I agree in entirety with all the comments by Waring, Wilson and Clark
(sounds a bit like a mysterious vaudeville act!) about the hazards and
small pleasures to be derived from playing the pianola in public
places.

Public performances are almost a mandate for the various pianola
societies perhaps for two major reason.  One is to play to our own
egos that we can like Moses part the sea and restore the pianola to
its rightful place in modern society and the second reason is to come
out of our pianola dens and see if we have not really gone quite mad.
I have had a recent experience which takes the public performance in
another direction that was most positive.

I was asked to play a two hour slot in the food area of a day long
celebration of the founding of Aurora University.  There were dozens
of things going on that day plays, choral concerts, body painting, etc.
The people who came over to the small Duo-Art player with twinkles in
their eyes and pure hearts were the children.  It was an interactive
affair with children leaning on the pianos and listening intently and
others I allowed  to pump the rolls.  Some kids I even got to use the
pedals to produce a bit of human-like music!

The two hours went very fast and the next day  on the front page in
the local paper serving a community of 120,000 was a beautiful picture
of a child and the pianola caught in a mutual moment of rapture.  It
doesn't get any better than this.  Well maybe, how about some person
with more money than he or she knows what to do with funding local
pianolists visiting elementary classrooms.  Who knows, maybe one of
these impressionable youths might just in the future buy one of our
pianolas and keep the faith into the next century.

Jim Edwards