elevision and film composer David Schwartz earned a “Best Instrumental Composition” GRAMMY® nomination for his memorable theme from the hit CBS series Northern Exposure. He scored each of the show’s 120 episodes, and reprised one recently for another purpose.

“I needed to show a director I could write in a New Orleans piano style, but didn’t have anything new to send,” Schwartz explains. “I found a floppy disk from an episode featuring piano, and used my Yamaha Disklavier® DC5 Pro to get the mix up and record it, saving a lot of time.”

David Schwartz

Yamaha Artist Services originally loaned him the Disklavier to compose music for Two Of Us (Viacom), a fictional post-Beatles reunion of Lennon and McCartney, and My Little Assassin (Lifetime), about Fidel Castro. “I was shocked how easy the Disklavier was to use,” laughs Schwartz, who’s since used it on scores for CBS’s Wolf Lake and The Ellen Show, Fox Television’s Murder In Small Town X, and the feature film You Stupid Man (ATG). “When it came time to return the piano back, I bought it.”

For Wolf Lake, he combined the Disklavier, a Yamaha S Rev-1 reverb unit (which samples performance spaces such as Manhattan Center and Amsterdam’s Concert Gebouw), and 10 string players performing live in his studio to produce “a convincing orchestra sound,” he explains. “The piano parts were played by Erica Weis on the Disklavier, which besides being a wonderful writing tool is also a great sounding piano.”

When time and schedules are tight, the Disklavier conserves both. “The Disklavier allows me to play parts, then edit, change keys, or just simply play tracks back,” explains Schwartz. “Compared to recording the piano, it’s much easier to write and record themes on the Disklavier because tracks are ready for engineering immediately.”

Yamaha at the
Vail Jazz Festival

rom late July through the early part of September, dozens of top jazz performers gathered in Colorado for the Seventh Annual Vail Jazz Festival, topped off by a Labor Day Jazz Party that drew music lovers from far and wide.

Pianist Bill Cunliffe performs with Terell Stafford

The four day Jazz Party offered 24 hours of music in seven distinct venues. For the second year in a row, a Yamaha C7 conservatory grand piano was provided by Hart Music in Grand Junction and a CFIIIS concert grand piano was provided by Colorado Springs Music Co.

(continued on page 18)