Back in California
Alameda, July 2
On Wednesday evening, a nice crowd gathered at John Callahan’s piano restoration shop in Alameda for a book reading and a couple of hours of piano playing. The occasion was the sendoff of a beautiful 1910 flame mahogany Steinway Model O owned by the Cornland family and refinished to perfection by John’s team. The piano was to be sent off to Sweden the following day. Booksellers from Mrs. Dalloway’s
in Berkeley came to sell books, John and Nancy put out some delicious food, served some lovely wine (including a beautiful Callahan cabernet) and everyone settled in for an evening of beautiful music and readings from the book.
As it turned out, it wasn’t merely a lovely evening. It was magical.
I was up first, with a brief talk about the book, during which I described what it was like to have John come over to my house to interview Verne on the speaker phone, in order to try to understand what, exactly, Verne had done to CD 318 to make it so responsive.
To my delight, I noticed that the group included several piano fetishists — the opimal kind of crowd for the book. People were buying copies of the book not just for themselves but for others as well: the pianists, teachers, tuners and Gould fans in their lives.
Then three frighteningly talented young pianists — Rachel Breen, Christine Xu and Chloe Ma, ages, 12, 13 and 7 –sat down to the Cornland piano and flew through a breathtaking array of Bach, Brahms, Chopin etc. You name it, these squirts could play it.
The most adorable part was watching seven-year-old Chloe, in her pink dress, almost stand up in order to reach the pedals.
Faust Harrison in New York
On Wednesday night I did a reading at Faust Harrison Pianos on West 58th Street in New York. Erica vanderLinde Feidner, a fine pianist who for years was Steinway’s top salesperson, was the primary force behind setting up this reading. She is friends with Michael and Marina Harrison, who very generously kept their store open past [...]
New York
Last night’s reading at the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble was mind boggling. There was a line snaking out the door — at least 250 people, maybe more. It was like a miniature rock concert, only more intense (once you get a bunch of book lovers in one small space, there’s no predicting what they’ll [...]
Ottawa, June 19
Gilles St-Laurent, the musician and conservator from the Library and Archives Canada (and a lovely Canadian in his own right) who helped so much with the book, came to the hotel this morning and together we set off for Quebec (just across the river, that is), to see the special Glenn Gould exhibit at the [...]
Ottawa, June 18
After arriving in Ottawa early this afternoon (Porter Air, the only way to fly), I met up with my friend Ian Austen, who is a gifted photographer disguised as a New York Times correspndent. It was Ian who took the beautiful photograph of the piano and the pygmy chair for the front of the dust [...]
Toronto
Canadians are the absolute best. In my next life, or perhaps later in this one, I would like to be a Canadian. I’ve said this on occasion to my Canadian friend Kevin Bazzana, and he usually promptly replies with, “We’d love to have you!”
This time, he responded with this: “I’m glad you are [...]
Glenn Gould and His Pianistic Obsession
This is a Web site and blog about Glenn Gould, the pianos Gould knew and loved, and the world of piano tuning. And it is about musicians and their relationship to their instruments.
The blog will focus on the publication of A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould’s Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano just published [...]