What's New?

I’ve spent the last month taking a self-imposed vacation from my once or twice-weekly blog posts, and I discovered two things: I miss it, and like to do it; and it makes an interesting
record of all the wacky stuff I run into. It’ll be good to look back at these posts and “trip out,” so to speak…

My lovely partner Tanya has begun to flex her formidable teaching muscles; she herself created this delightful site to promote her sculpture classes; she’s already begun to teach one full class
and another one starting in October is filling up. I wanna be teacher’s pet….

Our summer concert series is on temporary hold while we deal with a recalcitrant and so far anonymous neighbor. Go to my home page, then click on the words right below my picture
for the complete story…free the Atelier!!

As a personal note, I think every congressperson and senator who doesn’t want me and every other person in the U.S. to have the same quality health care that they and their families have access to is a hypocrite, and a bought-and-paid-for courtesan of the medical industry.
This battle is absurd. We are the ONLY developed nation in the world to treat our citizens so cruelly, to so brutally monetize medical care.

For shame, you doctors who have sold out your sacred oath to see your patients as a revenue stream. Bravo, you doctors who fight bravely on as healers while being buried in paper, unconsciousness, and unlimited opportunities to sell out for lucrative “honoraria” unctuously and constantly offered by Big Pharma.

This slavish devotion to the free market and irrational fear of “thuh gover-mint” despite the relatively shining examples of Medicare, military medicine, and the VA system makes me want to scream. Wake up, people. Universal access to quality health care is a right. Period.

The name Aksel Kolstad may not mean anything to you now, but I’m betting it will in a year or so. The brilliant and energetic young pianist/composer is on a roll, and he, along with his compadre, the smokin’ hot violinist Catherina Chen, rolled into L.A. late Wednesday night to play our pimped-out 1953 Steinway concert grand at the opening of the Moods of Norway store in Beverly Hills—some smart lads, I might add—and was seriously taken with the piano: “It’s the best Steinway I’ve ever played anywhere. Ever. In the world.”

We love that. And we love his playing. Check out his creation, Cafe de Concert, and join the party. what an outrageous concept—classical music for the people, with rhythm and laughter and intimacy. Check it out.

Welcome to summer; my son Ari is done with high school and getting ready to move to our nation’s capital for the next five years. That’s where American University is, and the School of International Service has offered him some strong incentives to get an MBA in five years; we’ll see how that goes. Ari is a political junkie to the tenth power with a gift for keeping an even keel in stormy emotional and social waters. He’s amazingly grounded and self-contained; he’ll do whatever he wants to do, with class, honesty, and a sweet heart.

I may have to have hip replacement surgery; oof. I’m working hard to avoid it, but I’m ready if it comes. There’s a new procedure that is less invasive with shorter recovery time. Stay tuned.

David Stanwood, John Callahan, Ann Garee and myself will have something very, very exciting to share with you in the piano world this fall. What if you could dial in the touch on your piano’s action AS YOU PLAY? What if you could find the absolute sweet spot, that ideal balance of inertia and resistance, for each different piece you play? For all your different moods?
What if you could make these magical changes within seconds, on the piano bench, with the turning of two dials? Is that something you’d be interested in?

Hmmmm???

I thought so. Stay tuned.

For Kool-aid-drinking, obsessive, lifetime piano geeks, at least. Like me. The North Bennett Street School is like a turbo-charged rocket tied on the back of the students. They’re saturated. They live pianos for a year or two. And it’s a huge boost in all possible realms to their destinies as people, artisans, and successful piano technicians. The building drips with legacy, and a tough, loving, no-bullshit approach to art and craft of the hands and heart as a normal, crucial, natural part of life, worthy of the greatest respect.

I did the same all-day marathon that I had done a few days before (you can view the class outline in the “latest releases” part of the “What’s New” section of my website) and all twenty-three full-time piano students showed up, along with some recent grads and legendary alumni—David Stanwood and Barbara Pease Renner, for instance. The staff was awesome and impeccable. A special tip of the hat to David Betts, the director of the piano school—a gentleman and artisan in every sense of the word.
To Debbie Cyr, Christine Lovgren, and Jack Stebbins: what a beautiful teaching job you do.

To all the students: you inspired me every single minute I was in the building. Thanks. Trust the force. Trust your ears. Trust your heart. Use common sense.

Now, back at the Atelier, preparing for an elegant benefit concert on Sunday. What a life.

What a pleasure to teach to people who are eager to learn. After some initial flurries of technical Murphy’s Law with the room’s projection system, everything went like it was on ball bearings: smoooth. The pianos worked like a charm, and Joe Weincek, my liaison with the local chapter, was a very capable, charming and stand-up guy. Now it’s on to Boston…

I’m in mid-town Manhattan, and I’m teaching an all-day class tomorrow called “The Soul of the Craft: Inside the Whole Piano” at the Yamaha Artist Services, Inc. Piano Salon to whichever of my colleagues in the New York City Piano Technician’s Guild show up. What a snazzy place, and Yoshi Suzuki, the senior technical manager, is wonderful, smart, and completely together, as is James Steeber, the overall director. I’m using two gleaming new(ish) S-4s to teach on, one that I quickly retuned and did some performance “tweaks” on (and will do a few more before the class in the AM) to practically show the difference between a prepared piano and one relatively “out of the box,” and further, to show what precision and intuitive feel in piano preparation sounds and feels like. The difference in the two pianos will be stark. Which is great for my purpose: show AND tell. The scoreboard never lies, and hopefully will make an inspirational impact on the careers of some eager souls.

I’ll debrief the class with y’all on Sunday, and then it’s on to Boston and the North Bennett Street School to do it all over again. I love to teach.

Busy. On every single possible front. Inside, outside USA, baby:

—creating an incredible fundraiser for Upward Bound House with my muse and partner, the gorgeous and talented Tanya Ragir.

—basking in the afterglow of a phenomenally well-reviewed concert under the aegis of the beloved-by-the-cognoscenti Jacaranda Concert Series using my Steingraeber concert grand. It was the loudest and strongest I have ever heard or seen a piano being played. I was actually nervous and afraid the piano would blow up or break down…

It didn’t. A couple of unisons did go, about twenty-five minutes into a forty-minute program, and I spent the rest of the piece before blessed intermission with my heart in my throat, my mind racing, and taking deep breaths to chill out. I always initially feel, when I hear a tuned note of mine go south, that I’ve ruined the transcendental experience of every listener, and that everyone involved who knows I’m responsible for this disaster will vibe me out and withdraw from me as from a leper…Not really, but you know what I mean: I feel bad.

Later, after I HAVE chilled out, and regained my senses, I find out nobody even heard it except me, the player, and the recording engineer. Sort of ashamed to tell you this, but I am getting better, and freaking out less than I used to.

—preparing for an East Coast piano mini- “tour,” teaching an all-day seminar called “The Soul of the Craft: Inside the Intentional Technician” on May 5 at the Yamaha Performance Center in Manhattan for the New York City chapter of the Piano Technician’s Guild, then flying to Boston and doing the same all-day thing at the North Bennett Street School (perhaps the pre-eminent school of piano technology in this country,) a tuning class for the Boston PTG that night, and some individual tuning tutoring at NBSS the following morning.

THEN, I’m accompanying David Stanwood to Harvard University, where he has arranged to have a showing/playing of his new variable-action-ratio invention, which promises to be revolutionary, and can be elegantly retrofitted into any piano. Since DAP will be the Los Angeles area authorized dealers and installers of the device, you’ll no doubt hear more from me soon about this. Prepare to be blown away.

—wrapping up my 20-year residence in Malibu; when my son Ari goes to American University in the fall, I’ll move in full time with Tanya, and kiss my little Malibu place goodbye.

Plus all the daily miracles and tears and challenges a committed husband, father, brother, friend, and business owner goes through—life’s rich pageant, indeed. I’ll keep ya posted.

I’m overjoyed to announce that David Andersen Pianos is the official supplier of concert pianos to the Jacaranda Concert Series, what I think is the hippest, best-curated, most passionate independent, non-profit series for modern, “young” classical music that exists—anywhere. So says Alex Ross, and he’s a bad-ass in the best possible way.

The first concert is Saturday April 4th, 8 PM, at the big ol’ Presbyterian Church at 2nd and Wilshire in Santa Monica, CA…8PM. Great young players, a program of Stravinsky and Messiaen, and a Steingraeber 272 concert grand. Mmmmmm….

…was just a pleasure to read; the author really did capture a bit of the flavor of our relationship and of the atmosphere on the day she spent with us. I love my sisters and brother with a fierce and tempered love; they’re all outstanding humans and funny, complex personalities, and we’ve seen each other through so many dramas and successes. Family is awesome.

Click here for the article…..

I “finished” another round of “tuning” the Kawai upright piano that Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders keep in their studio—tuned, or rather DE-tuned so that each string’s pitch is one entire octave lower than it was designed to be. These A-list film composers are fearless about incorporating fiercely original sounds—almost ugly or dissonant yet strangely musical and mood-and-action-appropriate. Depending on how the strings are struck, plucked, or bowed, there’s a whole load of unique sonic opportunities in this freak of a tuned piano. There are two massive challenges involved:
—keeping the piano from going sharp immediately
—dealing with exponentially more inharmonicity—literally like tuning underwater. Normal rules of listening and precise note placement do not apply; the strings were never meant to operate at this low degree of tension…but that’s what makes it sounds so freakishly cool.

Before we started, I made every single qualifier I could think of—no estimate of how long it would take, no guarantee it would hold or be useful in any way—and the composers were clear: let’s try it.

I’ll keep you posted. Literally. With an audio clip of the damn thing ASAP.