Mobile Music Touch is a novel treatment for people who have lost sensation in their hands from a spinal cord injury. Not only does it have therapeutic benefits, but it also teaches people to play the piano in the process. Developed by Tanya Markow at Georgia Tech, the MMT is a device consisting of a…
A Jazz Pianist Gets His Big Break – at 85
Back in the 1930s, Boyd Lee Dunlop taught himself to play music on a broken piano left out on the streets of Buffalo, N.Y. Only half the keys worked. He also taught his little brother Frank to play the drums while they were growing up. Frankie Dunlop went on to record with Thelonious Monk and…
Pianos to Plunk Down Around NYC
Consider them keys to the city: Anyone who gets a sudden itch to tickle the ivories will be able to play free public pianos in 50 places throughout New York City, from the Coney Island boardwalk to the Metropolitan Museum. An art installation touring the world is making its first U.S. stop beginning Monday. For…
‘Pianos on Parade’ lends music, quirkiness to streets
St. Paul, Minn. — Call it random quirkiness or a moment of spontaneous community, but on the streets of St. Paul it’s the summer of the upright piano. Twenty artistically decorated pianos have been placed around the city, to lend a little music to the streets and bring its residents together. “Pianos on Parade” is…
‘Pianomania’ Takes Persnickety Pianists To A New Pinnacle
Anyone with a piano at home can tell stories about piano tuners — or piano technicians, as they prefer to be called. In more than a dozen years of producing classical music here at NPR, I have a few stories myself about brilliant but picky pianists and the extraordinary demands they’ve made on our piano…
A Toy Piano Played Like a Grand Baby
The sound of a toy piano may conjure the magic and innocence of childhood: You see toy pianos in playrooms, not concert halls. But John Cage wrote a suite for toy pianos in 1948. In 2001, a toy piano was a central part of the soundtrack for the French romantic comedyAmelie. Pop and rock musicians…
