by Virginia Lloyd | Jul 7, 2009 | Blog, Pianos and pianists on the stage and the page
In a bizarre twist on the recent history of the automotive industry, Audi has decided to mark its centenary by commissioning its youngest designers to come up with a new … piano. I’m as much a fan of the piano as anyone who’s played the instrument...
by Virginia Lloyd | Jun 20, 2009 | Blog, Pianos and pianists on the stage and the page
I just stumbled across this article from the LA Times about the declining sales of acoustic pianos, the rise in sales of electronic instruments and digital keyboards, and what it all might mean. According to the article, 105,000 acoustic upright and grand pianos were...
by Virginia Lloyd | Jun 11, 2009 | Blog, Pianos and pianists on the stage and the page
Twenty-year-old Nobuyuki Tsujii is the joint winner of this year’s Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, held every four years in Fort Worth, Texas, over a gruelling 17 days. As is often the case with such competitions, the judges’ decision has been...
by Virginia Lloyd | May 31, 2009 | Blog, Improve your writing, Pianos and pianists on the stage and the page
The amusing and occasionally hilarious Joe Queenan published this essay last week in the New York Times about his fascination with books containing the word “piano” in their title. He finds them almost guaranteed to lift him out of whatever low mood he...
by Virginia Lloyd | Apr 20, 2009 | Blog, Improve your writing, Pianos and pianists on the stage and the page
Today I stumbled upon this lovely essay in a great aggregator blog called 3QuarksDaily. In The Literature of the Piano, Bryant Urstadt details his current reading tour – what he terms ‘another time-wasting obsession’ – of literature about the...