A 5-day music symposium will be held at Stanford University,
Palo Alto, Calif., starting Wednesday, January 14, through Sunday
January 18, 2009.  The formal name is "Reactions To The Record II".
This is a fascinating mixture of performances, presentations and
discussions on the evolution of piano performance practices.  To
illustrate the changes in performance practice over the years, they
have studied early phonograph recordings and piano rolls of historical
artists.

To get a better idea of what the symposium is about take a look at
their web site for all of the details:

http://music.stanford.edu/Events/StanfordMusicSymposium/index.html 

Another very important part of this symposium will be a rare
appearance and performances by internationally acclaimed pianolists
and piano roll authorities Rex Lawson and Denis Hall from England.
Rex and Denis will be giving talks and performances on Saturday,
culminating with a panel discussion on piano rolls and preservation.
I will be giving a brief talk on piano roll scanning and archival
preservation as well.

Sunday night Rex Lawson will be giving a very interesting all piano
roll concert as the finale.  (The program is on the web site.)  For
anyone interested in piano music, piano rolls and records, this is not
to be missed.

Michael Swanson