I’m not always me in my dreams but they say that if you’re someone else in your dreams, it just means that it’s a facet of you that you’re expressing.

So I’m me. I’m in this room, with a LOT of people.

And I don’t mix well. I really don’t, in real life. Just like Cannonball Adderley was fond of saying, “I hate crowds. Except if they’re all there to see me!”

These people are the real Hollywood types. The women are mostly wearing pearls. Real pearls. The kind of jewelry that I could never afford. Their hair has been done by beauty minions. Fiftyish women who look thirtyish owing to bleeding-edge high-tech facelifts and easy living and lots of time to focus on their appearance.

You won’t see these kind of women in middle America, and you certainly won’t see them in average, day-to-day life. They’re SoCal women, they live in places like La Jolla and Beverly Hills. They’re not celebrities themselves, but they aspire to be the friends of the stars and in that, the successful ones are stars in their own right.

The men are all in tuxedos, all black, with white shirts and little bow ties. The uniform of the loftier class. The secular garb of the rich and either famous or the “I know some one who is” famous.

They are all mainly there to be seen.

And there’s the smoking of tobacco and the drinking of alcohol. Two things that I haven’t done for so many years. I won’t play for audiences that are drinking or smoking or doing anything else except listening to me.

Why drag my heart out in public and give the best within me, my star-stuff, to the sound of a dinner knife cutting into seared animal flesh…an animal that was probably smarter than the one eating it?

But this is a dream. I’m okay with it, in the dream. I’m sitting there, alone, watching it all, not judging, wondering why I’m there.

It’s a posh night club with padded blue sofas and chairs, and it’s up on the second floor of one of those white adobe-and-stucco structures that have rounded turrets and spanish roofs, the kind that go for fifty million dollars in the ‘burbs of LaLaWood.

Billy Crystal, the comedian and actor, is the emcee. He’s slowly approaching the stage, touching hands and shoulders as he goes. And the club is owned by Alec Baldwin. Or one of them. I see him behind the big bar, making small talk, nodding dutifully, playing cool and enjoying every minute of it.

It’s not my scene, as Lenny Bruce would say.

Billy Crystal has the gin and tonic and the cigar. They’re props. He’s talking now. He does a little barely-funny routine about the Baldwin Clones and how they might still be replicating in an underground lair somewhere, but then he launches into the main subject of the night’s festivities.

“Okay. You’re all grown up. And you’ve heard everything. You’re blase. You’re world-wise, and world-weary. You’ve seen all the dog and pony shows. You’ve hobnobbed with the best and the brightest, and you are no longer even mildly impressed by anyone or anything. Everybody is selling something. And that something is bulls%$#, and it’s wrapped up in doilie, but it’s all s%$# anyway. The world is made of it. It’s just one big sea of s%$#. An unflushed Waterworld. Kevin Costner and all.”

(Giggles here. I wonder if Kevin Costner is here.)

“But tonight you’re gonna hear the real thing. What is the real thing? It’s something or somebody that wasn’t changed or totally f%$#ed up by all this s%$#. And I don’t mean they were unhurt by it. Oh God were they hurt, I couldn’t begin to tell ya’ how bad. Mauled by it. The lions and tigers and baboons and wild boars…and a lot of you are here tonight,” (again a smattering of laughter) “they really had a field day with this particular prey. But she looks okay for a carcass. She’s been bitten and chewed on and dragged through the jungle. And she’s a survivor.”

He puffs on his cigar. Three times. He’s uttered a sacred word, a word of magic and power and big medicine. “Survivor.” The audience applauds a tiny bit, not knowing why or who for.

“Like us, she’s a survivor. Only difference is, she wasn’t changed. She was mauled almost to death. When you or I or Alec,” and here he winks towards the direction of the bar, unseeing, “when we went through our ritual mauling, we grew hair and teeth and horns – and a few other protuberances – and we fought back, we got tough, we stuck it out. We stayed in this goofed-up town and hammered each other to death, and we got what we wanted. At least I did. The rest of you are on your own.”

He paused significantly, while a few people stirred and chuckled under their breath.

“This lady…when the ritual drawing and quartering got too bad, she went away and did what she does somewhere else, over and over. She was hurt too bad by the smell of blood to build that shell around herself that we all know so well, so she stayed on the move. A lot of us would call that running scared. But she kept doing what she does. She did it in so many places at so many different times that people started to talk about her. They never knew where she was. Where she lived. Where she was going, where she was doing what she does. A new way to get famous, I guess.”

Now I’m interested. Is this me? Could he be talking about me? It really sounds like me. And of course itis me, because now he says this:

“She plays the piano. But that doesn’t cut it. That doesn’t describe it. She plays like an angel, like a saint, like Mother Theresa would’ve played if she played piano. There’s a million piano players, but only one like her. And she always says that. I read her blog, and she says that every true musician has a unique voice, and that voice has the power to heal and change the world, but that the voice gets stifled and buried and grows hoarse and choked because the world treats it like s%$#. The world hates that voice. And since we’re all pretty much alike, there aren’t many voices left, just little squeakings and mewlings from under all those doilies that wrap up all the s%$# that we get to see and hear and consume, every day of our lives.”

I’m still stuck back at the Mother Theresa reference.

“She’s bloodied, half-dead, and tired as hell. She played jazz most of her life, when the musicians and promoters and agents let her, because we all know that jazz is that background noise that we folks use as a hip backdrop for our partying and screwing. It’s playing when we’re drinking or doing blow, it’s playing when we’re being seated in a class joint, it’s playing when we’re making it with our wives or husbands, or somebody else’s wife or husband.”

There’s no laughter now. It occurs to me that everybody is making it with everybody else’s wife or husband.

“And we all know that jazz is a man’s music, and the only chicks that get to swing are the groupies and the singers. And she played jazz, because classical music was so strict and formal. She didn’t want to have that stick rammed up her a%$ her whole life. She’s a reformed alkie, and she almost killed herself with cigarettes and booze. But she loved playing enough to keep playing. She just never got good at the game. She never got tough enough. She never played nice with the music business. Travolta, you here? You made Be Cool…you were right, man. And it’s the same with being a comedian. It’s a craft, a tradition. We love it. We live for it. But our best and brightest, Jonathan Winters and Robin WIlliams, they go and have breakdowns. They weren’t good at the game, either.”

I’m now wondering if he isn’t overdoing the part about how messed up I am. I look good tonight. I feel okay, too. Bloodied, half-dead, and tired as hell? On reflection, I suppose he’s got a point. But I hope he’s done with that line of thought.

He is.

“She’s going to play for you now. She doesn’t call her music jazz anymore. On her blog, she always capitalizes the “m” in the word Music. She’s been a composer too for fifty years, and she writes these melodies that’ll make you cry. The critics say she sounds like Monk or Bill Evans or McCoy Tyner. How the hell can you do that? She says she admires John Coltrane and Glenn Gould. Yeah, that’s weird. What a duo that would be.”

I’m thinking “fifty years…am I that old?”

“Her name is Jessica Williams and you better shut up and listen because she won’t be here for long.”

And it’s my turn.

I’m wondering if he knows something I don’t, about me not being here for that much longer. But I’ve had the same thought. I never felt that I’d live too long. My Mother died at 70 and my Daddy at 72. That means I might have a few years left. I never thought I’d live as long as I have.

So I’m at the piano, and I say nothing, because really, what can I say after that kind of intro? It was a good intro, like the trailer for a movie. He didn’t say one thing about the quotes of the men who had helped my career merely by giving me a laudatory sentence or two to put in my bio.

That quote by Dave Brubeck? About me being one of the greatest jazz pianists he’d ever heard? Or the one from McCoy, calling me a beautiful player? He didn’t say anything about that. Those quotes had gotten me more work than all of my practicing, all of my sleepless nights, all of my trying, trying, trying. Nothing about my Guggenheim either, or about my appearances at the big festivals and halls all over the world.

He made it sound like I was a total nobody, but that I had done something really special, just by holding on to this piece of myself that most people had let go of or wrapped in a doilie. Just by being weak, with no defense except for the flee response.

I kind of like that, thinking about it now, awake.

So I played. I went through that dramatic moment of anxiety that I always get before I touch the keys, and then I hit a “D” which is the first note I ever hit as a child of four. I know it was a D because it made “orange” in the air, and that’s the color that most people with Asperger’s or Kinesthesia see when they hear a “D”.

And “D”, particularly D minor, is the “key of our times”, the key that best describes the first decade of the 21st Century. It started for me before Sept 11, 2001, and it hasn’t changed key yet.

So I played my composition “The Child Within” in D minor which, in retrospect, was named with childish, guileless naiveté. I’m usually embarrassed by the name because it’s so unhip, so new age. But then, in the dream, I remember:

They don’t know the name of it. I’m safe. And besides, they’re not jazz buffs, jazz hounds, jazz poodles, jazz pit bulls. I can do anything I please.

And, as I play, the Music gets very dense and deep, very contrapuntal…and I’m improvising like Bach, in that two or three-part style of his, and then the Music turns GOLD, a color I don’t see often when playing, as it’s the color I reach when I begin to reach what the Buddhists call the Bardo State, the Ground of Being. It’s the state of sacred oneness with all things. It exists, but most westerners don’t believe in it.

I wake up crying.

And that’s the dream.

Every few years I start looking again. I am never satisfied with the instruments I wind up with. I’m lucky in that they seem to come to me, brand new, at little or no cost. This is not because I have any arrangement with a piano maker. Indeed, most manufacturers eschew having pianists represent their brands, as far as I know. I don’t think that any but the most famous artists are supplied with pianos, and I’m not so sure that Steinway does that at all anymore, after the indignities heaped upon them (and rightly so) by Gould.

It’s always made me a bit crazy, knowing that Monk, and Bud Powell, and so many other great musicians went for years without instruments in their house. Many of these masters also went without houses. I was years without an instrument, myself, as were many of my associates. But quite a few years ago, my life took a turn. Rather, I turned it, by getting out of clubs, by becoming clean and free of alcohol and tobacco, by rediscovering my passion for GREAT music as opposed to pedestrian jazz music, and by nurturing my natural, innate ability to make audiences weep with joy as opposed to providing them with nearly free and usually recognizable (if unusually inventive) “jazz party music” – to the strains of which they might get loaded and lucky.

So it’s no surprise to me or anyone else that discovering how a piano’s action affects my creative process is quite a new interest for me. Suddenly, in my sixth decade, I’m concerned with fall-boards, and key velocity, and touch, and “the ledge”. Where I would play any instrument without complaint in my youth, now I’m very hard to please when it comes to pianos.

I’ve written down a few things that I like:

I like a swift, soft, sure action, even from bottom to top. I don’t like pianos that feel like Ford trucks. “Like a rock”. Or is that Chevy? Whatever it is, it should never apply to pianos. I shouldn’t have to be an athlete to play a swift passage. I shouldn’t have to exert much physical energy to accomplish ANY task at a piano, other than to clean it or move it. It needs to be without discernable resistance. I know this goes against all the theories that one can get more dynamics if one has a wider range of “striking power”…

A piano, like a little dog, should never be struck. It should be caressed and teased and held and played with and trained, and, like a little dog, it should be full of life and able to get around just fine on its own power.

I also hate pianos that growl and scream. Steinway is known for its “growling bass”.

Growling should be reserved for circus animals and professional wrestlers. I don’t want a piano that growls at me or anyone else. Screaming is equally upsetting. The glassy tinkle of the high treble of some Steinways makes my brain hurt. Yamahas used to be guilty of that but the company is learning. The high end should be bell-like, even thin. Thin like clear, clean air at an elevation, not thin like aluminum foil.

At many concerts, I play with the lid fully closed. Lots of attendees and – more specifically – most promoters are horrified at this “break” from tradition. To have spent all of that money for something so big, and then, to have little me just amble in, and close the lid, as if the concert were over and I not yet having played a note. It’s the metaphorical equivalent of having cold water dashed in their face.

Which brings me to a major gripe about pianos. All of them.

They should all be played, at all times, even during “thunderous” passages, with the soft pedal down, depressed, nailed to the floor.

The single most annoying thing about pianos is the inability for all of those strings to stay in tune all of the time, much less through a performance. Two strings per note, from lower treble to the absolute top of the register, is enough.

By depressing the soft pedal, the keyboard of a grand piano will - should – shift, and the hammer should hit only TWO strings. It sounds more sonorous, more pure. It has a clarity and a singing quality and a purity that three strings drown out. Three strings rarely can be tuned to produce such beauty, such lovely clear singing.

Three strings per note on the middle and upper register of any piano is a superfluous and nefarious roadblock, serving only to detract from the beautiful sounds that might emerge, were the instrument allowed to bypass all of the conflicting transient overtones created by three strings per note. One too many.

I am waiting for someone to make a piano with one string throughout the bass for each note, and two for each other note on the lower-mid, mid, and upper end. That will be a piano. With an action as fast as light, and less strings, the piano would become a truer, more playable, and more tunable instrument. More adjustable to the player.

Why should the player have to adjust to the piano, especially when you consider the cost of a decent one (which I have not found yet.)

There was historical precedence for the madness of stuffing so many strings into such a small space. One imagines that some idiot tried four, and yes, probably five strings at once. Thinking on this for a moment, I’m sure of that, having lived long enough to understand the excesses that over-zealous, power-mad, self-appointed experts are capable of and given to.

The historical precedence was a) the use of the triceps and biceps, along with the quadriceps and other angular anatomical anomalies, usually ending in “ceps”, that some men seem so fond of, to create great storms of sound, literal crashing cascades of notes played at the highest volume possible: think of the word thunderous – think of the concept of sturm und drang – think of the pouring forth of the passion of a tormented soul – all very noisy affairs… and b) the decision to put one orchestra (the piano) in front of another orchestra (the orchestra) and call it piano and orchestra.

“Also Sprach Zarathustra”, and thus spoke history. It had nothing to do with music as we would have known it, had cooler heads (such as Bach’s, or mine) prevailed.

The power of the symphony is a beautiful thing when it is used in its own setting, namely, as a solo entity. Nothing can touch the violin for sounding out above an out-of-control symphony orchestra’s most mortally offensive din.

Take Rimski-Korsakoff’s Sheherazade. Give me Yasha Heifitz playing it with the New York Philharmonic, conducted, at a snail’s pace – which is its correct pace – by Lenny Bernstein. Put a nine-foot Steinway-D out in front and you’ve just put training-wheels on a freight train.

And I feel that way about jazz, too.

If only Bill Evans had been left to his own devices, sans the “interplay of his great trio” that, at times, became a hash of egotistical BS approaching the calamity of ten accordions improvising at once, in different keys!

When he played solo, it was about touch and song and drama and pain and joy. It was about romance and sorrow and longing. It was music from his heart. Introspective, quiet, simple, tragic, mellifluous, delicately lovely beyond any words.

When he played with that one cursed trio (you know, the one that the critics revere most highly; theone with the tragedy and the dying early and the miserable breakup) it was enough to wake Davy Jones and send him paddling frantically up to the surface to see what the hell was making that awful rattling.

And then Bill himself said it. He actually said “I never liked that band.”

Aha! I knew it! I can’t reveal my sources, because I would be drawn, quartered, and then eighthed or possibly sixteenthed. Oh, foo on that. He said it to me. And I think we were alone, so I can’t prove it. I just hope he said it to other people too. I’m sure it was something that he must have shared withsomeone besides myself. And I knew it! I wouldn’t have liked it either. I knew they fought like the Honeymooners, and I knew it was more than just personality problems.

So there you have it. Pianists trying to play as loudly as bassists with amplifiers that go up to eleven (just like in Spinal Tap) and drummers who, like practiced skeet-shooters, are adept at blowing every single important note that a pianist may play clean out of the air. Pull! Pull!

Pianists

I said once, years ago, on the notes to an album of mine, that “I was a musician first, and as much of a pianist as I needed to be to express myself adequately.”

Gould said it better (no surprise there): “I have no great love for the piano. But since it is the instrument with which I am most familiar, it is the one I choose to play to express my music.”

I couldn’t agree more. With the near-infinite shortcomings of the piano (the mere size and weight is daunting enough) who wouldn’t long for the wonder, the sheer joy, of playing the same instrument that you learned on as a child? Particularly if it was a good instrument?

I learned on a Kimball upright. My daddy bought it for me in 1954 or ’55. I was six or seven. I had been playing piano at my grandma’s house since I was an early four (or a late three) and was addicted already. Abducted is a more fitting term. Every day I begged him for a piano. He got drunk one night and came home proudly brandishing an accordion. Of course, I wanted him to die, slowly and painfully (which he did, in due course, but not right then.) He broke down eventually, being the sentimental, music-loving, weekend-alcoholic, essentially good-natured man that I convinced myself he was (by the time I was thirty) and bought me the Kimball. A thousand dollars! In 1954!!! It WAS a fine instrument. At least it seemed so to me!

It was mahogany. It was a bit less than five feet high. It had three pedals. Yes, it had a soft pedal, but that soft pedal moved the hammers closer to the strings. On a grand, the soft pedal would mute the cursed third string. But I was too young and stupid to know about third strings or my looming distaste for them. The middle pedal sustained bass notes only. A weird affair. But I found that, by using it instead of the sustain for fast passages, it created a reverb-like effect. It was like playing in a hall.

And I disassembled that piano, as I have done to all pianos since. I took the top and front off to gain access to the strings. I took the lower front off (that part UNDER the keys, on an upright) and laid it on the floor under my left foot. I needed a drummer, and that left foot became the hi-hat foot. Even in 5/4 time, that left foot was going on 2 and 4 and 6 and 8 and 10. All by itself.

That little Kimball held up until I left home, at the age of – was it sixteen? Yes, I suppose it was. I played it to death, and I always pretended that I was playing to a full house. Off to my right, where the living room was, there were at least a thousand people, listening to every note. And, by the time I was twelve, I was burning up the road.

I would put on recordings of the Miles Davis Quintet, and play along with Philly Joe Jones and Paul Chambers. (I might’ve died right then and there had someone told me that, in less than 20 years, I’d actually be playing on a real stage in front of real people with Philly Joe Jones (!) and his band, of which I had become a member!)

But back then, there I was, alone, in my house, playing the piano, at the age of eleven or twelve.

Of course, no one was there to hear me. But my dreams all came true, and, years later, I played for the Crowned Heads of England and the Bald Heads of Charles Street ( a very, very old joke, at least where I’m from) … but the England part came true, too. The last time I was there, at Brecon, I was invited into the country by the Home Office. I think the Queen may have some pull there. It was an honor to be expected and greeted at Heathrow as “Ms Williams, the prominent pianist from America.”

(Now we simply need to impress that upon the Americans.)

My European audiences have been large, devoted, and enthusiastic. I never wanted to be famous, and am not capable of being delusional enough to believe myself so. Musicians, particularly serious musicians, are rarely famous in the traditional sense. Princess Di was famous. Any American President is famous. Elvis Presley and the Beatles were famous. There are also serial killers that are made famous by the press. But you have to be crazy to want to be famous!

And rich does not necessarily go with famous. Matter-of-fact, most times, the two words are not attached even remotely. In reality, the world’s most creative people are very often NOT terribly well-to-do, and sometimes, they’re even living in poverty. Lots of Americans seem utterly amazed to hear about this.

If you hear a person’s music on the radio, don’t assume that they live in a mansion and have a butler and a maid and sixteen bathrooms. I have to muddle along with one (bathroom, that is) and (gasp) no servants at all! The up-side to all of this is that it’s tremendously fulfilling to do what you love. And you can only use one bathroom at a time.

Anyway, if you run into a jazz musician who tells you that they’re famous, look at them askew. Do you really think that anyone down at your local Safeway or WalMart will know who they are? Do they? If they do, run.

We do not become musicians to make money or to be famous. We become musicians to make MUSIC. Perhaps this is why so MANY musicians make so LITTLE music.

The pianists that move me in deep ways are usually the ones who don’t TRY to be pianists. Trying to be a great pianist is ridiculous. Trying to be ANYTHING is ridiculous. We are or we aren’t. I am a musician. It is the thing my body does in its sleep, at rest. I play in my dreams, or I am always trying to get to the performance on time. This may not be a good thing as viewed by a specialist in dream symbolism, but to me it usually indicates that I’m not working nearly enough. Which I never am, because I refuse to grovel, and I refuse to compromise, and, the older I get, the less time I have for games. I’ve devoted my life to exploring solo playing. If a promoter calls me and TELLS me I must play with a band, I am usually not amenable to that sort of thing (and that’s putting it mildly). I’ll play with others when I want to, not when I’m told to. That’s in my music, that kind of obstinacy that refuses compromise.

That’s why I am seduced by Monk. That’s why I positively adore Gould. That’s why I don’t care much for many of the younger “cult” pianists who are more concerned with speed and appearance than with substance and moral courage. That’s why I find the music of Keith Jarrett so hard to write about. Music SHOULD BE hard to write about, by the way. Jarrett is at times the greatest pianist in the world, and at others he may be among the worst. THAT, I find enthralling and captivating. USEFUL. I find nothing useful in billions of notes spun out by millions of tiny flying fingers, in thousands of universities and institutions and halls of academia, not to mention concert halls, all over the planet, on any given average day.

The state of art and music – both being roughly the same thing – is deplorable, and has never been what one would deem acceptable by any but the most base standards. Mediocrity is everywhere, and it is the rule.

To be mediocre, one needs do nothing except to do what everyone else is doing. I think that’s just fine, and it’s why you won’t find me around anywhere, not in a jazz bar, drinking and smoking and taking drugs and acting hip, trying to look 39 when I know I’m 60. I won’t dye my hair. I won’t wear silly, constricting garments that are impediments to movement. I won’t try to look happy when I’m sad, and I won’t try to act healthy when I’m ill. I will not try to act interested when I’m bored, and I won’t say I like something when I actually abhor it.

Consequently, I am attracted to those artists, those very few artists, whose art offends. I am attracted to musicians who are controversial and not well-liked or universally loved. They must be magnificent. More than competent, and more than great. They must be profound. They must cross and effectively traverse, and even erase the line between life and death. That is the line between art and life. I won’t settle for good or even great. It must be pure TRUTH I am hearing. For me, the musicians who have most often accomplished this are Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Keith Jarrett, and Glenn Gould.

I have been near death for so many years, and I have lived so close to it and crossed the line so often in my dreams AND in my waking state that it is now impossible for me to bend to the pressure of other human beings to be a certain way, to look or act or play or think or believe or behave a certain way. I can not be friends with just anyone, and I can not play with just anyone. And I can NOT just listen to anyone.

I am now re-crafting my music so that I may listen to it again. It is hard to call myself a pianist, because there is so much I can NOT do and so much I DO NOT know. I DO know that I am a musician, and I am that always.

I am now working at becoming a pianist, preferably one that I’ll enjoy listening to.

Being so sick for so long is not something I easily put behind me. It’s left marks all over my consciousness, and changed me drastically. I won’t be doing things that I did, and I will be doing things that I never did. It gave me perspective, and I have good days and bad days and some days that are just “blah” days, but I never have days that are cluttered with indecision about my art. Not any more. There’s only one direction for me to take now, and it is like those lines that Trudell writes about. “Straight ahead and strive for tone.” as Ray Drummond always says.

[postscript: for all of their faults, six cds of mine that I made while I was ill all seem to stand up very well to my repeated listening of them. Songs for a New Century, Prophets, Deep Monk, and Tatum's Ultimatum are some favorites. I particularly have a soft spot for Songs for a New Century, as it is almost a see-through entity, as transparent as glass, as delicate as an exotic jellyfish. Every note is not right, but every note is revealing. It's probably the most revealing album I've ever made, almost embarrassingly so, and so I must love it the most. The other two have similar properties. Blood Music, being mostly electronic and very modern, is one of my favorites, but I'm wild about technology and know that it won't have appeal to a "purist" of any camp. It also seems to be an anti-war statement somehow, but it became that without any conscious help from me. Finally, Vital Signs, my way of challenging myself to a duel, was and is a success, except that we shall never know who won.]

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I’ve had my new piano for about two weeks now, and it has been a very illuminating experience.

First, let me say that it is MY piano, the one I love. I will never sell this one. This one is with me ’til death do us part. It fits me like no other piano has. This is a combination of great craftsmanship, superb advice, sound judgment on my part (as far as knowing what I wanted), and sheer dumb luck. Make no mistake. There are very few great pianos out there in the world. Most of them are in various levels of disrepair, and many of them are beyond help. The majority of pianos are absolute junk. That junk can cost an unsuspecting buyer upwards of $200,000.

America makes bombs now, not pianos. And very few people are pianists. There are many people who claim to play the piano but most are notpianists. The Chinese make pianos. Not very good ones at the moment, but one can be certain that this will change. The Chinese piano-makers are improving constantly. In America, the land where almost every household had a piano, the land in which almost every woman played at least a few tunes on the piano, the land in which the Steinwegs brought piano-making to an art in the early 1900′s, pianos are now just so much kindling. The repetition/action of the new Steinways is deplorable. In 1953 they used teflon to supremely ill effect. Now they may as well be using rubber. It feels like that. Rubber action. Almost every piano I have played, with the exception of an occasional Bosendorfer or Fazioli, is virtually unplayable by a discerning pianist. The one, the only exception is the Yamaha. Even their 6-foot grands sound and play well.

Needless to say, my Yamaha seven-foot, six-inch Conservatory Grand from 1984 with Blue Renners is a dream come true.

Strange thing about this instrument… there is not one single mark on the fall board.

The fall board is always subject to little hits and dents from the fingernails as one plays. Fall boards are never clean except if they have been replaced, or if the piano has not been played. Judging from the pristine keyboard, the absolute absence of any mark anywhere on either black or white key, indicates that this piano was hardly ever played. If ever.

There are no wear-marks on the pedals! None at all. I have looked in vain for any sign of usage and wear, and can find none.

Was this the piano that was owned by the “little old man in Oswego” who only played Moonlight Serenade on it once a month? And even then, very very very sloooowwwly? 

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An instrument can be an assemblage of parts, or it can be alive, a living and breathing animal. That’s what I have in my studio. This piano has bouquet. It is filled with possibilities, and not unfulfilled ones, either.

It can sound like a soft symphony. I can make it sound like a guitar. I can make the bass soft and round or hard and square. It can roar like a lion. And there are miles between it’s whisper and its roar. It is that infinitely delicate touch. There is so little escapement friction that it will occasionally repeat a note on a bounce-back. No, it is not supposed to do that, but I wouldn’t change it for anything. It’s idiosyncratic, like mayonnaise with your fried chicken. Don’t make me eat fried chicken without a little mayo on the side!

There is an aura about this instrument. And a mystery. Where has it been? How did it get to be this way? Who worked on it and adjusted it to be so sensitive and sonorous?

Only a very astute craftsperson could have done this. This piano is also in tune, and yet I have not yet had it tuned, because it needs to settle for several months. And it’s in tune. It came 150 miles to me, by truck, and was bumped and wheeled around and turned sidewise and this way and that way and it’s in tune. And it sings, perfectly. You tell me. I’ve never experienced anything like this.

There is a problem I see arising. There will come a time when someone else will want to sit at my piano, touch my piano, and perhaps play my piano. What will I do then? Risk losing a friend? Of course not. I just won’t let anyone play my piano. That way I will NOT lose a friend.

I can’t imagine someone else touching this. I know it so well. I knew it after it was here for a day. Like an old friend I hadn’t seen for ages.

I’ve had other pianos. I’ve had movers drop them. I’ve even had one person break an entire pedal assembly with a size 13, 300-pound foot. This will not happen to my piano. I have a mover. He better stay alive for a long time. His name is Helge  and he is a master. One must be a master mover trained in the art of piano moving to move such temperamental, delicate beauties.

And never will a piano tuner touch this piano. Only a piano expert - a superb technician - will tune and adjust this piano.

I have fallen in love with a piano!