[CAUT] Re: Voicing and Hall Acoustics

[James Ellis]

Elwood Doss and Horace Greeley have made my day.  Thanks, guys.

Elwood wants me to tell all.  But Elwood, I think I'll stand my ground.  I
don't want to make someone angry.  I will say, however, that it was NOT in
Oak Ridge, TN.  I'll also say that same gal who refused to play that D some
20 years ago came back the next year and played the same piano in a
completely different setting, and she liked it.  She didn't know it was the
same piano, and that nothing had been done to it.

But I'd rather "shift gears" now, and mention something that's the extreme
opposite of the earlier story.  

Zhi Li form China is coming to Oak Ridge, TN next week for the third time,
and she is going to play the Rachmaninoff Second with the O.R. Symphony.
The Oak Ridge audience loves her, and I think her feeling for this audience
is mutual.  I like her pretty well myself.  She is very nice, and she
appreciates anything anyone does for her or the piano.  If she plays as
well as she did before, she will do well with the Rachmaninoff.  

The old D she will play is 80 years old, and it has had a rough life at the
Oak Ridge High School for the past 60 years, but it's still hanging in
there.  A friend of mine re-strung it more than 20 years ago, and I gave it
a new set of hammers, shanks, and flanges about 5 years ago, plus a new
music desk to replace the one that got smashed, a new lyre to replace the
old one that got broken off three times, fixed a leg that got broken off,
and a new Jansen artist bench to replace the old one that was wrecked.  The
school and the school band use it, and so does the Symphony, but the City
owns it, and there is no way it's going to get a complete rebuilding.
Anyway, I gave it its first going-over of the year today.  It will get at
least one more before the concert, and I'm looking forward to seeing that
gal again and hearing her play the Rachmaninoff.

Jim Ellis