Dear Friends on Pianotech, Last night I watched a TV documentary about a famous pianist named Glenn Gould. It was on our local PBS station, and was titled "32 Short Films about Glenn Gould". The documentary portrayed Mr. Gould as being very eccentric and strange. Sone things I remember from the show include a Flouroscopic film of Mr. Gould playing the piano. It was fascinating seeing his bones just hanging there in space, with his fingers moving on the keys and his feet using the pedals. Another short film was a close up of a Steinway grand, especially focusing on the hammers striking the strings and the dampers rising and falling. It was beautiful and fascinating. In another short film that interviewed people who knew Mr. Gould, there was a quote from a piano technician (didn't catch his name) who had worked with Mr. Gould. He said that he frequently gets calls from people who want him to tune their pianos the next day, but he said that Mr. Gould was courteous and always scheduled his piano tunings about 2 or 3 months in advance! If you are interested, there will be additional showings of this documentary on PBS, but very late in the evening, so you may want to set your VCR to record it. The other times are in the middle of the night on the 21st, and in the middle of the night on the 24th. About Piano Catapults: there is an educational program about science (geared for children but interesting for adults) called Bill Nye, The Science Guy. On this program there was an upright piano catapulted into a lake. Say, do you suppose that the PTG could invest money in a piano catapult? We could charge admission to offset the cost of building such a device. It would have the benefit of entertaining piano technicians while also ridding the world of many old junk uprights! Just a thought. David A. Vanderhoofven dkvander@clandjop.com Joplin, Missouri, USA Associate Member, Piano Technicians Guild
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC