I spoke with Robbie Rhodes on the phone today.  Robbie is a EE who put
himself through school many years ago playing piano on Disneyland's
"Mainstreet USA".  He is an active Dixieland Jazz Pianist when not
working as a "rocket scientist".  He's promised to get a modem hooked
up to his machine soon.  In the meantime, he's taken me up on my offer
to transcribe from a telephone conversation.

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Artis Wodehouse is the person who did the CD "Gershwin Plays Gershwin - The
Piano Rolls", Elektra Nonesuch 79287-2.  She organized the project,
transcribed all the Gershwin piano rolls with the assistance of Richard
Tonnesen of Richardson TX (Custom Music Rolls).   Richard Brandle of Dallas TX
wrote a Duo-Art emulator that took the piano roll data and turned it into MIDI
with expression.  Artis edited the MIDI file and then played it on a
Yamaha Disclavier for the CD about 3 years ago.

Flushed with that success, she has now turned to Jelly Roll Morton.  Ther are
12 surviving piano rolls recorded by Jelly Roll.  Richard transcribed them
at a particularly high resolution (about 300 samples/inch) and Rob Rhodes
"recovered" the master roll with a Pascal program. [ I will let Rob explain
exactly what recovered means in a later article ]

The MIDI files (with no expression data -- none was recorded originally) have
now been given to Artis for editing and addition of expression data.
The end product will be another CD to be published by Electra Nonesuch.

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Rob Rhodes just completed a music roll for a Mel Brooks Film: "Dracula: Dead
and Loving It"  -- Its a Mel Brooks satire of all the Dracula movies.  Robbie
was contacted by the film's music director to create a music roll for the 
player organ sequence in the movie.  The music is "El Choclo - Tango".  Richard
Tonnesen perforated the roll.  Watch for Robbie's name in the credits.  The
movie should be released in December.

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The "grapevine" says that Wayne Stahnke, the inventor of the Boesendorfer SE
mechanism, is continuing his projects of transcribing  piano roll performances
of Vladimir Horowitz and Sergei Rachmaninoff.  Wayne's taking all of those rolls
and "recovering" the master rolls.  The end result will be a set of Disclavier
diskettes published by Wayne's company "Live Performance".

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Eric Bernhoft is creating piano rolls from the live performances of Peter
Mintun and Frederic Hodges.  We think they will be in Duo-Art format.  He's
using a MIDI velocity sensing piano.  Hodges is well known as the pianist
of the Royal Society Jazz Orchestra.  Mintun is a long time follower of
the piano stylings of Victor Arden (an Ampico artist)  and Dana Suesse.

Robbie Rhodes