We just finished the Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival here in beautiful downtown Moscow, ID, so I've been out of the loop for the last week & a half. I had heard rave reviews about the festival before coming here, but I grew up in Idaho -- you know, potatoes & all -- what could be so great -- but it is a pretty incredible event by anybody's standards. Last week we had more than 18,000 students (yeah, count 'em all - almost as many as the whole population of Moscow w/UI students) competing; about 20 new pianos in here for concert, competition, clinic & workshop sites; and most every big name in jazz you can think of. Whole lot of work, but lots of fun. I'm not a real jazz fan, but this is a pretty eclectic festival with some pretty fantastic musicians & kids of all ages competing. If you ever get out this way in mid-Feb., it's a real treat. However, to the point. The festival's main stage piano was a pretty nice GS-100 that Kawai sent in. There were so many artists that 6-8 players might get to it in the course of an evening concert. The differences in players at the festival sure played hob with the sound system, to the point that it was almost impossible to compensate for the differences in style & attack. Miking (sp?) the thing is always a bit of a challenge, but necessary in light of the fact that it's held in the Kibbie Dome (football stadium) in front of 6-7,000 spectators. With mic. placement, we finally got a good mix in the house, but it made it tougher for the recording engineer. Even so, some players would produce a nice, round, full sound, & others would sound like a xylaphone no matter what the sound guys did. Back on the other side of the musical fence, our piano duo team here at UI recently did a Crumb piece with percussion. (I almost said perdition, giving away my prejudices toward new music. Actually the Crumb is a fairly innocuous piece, well done, and was interesting.) As I say, this piece is pretty mild as new music goes, but interestingly, Jay broke a couple of strings in the capo area while strumming lightly across the strings (fortunately in rehearsal only). My theory here, is that the strings were probably about ready to go anyway (this one's due for new strings in the capo area, & new hammers this summer), and the strumming across the strings set up an abnormal vibration pattern that was the proverbial straw on the camel's back. Of course, I have lots of other bogus theories too, but we won't get into that. Not deep, but I just found it rather interesting. Otto
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