Light-Painted Piano Player

This light-painted piano performance mashup set against the San Diego skyline was created by Ryan Cashman:

Light-Paint Piano Player from Ryan Cashman on Vimeo.

How Ryan did it:

To answer a few questions, I wrote the music and recorded it first. The frames were photographed with a Canon Rebel using 20-30 second exposure time. I used a small green LED keychain light to draw each frame. Once all the positions were photographed they were strung together and synchronized to the music in After Effects.

Collaborative Piano Studies at the California Institute of the Arts

The Herb Alpert School of Music at the California Institute of the Arts offers a Master of Fine Arts in Collaborative Keyboard. On the Collaborative Keyboard program:

This specialization prepares advanced students for careers in various collaborative keyboard disciplines through a course of study that concentrates on multiple aspects of collaborative performance, including work in vocal and instrumental chamber music, conducted ensembles and opera, while also refining repertoire knowledge and language facility.

On the program's audition and application requirements:

Either present a live audition or submit recordings of your performance of three works in contrasting styles or from different historical periods. Live auditions are strongly recommended. The audition or recording must clearly demonstrate your level of performance and range of repertoire. In a live audition, expect to demonstrate your abilities in sight singing/sight reading and the identification by ear of various intervals, chords, scales and rhythmic patterns. When a live audition is not possible, you should submit evidence of ability in these musicianship skills. This evidence may take the form of letters from major teachers and/or transcripts of prior musical courses or private training.

For more information, contact the Herb Alpert School of Music.

For more programs, consult the complete list of Degree and Diploma Programs in Collaborative Piano.

Win a Free CD of Vladimir Horowitz at Carnegie Hall

The moment has arrived, and I have two CDs ready to send out to Collaborative Piano Blog readers. But before I announce the rules and skill-testing question, I would like to thank Sony Music for making these two copies of Vladimir Horowitz At Carnegie Hall-The Private Collection: Mussorgsky & Liszt available to readers of the Collaborative Piano Blog. This is an astonishing recording of Horowitz as you've never heard him and I'm pleased to be able to give away these CDs.

Here we go...

Contest Rules and Regulations

1. In order to win one of two free CDs of Vladimir Horowitz at Carnegie Hall - The Private Collection: Mossorgsky and Liszt, answer the following question correctly:

On what date (month, day, year) did Vladimir Horowitz make his Carnegie Hall debut?

2. Send your answer to me at collaborative piano [at] gmail dot com. The first two people to send me the correct date will each win one of the CDs. As soon as I have two winners, I'll update this post announcing who they are.

3. There is no deadline for the contest, and it will remain open until winners have been chosen.

4. After the winners have been determined, I will send the CDs to their home or work address. Please don't send me your address until you know that you are one of the two winners.

Good luck!

Update 12:21pm:

Joshua W of St. Paul, Minnesota is the first winner! One more to go...

Update 12:32pm:

Anne Lee of Toronto, Ontario is the second and final winner!

This contest is now closed. Thanks to everyone for competing and stay tuned, as Sony has expressed an interest in running this contest again for the 2nd and 3rd CDs in the Horowitz at Carnegie Hall - Private Collection series.

Christopher Aaron Smith and Terry Decima Perform Tom Cipullo's Desire

More people need to perform the songs of Tom Cipullo--here is a wonderful video of tenor Christopher Aaron Smith with pianist Terry Decima performing Desire from Cipullo's Another Reason I Don't Keep a Gun in the House at the New England Conservatory in March 2009:

Vladimir Horowitz at Carnegie Hall - The Private Collection

When I was younger, one of the things I always wished when listening to some of the late recordings of Vladimir Horowitz was to be able to hear more recordings of him in his prime than were available then, with a level of sound quality that would give a more complete picture of his playing, and be able to fill in the many mysterious gaps in his decades-long development as a pianist.

That moment has come.

Sony has recently announced three collections of recently unearthed recordings of Horowitz, the first of which is entitled Vladimir Horowitz At Carnegie Hall-The Private Collection: Mussorgsky & Liszt.

Some interesting tidbits about the lost recordings and their reappearance from Sony's press release:

This release features performances of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, from April 2, 1948, and the Liszt Sonata, from March 21, 1949, both at Carnegie Hall. Two more Private Collection releases are scheduled for the fall and early 2010; they include music by Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Haydn, and Beethoven.

In 1988, a year before his death, Horowitz donated to Yale University a treasure trove of original recordings composed of Carnegie Hall concerts and performances he gave during the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. Horowitz had employed an engineer to make 78-rpm recordings of his Carnegie Hall concerts in this period, and he used them to review and judge his performances. Most of these mono recordings were originally contained on 12- and 16-inch acetate discs. They have been impeccably mastered, with the sound restored, from new transfers made in the Yale archives. Significant press accompanied the original announcement of the donation of these recordings to Yale, where Horowitz performed often through the years and was an assistant fellow of Silliman College.

The first volume is classic Horowitz. He is in sovereign form for the Liszt Sonata, a piece associated with him throughout his career for its incredible virtuoso display, with its cascading runs punctuated by incisive chords. As David Dubal, professor of Piano Performance at the Juilliard School, mentions in his liner notes, “His Liszt Sonata was invincible.” Dubal adds that the private collection release is “more glorious than the 1932 recording,” which is typically considered the gold standard for performance of the sonata. Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition demonstrates a different kind of fearlessness unique to Horowitz. His interpretive license as a transcriber of famous works and melodies—including his frequent encores, Variations on a Theme from ‘Carmen’ and Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever—has become a part of his legacy, but even in this context, his transcription of Mussorgsky’s Pictures is particularly bold. For Horowitz, there were no hallowed works, only great performances.

What I noticed about these recordings is that they offer an amazingly accurate picture of how Horowitz played at the absolute height of his powers, and with pretty good sound to boot (albeit for the late 40's on acetate). In addition to deadly accuracy, which one doesn't associate with his later recordings, he is able to create unbelievably bold colors at the piano, from passages played with raw power and authority to moments of the most exquisite and tender sentiment imaginable.

Now the cool part...

To celebrate this occasion, Sony Music has made available to readers of the Collaborative Piano Blog two copies of Horowitz at Carnegie Hall - The Private Collection, and to decide who gets them, I will be holding a contest tomorrow on Friday, July 10 at 12pm EDT.

The contest post will go live at noon EDT and to win you'll need to answer a skill-testing Horowitz trivia question and email me the answer. Stay tuned...

(Thanks, Dana!)

Remembering Bob Mitchell, 1912-2009

Bob Mitchell, the last surviving accompanist of the silent movie era, has passed away at the age of 96. From his Los Angeles Times obituary:

He helped create "a true revival of cinema on the highest level," said Charlie Lustman, who owned the theater from 1999 to 2006. "That you could walk into a classic theater and see a classic movie accompanied by a man who had done it way back when. . . ."

On Christmas Day 1924, Mitchell was practicing carols on the organ at the Strand Theater in Pasadena when the lights went down and a movie about the Yukon went up. The 12-year-old kept playing, improvising a soundtrack. Soon he was accompanying matinee shows five times a week.

He played for films such as the romantic wartime drama "What Price Glory," the action-adventure "Beau Geste" and the Fritz Lang futuristic fantasy "Metropolis."

With the arrival of talkies and Al Jolson in the 1927 film "The Jazz Singer," Mitchell's first silent-movie career ended when he was 16.

Mitchell, a Cal State and Trinity College graduate, also went on to play in the Armed Forces Radio Orchestra, worked as organist for both the LA Dodgers and California Angels (Mitchell was the first organist to play in Dodger Stadium), conducted choirs, and once again worked as a silent movie accompanist during the recent revival of the medium.

Memorial Service Information
MP3 of Bob Mitchell playing He's Got The Whole Wide World In His Hands
A remembrance by Jon Weisman in Dodger Thoughts

Here are the Mitchell Singing Boys with Bing Crosby in the 1944 film Going My Way:



(Via @blackwingjenny)

Tapestry at the Doras

Taylor Graham, librettist of Tapestry New Opera's Dora-nominated opera The Virgin Charlie, has written an interesting blog post about her experience learning the new opera creation process, the success of her first opera, and the night of the 2009 Dora Awards. An excerpt:

While Bill [Rowson] and I were talking about reasons we thought opera creates possibility I discovered that what the two of us needed was to create something large, something funny, something bigger than the both of us, and yet relateable, caring, sensitive as that is undoubtably key similarities in our personalities. From that discussion I began to create the world of Charlie, our main character and pitched the idea to Bill and with his approval to Tapestry. About a year later I was at the Enwave Centre standing up to bow as "The Virgin Charlie" came to a close.

The category of Oustanding New Opera/Musical (in which four operas produced by Tapestry had been nominated), was eventually won by Abigail Richardson and Marjorie Chan's Sanctuary Song.

(Via Inside The New Work Studio)

Image Credit: Xin Wang and Alvin Crawford from the 2008 Tapestry production of Sanctuary Song, as photographed by John Lauener.