In the early 1980s, my father got a Baldwin upright electric piano. My dad had played piano as a child and in college. He’d performed live, improvising soundtracks to silent movies at an art-house ...
In this article, we're putting that theory to the test. We’ve enlisted a relative piano novice who will embark on a thrilling eight-week journey that includes both one-on-one in-person lessons and the ...
The first time I sat down to try to play a piano, I was five months past my 40th birthday. It was a five-octave Yamaha beginner keyboard with a Bossa Nova setting and basically no dynamics, and I had ...
At 18, Jean-Philippe Rio-Py escaped a brutal cult that wrecked his childhood. He suffered hardship in his 20s and early 30s, but was determined to develop his musical talent. It led to huge success, ...
The inside of a piano is a remarkable thing. A feat of engineering, the string frame holds 30 tonnes of tension, created by around 230 strings making up 88 pitches. These strings are normally hidden ...
This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here. At eight o’clock one ...