of stories I’ve heard over the past decade of people being manhandled, misdiagnosed, unheard, and being made more ill by disjointed, money-based, dispirited health care. Tale after tale of frustration, fear, disappointment, and poor and wrong diagnoses.

Watch the movie “Sicko” and tell me there’s not huge veins of truth there
(Michael Moore’s creepy affect and unctuous left-wing propaganda notwithstanding.)

It’s enough to make an old freak take to the streets again. Almost.

The bold, young, and muscular Il Palpiti Orchestra, a global phenomenon almost two decades old, played a short and powerful program at the Saban Temple of the Arts, formerly the Wilshire Beverly Hills Theater, and the powerhouse pianist used our “house” concert grand. And they loved it, so they said. “Ecstatic,” reportedly. I’ll take that, thank you very much.

You can hear the beast to full advantage on my website; pass the cursor over the song player, then scroll down to Mike Garson’s “Gershwin Medley.”

I love this piano. AND: it’s for sale. (On my website: click on “Pianos for Sale” then on “Pianos On Hand.”)

So you can love it forever, if you buy it. I would say, side by side, there would be a clear and striking positive difference between this piano and a new factory instrument vis a vis tone AND touch.

That said, I’ll match the price of any deal on a new Steinway that you show me for my instrument for the next 30 days ONLY. That is, if you show me a legitimate offer from a dealer for a new 2009 (according to the serial number) concert grand, I’ll price-match it for my (IMO) superior and certainly more labor-intensive and custom instrument.

Come on down and see me. I’m in a selling mood.

My treasured colleague Michael Spreeman, maker of some of the finest instruments on the planet,
has sprung into the 21st century like a young lion, full of power and fervor. My homeboy has his own channel on YouTube here. Wow. So cool.

Now I’m jealous. I want my own channel on frickin’ YouTube.

Even though I’m nowhere near as gifted or productive as Spreeman.

But at least I’m self-deprecating. I got that goin’ for me.

Anyway, check out Michael’s website and everything. He’s the bomb. And his wife is a goddess.

A long-revered colleague and new-found friend, Steve Brady has big gifts as both a piano technician and a writer. He spent an afternoon with me at the Atelier this spring, and the result is a startlingly personal and resonant article in the new supplement to the Bible of the piano biz, Larry Fine’s “The Piano Book.” It’s called “The Acoustic and Digital Piano Buyer: a supplement to the Piano Book.” The online version is free, and it’s here; my article is on page 61.

Larry Fine has done it again—he’s made an elegant, info-packed package that will serve every sector of the business with the same excellence and honesty that has accompanied all his work. Great job,my friend….

One think I get consistent great feedback about is the look and feel of my website; people that visit uniformly feel entertained and informed. The redesigner, Olaf Sjenna, is now in New Zealand working like an elf on the CGI for James Cameron’s next big movie…so the search for a quality site maintainer has taken six months and has been somewhat of a nightmare—kissing a bunch of frogs that certainly weren’t princes, so to speak—but now we’ve got the guy, Mr. Dave Mosso at Spacious Mind down south in Orange County. Outstanding job. Dude.

So all the pianos we’ve been gathering and tweaking for a while are now up on the site; go to “Pianos for Sale,” then “Pianos on Hand,” then click on “Hand-built New & Vintage Pianos.” Mmmm. Fresh meat. So to speak.