5 Year Old Adopted South Korean Blind Piano Prodigy Yoo Ye-eun can play songs after hearing them once. Watch her perform with Britain's Got Talent's Connie Talbot in a South Korean TV show called "Star King".
posted on Jul 13, 2008 - View this thread

Smooth Jazz, also sometimes referred to as new adult contemporary music or instrumental pop, is generally described as a genre that utilizes instruments and improvisation traditionally associated with jazz and stylistic influences drawn from mostly R&B, but also funk and pop. Since the late 1980s and into the 1990s, it has become successful as a radio format. [source wikipedia]
posted on Apr 20, 2008 - View this thread

Monsieur, you vill not speak disrespectfully of a member of ze family! It is a boon travelling companion, without which I do not function, I cannot operate. It has been with me for 21 years, zis thing, this chair!

Glenn Gould performed for 21 years seated in a folding card chair modified by his father to be height adjustable. That one chair accompanied him around the world in support of each of his recordings and performances, and now resides on a pedestal at the National Library of Canada. Luckily, exact replicas of the skeletal, cushion-less chair are available for only €990.
posted on Apr 16, 2008 - View this thread

This post goes out to everyone who is supposed to be working right now. Perhaps you can relate.
posted on Mar 9, 2008 - View this thread

Free Bird on piano [YouTube]. The 14-year-old musician, who calls himself UnclassicalPiano on YouTube, currently has 16 other selections, including Stairway To Heaven, Behind Blue Eyes, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Message In A Bottle and Black Sabbath's Paranoid (his main interest is metal), all of which he says he learned to play by ear.
posted on Jan 15, 2008 - View this thread

Oscar Peterson passed away last night.
posted on Dec 24, 2007 - View this thread

Have these fellows whetted your appetite for Southern Hemispherical comic singer-songwriters who care about The Issues? Barefoot Australian Tim Minchin ought to satisfy that hunger with an environmental anthem and a peace anthem. But aside from his social activism, he's also vulgar, poignant, dark, and of course, rock.
posted on Nov 14, 2007 - View this thread

A day in the life of Abdullah Ibrahim, South-African composer and performer who creates hypnotic and softly singing grooves. To me, his recent piano trios are the highlights of his work, because they are both swinging and soulful. But his compositions do not sound bad in a big band setting -(or in an arrangement for guitar). His music is quiet and meditative but powerful, and has sometimes been used as a banner for freedom and equality. Now he likes to withdraw once in a while to the smallest scenes (french commentary with some english underneath), putting strong emphasis on necessary simplicity. Written portrait.
posted on Nov 1, 2007 - View this thread

In 1956, Time Magazine wrote, "He is the summit of sex—the pinnacle of Masculine, Feminine and Neuter. Everything that He, She or It can ever want." (Wait. Seriously???) Behold the evolution of The Liberace Show: from dapper virtuoso to sequined, wacky showman.
posted on Oct 30, 2007 - View this thread

Sad, head-down legendary jazz piano. (Single-link YouTube) More Bill and the Wiki. [Previously] Hopefully more of a reminder than a double.
posted on Oct 25, 2007 - View this thread

Rachmaninoff had big hands. (More from Igudesman and Joo (flash), former students of Yehudi Menuhin).
posted on Oct 9, 2007 - View this thread

Zenph Studios has developed a process (using high-resolution MIDI) which "re-performed" Glenn Gould's famous 1955 piano recordings of Bach's Goldberg Variations in hybrid multichannel SA-CD format.
posted on Sep 4, 2007 - View this thread

He's got Rhythm (single-link YouTube)
posted on Aug 25, 2007 - View this thread

The Muse's Muse Songwriting Resource is the place for songwriting tips, tools, interactivities and connecting with other songwriters around the world. See the section about musical instruments or get into the guitar player's guide. Start communicating with other musicians and songwriters in the forums and check out the music reviews. Lots to do, see, hear, learn, and most of all, enjoy.
posted on Aug 22, 2007 - View this thread

At fourteen years old, Jennifer Lin is a shade better on the piano than most eighth-graders. (video) [via]
posted on Jul 29, 2007 - View this thread

A lovely free online text on the Fundamentals of Piano Practice. (Tuning, too.)
posted on Jun 25, 2007 - View this thread

Regina Spektor is a Russian-born American singer-songwriter and pianist associated with the anti-folk scene centered on New York City's East Village. Incorporating "piano riffs and integrating moans, nonsense words, groans, gurglings, or warblings," Spektor has a pretty unique voice (Seattle P-I: "an instrument with the agility of an athlete and the flexibility of a yogi") and style which incorporates "beatbox-style flourishes in the middle of ballads, or the use of a drum stick to tap rhythms on the body of the piano or chair" (wiki). She's got a pretty unique voice and "Fidelity" is a very unusual and rather enjoyable music video. Someone to keep an eye on (although Mefites already had been doing so).
posted on Jun 9, 2007 - View this thread

Nora the cat plays piano Plus there's a sequel!
posted on Apr 25, 2007 - View this thread

Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No.3, in D minor, with Martha Argerich on piano. Many know the Rach 3 from the movie Shine. [Via C&L.]
posted on Feb 26, 2007 - View this thread

The Hatto Hoax. Joyce Hatto has been described as "the greatest living pianist that almost no one has ever heard of." Her performances of piano works by Liszt, Schubert, and Rachmaninov were praised by classical afficionados for their "addictively beautiful sonority, cultured musicianship, and total instrumental mastery." Since she died in June 2006, however, Hatto has been at the center of one of the stranger scandals to hit classical music in years. It's starting to look like some or all of her treasured, hard-to-find recordings made since 1990 are not her playing at all. [Via]
posted on Feb 16, 2007 - View this thread

"Feelings" - As only the brilliant but... ummm... eccentric (case in point: July/August 1995 in that last link) Dr. Nina Simone could've performed it.
posted on Jan 12, 2007 - View this thread

What's the most difficult piano piece? Opinions vary. Is it La Campanella, written by Liszt to show off what only he could do? (performance, score) Is it Balakirev's Islamey, which even Balakirev struggled to play? (performance, score) Or Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit, written to top Islamey? (performance, score) Does Godowsky double his points by reconfiguring the already-difficult Chopin for the left hand? (performance) And if someone plays all four hours of Sorabji's Opus Clavicembalisticum, written across four staves to fit the extra notes, will anyone listen? (perfomance excerpts, score excerpts)
posted on Jan 6, 2007 - View this thread

Andras Schiff's lecture-recitals on Beethoven's piano sonatas
posted on Nov 1, 2006 - View this thread

Free piano, slight fire damage.
posted on Aug 13, 2006 - View this thread

What is people's fascination with playing the Mario theme on the piano? Blindfolded, even. Super Mario World, too. And Mario 64, and... some other rubbish.
posted on Jul 12, 2006 - View this thread

When an accident becomes a community attraction... It's not one of these, but when some lads from Sheffield couldn't fit their piano into their house, they inadvertently created a new concept - the 'street piano'. Start your own street piano community today!
posted on Jul 7, 2006 - View this thread

The Pianolina - an addictive flash game - is something like a cross between Pong and WolframTones. Brought to you by Grotrian, piano manufacturers since 1835, the pianolina visualizes musical notes as little squares that chime when they bounce against each other or against a wall. Its sophisticated interface lets you add chords, gravity, or start with the basic notes of well known compositions like Beethoven's "Für Elise".
posted on Jun 16, 2006 - View this thread

"The sound was not of this world, it hovered in space like some celestial blessing".
He could play the piano ”before he had learned to smile”, his mother said, and he gave his first concert at the age of six. He studied under Alfred Cortot, Charles Munch, Paul Dukas, and Nadia Boulanger. He was an esteemed teacher and critic at 19, an international phenomenon at 24. He escaped from his native Rumania to Switzerland in 1943 with his fiancée, a joint capital of five Swiss francs in their pockets. After the war, just as he had arrived in the pantheon of great performing artists, Dinu Lipatti was diagnosed with leukemia. In September 1950, near death, despite the urgings of his doctors Lipatti insisted upon one last recital at Besançon. As his wife recalled, this was the only way Lipatti could bear to take his leave of the world. Lipatti was so weak he could barely walk to the piano. But once he began playing, he became transformed. After performing 13 waltzes, he could no longer muster the strength necessary to perform the final selection. So he substituted Myra Hess's piano arrangement of Bach's 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring".(page with sound). Three months later, Lipatti died at the age of 33. After Lipatti's funeral, his old mentor Cortot wrote: "There was nothing to teach you. One could, in fact, only learn from you."
posted on May 20, 2006 - View this thread

An interactive Shockwave-based look at Bach's Well-tempered Clavier. Go one level up and explore the entire coverage of Bach.
posted on Apr 10, 2006 - View this thread

A piano. A catgut free piano. A catgut free piano that includes cats. Very angry cats.
posted on Mar 1, 2006 - View this thread

Remember the mysterious Piano Man? Well, he got better.
posted on Aug 22, 2005 - View this thread

Listen to some Jelly Roll Morton, fill out a sex survey... Imagine taking the piano licks of Jelly Roll Morton and adding a Google Maps-like approach to mapping sexual activity in the US. The possibilities are endless...
posted on Aug 13, 2005 - View this thread

Cool Keys Radio. A true labor of electric piano love that will undoubtedly sate the taste of even the most ardent lover of the instrument.
posted on May 29, 2005 - View this thread

Piano Chords One would think that searching for such a pedantic string via Google would not net much in this post-adwords age, however Chord House's (apparently HTML-based) Chord Generator app is suprisingly nifty, with visualizations and audio samples of both each of the notes and and chord itself. Now don't go hogging all the bandwidth -- I aim to plunk down "People Just Ain't No Good" from available chord tablature for the next half hour or so...
posted on Feb 11, 2005 - View this thread

Last night, I watched François Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player. While looking for information on the movie today, I came across this website which features famous uses of the Giuoco Piano opening in chess. Yes, it is the only chess move I know, aside from losing....
posted on Feb 8, 2005 - View this thread

He plays the piano with his balls (SFW)
posted on Jul 2, 2004 - View this thread

Tickling the ivories - uh-oh, bad girl post! This mpg video clip is just too darn fun not to share, but it is definitely nsfw, which is why I am posting it pre-Friday. But hear me, you will get fired if you open this at work! I mean it! just doing my bit to dispel the boyzone myth
posted on Jan 23, 2003 - View this thread

"Picasso of keyboard funk" - Professor Longhair would be 84 today if he were still alive. His distinctive meld of boogie woogie, blues, funk and Latin makes for piano that is quintessentially New Orleans...Tipitinas, one of the more famous local music bars, took its name from his signature song. "Fess" was a seminal influence on such musical greats as James Booker, Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint, Art Neville, Doctor John and Marcia Ball, one of my current favorites. You can hear a few Fess samples from Crawfish Fiesta, arguably his best recording, issued just after he died in 1980. He was inducted in the R&R Hall of Fame as an early influencer in 1993. Happy birthday, Professor!
posted on Dec 19, 2002 - View this thread

Christopher O'Riley is a pianist who has transcribed some Radiohead tunes. Give a listen if you like, and spare me the Radiohead does/doesn't suck thread.
posted on May 31, 2002 - View this thread

A little plastic toy piano discovered at a flea market becomes the focus of Twink, the whimsical all toy band. Listen to or download the slightly surreal, sugary and surprisingly complex mp3s to hear the piano and the accompanying toys; hurdy-gurdies, musical saws, busy boxes, speak 'n spells, squeaky toys and giggle sticks. The happy-go-lucky yet vaguely sinister "Hoppity Jones" is a personal favorite. Twink is the brainchild of Mike Langlie, icon maker extraordinaire at Yipyop.
posted on Apr 19, 2002 - View this thread

Babe Ruth threw a piano into a Massachusetts pond eighty-something years ago. Will finding and restoring it break the Curse of the Bambino? Who cares! Life is about the journey, and this is a cool one.
posted on Apr 3, 2002 - View this thread

Le Piano Graphique music simulator. A few keystrokes and a bit of Shockwave and -- Voilà! -- you've created a musical/artistic masterpiece.
posted on Jun 4, 2001 - View this thread

And what would you do with 2 Million dollars? Ah yes, buy a piano.
posted on Oct 18, 2000 - View this thread

Net Music School Found a very cool site in Flash that provides online guitar and piano lessons over the 'net. They got a free lesson sections too.
posted on Nov 2, 1999 - View this thread