lectric waves wound their way through New York City crowds who had gathered this summer to witness the vast sonic possibilities of virtual sound at Lincoln Center's Electronic Evolution series.

At the series' height was the Electronic Ensembles concert, performed at the New York Society for Ethical Culture. The ensembles featured an evening of works from the classic to the new, each with an electronic element, culminating in a 17-musician panoply of electronic wizardry, performing Terry Riley's "In C." The performance marked the first all-electronic version of this minimalist composition.

The concert began and ended with iterations of C on a Yamaha Disklavier® MPC3 piano, played by John Musto. In between were timbres from electric guitar, electric harp, and more esoteric instruments such as the E-Tablas, theremin, marimba lumina, ondes martenot, and a Chapman stick.

"We wanted a piano that was of high quality, and we were interested in maintaining the electronic element of the piece," says series Producer Erica Zielinski of the Disklavier. "'In C' can be done with any combination of instruments, but we wanted it all done electronically, and we felt we needed to have the basis on the piano. The Disklavier ended up being like the pulse of the piece."

"In C", written by Riley in 1964, is known as one of the seminal works of minimalist music. In it, the piano strikes a uniform tempo - middle C - while an ensemble plays 53 short melodic phrases. Musicians move at their own pace, playing each phrase as many times as they wish, until everyone had reached the 53rd phrase.

Part of its Festival 2000 series, Evolution explored the origins of electronic music with works from the 1920s through the present day.

Music Makes the Difference for Autistic Child

rittany Maier was locked inside a world all her own. Blind from birth and later diagnosed with autism, a brain disorder that limits her ability to communicate and understand her surroundings, Brittany was often a mystery to those around her. But music would become her bridge to the outside world.

What began with Brittany playing nursery rhymes with one finger on a tiny keyboard blossomed quickly into incredible feats of listening and memory — at 11 years old Brittany can now perform an entire score after hearing the music played just once. The little girl's courage and musical gifts have inspired many in her town of Columbia, S.C., including Dan Hanfland and Larry Wiese, co-owners of Carolina Piano Galleries. Together with Brittany's speech therapist Helen Bykalo they launched a fund-raising effort to buy the little girl a brand new Yamaha Disklavier® DGH1BA piano.

"At five she started playing 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star'," says Brittany's mother, Tammy Maier. "A month later Brittany was playing classical music."

Within three months, Brittany was playing anything that she had ever heard, including all of Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables.

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