Hello All -- I was at the "Century Rolls" concert.  The piece (the rest
of the program featured works by Beethoven) appeared to my naive ears
to have only a slight relationship to automatic music.

First, to answer Michael Swanson's question, there was no player piano
present.  Second, the music's rhythm was not fixed (as in the common
mis-impression of piano rolls), but instead varied almost continuously
throughout the work, and the piano's tempos were contrasted with the
orchestra's in rhythmical counterpoint.

I had feared a stereotypical treatment of player pianos, but the music
(as well as the essay on it in the program) certainly did not support
the "player-piano-as-musical-Frankenstein" cliche'.  Maybe too much
exposure to my Duo-Art has dulled my sensibilities, but I did not
notice the musical "strait-jacket of the piano-roll idiom" to which
the San Jose Mercury News' reviewer alludes.

Steve Harris