New CVP200 Clavinovas Add Color to Winter NAMM 02

Festivals Stir Up Excitement - and Sales

Behind the Scenes at Newport

Yamaha Corporation Donates Clavinova Digital Piano to the Foundation for Blind Children

Composing at CSM

Harmony Sets the Tone at Oakland, CA Music School & Store

CVP107 Offers Comfort and Versatility

NYC Jazz Labs Strike the Right Chords

Back to School with Clavinova Labs

New Sesame Street Initiative Brings Music Making to Kids and Parents

Clavinova Tour Cancelled Following September Tragedy amaha planned a two-week nationwide Clavinova Tour last fall to familiarize dealers with the many new features and capabilities of the new CVP200 Series. However, the first day of the tour was September 11, and like so many other things on that day, the tour was cancelled. In fact, the suspension of air travel left product specialists in several cities around the country without flights out. Yamaha presenters in Portland, OR and Park Ridge, NJ had to make their way home by car. Yamaha Piano Division responded to the cancellation by sending all dealers a special CD and videotape that covered much of the material that was to have been included in the tour presentations. The CD was an “audio brochure” demonstrating all the voices and styles of the new Clavinovas, performed live by Yamaha artists and recorded straight from the instrument with no multi-tracking or editing. The video highlighted the operation of the new screen, the new Music Finder and Vocal CueTIME™ systems and more, with tips on how to demonstrate these features to customers. Both presentations were created in a short period of time, in response to the tour cancellation, by the same people who had been stranded away from home only days before. Since then, Yamaha Piano Division representatives have been making a concerted effort to get together with dealers around the country to offer them a detailed personal orientation. The response has been overwhelmingly positive from those people they’ve connected with, but they haven’t been able to see as many people as they would have on the planned tour. Fortunately, Winter NAMM 2002 represents a great opportunity to make up for the lost tour, with Yamaha’s products and experts out in full force. To any dealer attending NAMM who has not had a chance to learn first-hand about the CVP200 Series, Yamaha has extended a welcome to visit the Yamaha booth for a detailed, unhurried, one-on-one orientation on this exciting new product. In addition, Product Specialist and Marketing Consultant Craig Knudsen and Product Specialist Philip Keveren will offer daily CVP200 Series performances at NAMM. Visitors can check at the Yamaha booth to learn where and when to hear this duo, the same performers who gave the Disklavier Mark III and Disklavier Pro 2000 their respective introductions. “We’re doing this because we want to do it right,” Knudsen says. “Since the tour was cancelled, here’s a chance for dealers and salespeople to hear the new CVP200 Series in its full glory and appreciate its potential.” Yamaha will also be introducing the Clavinova’s new Follow Lights™ software and giving out free disks of “God Bless America” to dealers at the show. This special disk includes five arrangements of the patriotic standard-XG with Lyrics, Follow Lights™, SmartKey™, You Are the Artist™, and CueTIME™—for a great point-of-purchase demonstration of the Clavinova’s capabilities. For the people who were away from home giving the product demonstrations on September 11, especially the ones in New Jersey, only a few miles from the World Trade Center the day left indelible memories. In New Jersey, the presentation had just gotten underway at a local hotel when National Sales Manager Mark McNeary got word of the disaster and stepped in to shut down the proceedings. “Everything we were planning on doing just seemed inappropriate,” recalls Electronic Keyboard Product Manager Cameron Shearer. “We decided to let everybody go home and deal with this.” McNeary, Shearer and Product Specialist Tom Folenta spent more than four days driving back to Yamaha’s Buena Park, CA headquarters in a rented van with all their presentation gear. Product Specialist Dan Rodowicz and District Managers Jim Levesque and Bernie McCaffrey drove home as well. “It was really an emotional experience,” Shearer says. “As we were driving west through New Jersey and Pennsylvania, we’d see convoys of ambulances and fire trucks on their way eastbound. It was a pretty amazing sight to see.” In Oregon, Knudsen, product specialists Brent Mills and Dane Madsen and Assistant General Manager Jim Lynch found themselves with several dealers who had traveled great distances to attend, so they offered an abbreviated version of the day’s presentation before heading home. “We were all shocked and saddened,” Knudsen says. “Obviously it was minus the humor, just the facts.”

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