Continued from page 2 The Syracuse Symphony presented its Gershwin tribute October 8-10, 1998 and in preparation for those performances, Cooper spent considerable time studying Gershwin's original piano roll compositions. "It's faster, more fervent, more pressed and pushed," says the conductor. "It makes us think of what life and music was like for Gershwin. You have a sense of everything needing to be packed in." These concerts and the conductor's remarks are vivid examples of the Disklavier's importance in the technological advances being made in music reproduction. "The Disklavier is a perfect example of modern technology working to preserve our cultural heritage," says Gershwin scholar Artis Wodehouse. Throughout his illustrious, though unfortunately brief, career, Gershwin wrote songs for player pianos of his day. Recorded on piano rolls, the rolls were then fed into a reading device within the piano and operated by the player pumping pedals to move the paper and get the instrument to play. The Disklavier brings the concept into the 21st century. Wodehouse has restored Gershwin's piano rolls and transferred them to computer disks that are in turn interfaced with the Disklavier to produce the technological equivalent to Gershwin's beloved player piano. Using floppy disks as a recording medium, the Disklavier is a high quality acoustic piano which is able to play back an original performance, ensuring that tonal irregularities, noise, and distortion typically found in audio recordings of a piano, are completely avoided. Gershwin may have died prematurely, but through the Disklavier his performances live on. The man who has become an icon might have faded away, at least in the disposable pop culture world in which he existed. Even his great champion, pianist/comedian Oscar Levant, meant to bestow a great compliment when he said Gershwin's music would survive as long as the composer was around to play it. The Disklavier has proven that statement wrong and made it possible for audiences throughout the world to experience the presence of George Gershwin.

Grand Quotations   "The sonority he summoned from the Yamaha concert grand was rich and firm, not shattering as can happen in super-resonant Preston Bradley Hall." - Chicago Tribune 10/23/98 of Abby Simon recital as part of the Dame Myra Hess Series   "The Yamaha piano surged through all the moods..., giving us tumult, tenderness, passion, delicacy, mournfulness, and lyricism all inter- twined into something so grand one could have wept from the beauty of it." - Katherine Ellis The Daily Sentinel Grand Junction, CO

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