Yamaha italicizes this synergy by harmonizing a brushed aluminum case and fittings with a cherry hardwood rim and a two-piece clear-acrylic lid. So should we be at all surprised to see how some 60 years later the Yamaha company celebrates its centennial as a piano manufacturer with an aesthetic and technical flourish by demolishing the boundaries between such never-the-twain-shall-meet categories as acoustic piano, digital synthesis and the home computer with the Yamaha Disklavier Pro 2000. This is now a standard feature on some of the most humble of digital keyboards. By inserting a special transposing lever beneath the keyboard, the composer was able to play in any key using only white or black keys. For instance, among the many historic pianos on display at the Smithsonian’s Piano 300 celebration is the Upright Transposing Piano that the Weber company of New York customized for Irving Berlin in 1940. Because where creative musicians are concerned it’s easy to forget how often form follows function. So even for all the devotion to the acoustic piano, I urge jazz pianists to remain open to the possibilities of today’s emerging technologies as both composing and performing vehicles. But it wasn’t until the 1840s that the American maker Chickering and his great rivals at Steinway perfected a one-piece cast iron frame that was able to accommodate the increased tension of heavier strings, and from that point on, this musical child of the industrial age evolved into the expressive orchestral instrument we know and love so well. And it’s worth noting that it took roughly 150 years for the physical and technical demands of players such as Beethoven, Chopin and Liszt to force the descendants of the original fortepiano to deliver a bigger, more complex tonal palette, while allowing for faster, more pliant action to accommodate the swift, complex, rhythmic phrases of an emerging generation of virtuosos. Having heard Malcolm Bilson perform on a fortepiano from Mozart’s day, I can tell you that while it had a brilliant tone with a very complex set of overtones, it was a much more delicate instrument than what we’re used to. Bach, wasn’t overly impressed with the nascent pianos of his day he did his damage on those big pipe organs, though he had a warm spot in his heart for the tiny clavichord. At that time, the harpsichord remained the instrument of choice among the leading keyboardists, who no doubt regarded this upstart instrument much as pianists today sneer at synthesizers, as if to say, “If it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it.” The original bebopper, J. Of course, when contrasting the enduring appeal of acoustic pianos with that of their contemporary digital brethren, it’s worth noting that synthesis is a relatively new performance technology, while the piano has been evolving since the dawn of the 18th century. And when it comes to intimacy and immediacy, the sound of a good acoustic piano is so intoxicating it’s easy to see why its practitioners are utterly devoted to it. Being as jazz is music of spontaneous self-expression, the instrument that offers the most direct path to emotional fulfillment is the one musicians will gravitate toward. Should I be surprised by the aesthetic ambivalence even devoted creative electronic musicians feel toward synthesizers? Hardly.
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