[CAUT] Adams 1/4 tone sharp piano

[reggaepass at aol.com]

  <I wonder what piano they used at Lincoln Center when the work 
premiered. Being
  <paid a salary by the state, I can afford to experiment and do the 
extra work but
  <as a private gig I would charge a pretty hefty fee especially since 
the piano
 <will have to be brought back down to normal pitch afterwards.

  A highly respected member of our composition faculty (for whom I have 
done many a custom tuning here at CalArts) had a piece programmed at 
the L.A. County Museum of Art. They have two concert grands there and 
the regular house tuner serviced the better one for the pieces that had 
no special tuning requirements. Since they only "realized" that the 
house tuner didn't have a clue what to do about the alternate tuning 
(remember: "Lack of planning on your part does not justify and 
emergency on my part"), they contacted me...one day before the concert. 
Because of the short notice, I gave them the disclaimer that there were 
absolutely no guarantees that the tuning would hold. (Fortunately, it 
was not as radical a departure from ET @440 as your Adams project, 
Eric.)

  I used all four hours in the hall that our combined schedules allowed 
(at $90/hr plus $45 for travel time + $405). Of course, they also had 
to pay the house tuner to re-tune after the fact. The concert went 
swimmingly, and the composer, James Tenney, held forth on stage 
afterwards demonstrating the ins and outs of his tuning to his eager 
students and other intrigued audience members.

  When Tenney subsequently invited me to address his composition forum 
on tuning, I told this tale by way of illustrating that, while we 
support this kind of activity among faculty and students alike here on 
campus at CalArts (at the expense of normal maintenance, of course), 
the practicality of doing it out in the "real world" in another matter 
entirely. If you are not well-known and highly thought of, and promises 
have not already been made about presenting a piece that places extra 
demands on the venue's budget, your music simply won't get played.

 FWIW,

 Alan Eder, RPT