Prince’s ALPHA Grand 97— Sold!
Back in 2016 music-legend Prince commissioned ALPHA Pianos to build a special edition of their ALPHA Grand. This was to be used on the final European leg of the Piano & A Microphone Tour. Yamaha… Read more »
Book: Bartolomeo Cristofori and the Invention of the Piano
Last month we ran a piece on the new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, entitled The Art of Music Through Time. This features the oldest surviving piano — Bartolomeo Cristofori’s 1720 “gravicembalo col… Read more »
New Product: The Virtual Steingraeber E-272 from Modartt
If you are exclusively an acoustic pianist, do read this. It may just whet your appetite… Modartt is a French technology company specialising in products with artistic applications. Their best known product is the Pianoteq… Read more »
New Product: Yamaha P-515 Portable Digital Piano
The 2018 Summer NAMM show takes place every year at the end of June. This is the Winter NAMM show’s little brother – smaller but still an important event in the musical instrument calendar. The… Read more »
New Exhibition for World’s Oldest Piano
Bartolomeo Cristofori, of Padua, Italy, is undisputedly credited with being the inventor of the piano. But he was actually striving to produce the first harpsichord to offer a touch responsive keyboard. Pressing a harpsichord’s key… Read more »
Sing For Hope Pianos 2018
Next week the 2018 Sing for Hope Pianos project comes to an end. Over 50 highly decorated pianos have been placed in high traffic areas around New York for the past three weeks. And on… Read more »
New Book: Chopin’s Piano
Chopin’s Piano – A Journey Through Romanticism* is a newly published book by conductor, author and biographer Paul Kildea. Books about pianos often explore a particular facet of the instrument—its history, how it works, its… Read more »
Musings on the Sale of the Colt Clavier Collection
On June 7th, 2018, on instructions from The Trustees, The Colt Clavier Collection of Historically Important Keyboard Instruments was sold by auction. Much has been said about the loss of this great private collection—it was,… Read more »
The World’s Largest Piano Mk.2?
In 2009 the Alexander piano was, arguably, the largest piano in the world. It was build by Adrian Mann in a friend’s farm shed in Dunedin, New Zealand. Incredibly Mann was just 20 when he… Read more »
Seismic Waves and The Tsunami Piano
In 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent tsunami devastated large areas of the country’s eastern seaboard. In the north-eastern region of Tohoku, amongst the wreckage of the Miyagi Agricultural High School’s gymnasium, a… Read more »