Player Piano Concert
By Jim Edwards
Chicago AMICA has done about ten concerts with player pianos and will, the first week of April in Aurora, Illinois sponsor a week long festival to commemorate the l00th anniversary of the player piano.
During this week Rex Lawson and Dan Wilson will be playing a l9l5 Aeolian 645/88 note push up in several concerts. One concert is a master's class on the player piano, another concert a concert at a local high school with the push-up and a 9' Steinway.
The biggies are a jazz concert with a professional jazz band doing Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in the original form as the Paul Whitman band did it in the l920's, and on Sunday Rex will play the Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No. 1 with a full symphony orchestra (Fox Valley Symphony) in the beautifully restored Paramount movie theatre completed in l933.
In the past I have helped produce concerts with orchestras in this country and made connections with the Pianola Institute in England who helped sponsor the Chicago Youth Symphony in an England tour which ended with a concert in Queen Elizabeth Hall with two pianolas doing Carnival of the Animals.
We have done a few concerts with only a reproducing grand on stage; usually we like to go the whole route and combine the player piano with orchestra as was done in the l920's. Singer and player piano concerts are easy to do all you need to have rolls which are accompaniment rolls.
Ampico system had such rolls and I am sure the others systems had them also or use regular 88 note rolls form current sellers such as QRS. Come to our festival and spend Saturday evening with the gang from the festival at a local pub drinking brews and pumping rolls and pump me for more info.
Jim Edwards, Wynette Edwards' roll-mate
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(Message sent Tue 18 Mar 1997, 00:07:20 GMT, from time zone GMT-0600.) |
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