I’m borrowing the name of a great tune by the icelandic band Mum for this post, not because its about them but because it is about the piano…. On Sunday I’m going to a film at the NZ Film festival called “Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037″ and it looks incredibly intriguing – my mind buzzes thinking about what a talented film maker & cinematographer could do with this subject matter!
Borrowing the blurb from the Festival Catalogue: “There is no more engrossing subject than man at work. The proof… is in [this] chronicle of the production of a single Steinway concert grand – a nine-foot beast that requires a plank the length of an anaconda, a year of assembly, and a small army of blue-collar technicians whose skills are as minutely focused and compartmentalized as a safecracker‘s… Testimonials from a variety of pianists… describe and demonstrate the variances of sound inimical to each Steinway, among the last of the hand-crafted pianos. But they‘re distractions from the drama in Steinway‘s Queens factory, where a single slip of a ‘pizza wheel‘ wire stretcher or an imbalance of a few thousandths of an inch could ruin a $25,000 instrument. Director Ben Niles and cinematographer Ben Wolf scrutinize each step… offering moments of fixated strangeness and wonder… As a study of stubborn artisanal tradition in the ProTools age, Note by Note is a stirring symphony of specialized labor.” — Jim Ridley, Village Voice
Check out the movie website and/or watch the trailer:
Ok and just to continue the confusion, heres a live video of Mum playing aforementioned track at the Liquid Room in Shinjuku:
ah the restraint, beautiful!
Bugger, I missed that. Looks like it would’ve been good.
It was! really good… if you have an interest in the piano then i would keep an eye on their website & get the dvd when its released…
my favourite bit was when the piano went into the ‘pounding room’
& was hooked up to a machine that basically pounded the keys
so as to stretch the strings & get all the mechanisms worn in….
after the movie I came home, booted up Native Instruments Akoustik Piano
loaded up the Steinway D concert grand, shut my eyes & noodled around for hours….
Hello Tim
I’ve just received the DVD from USA. I’ve watched it, and i just want to say one word; Ouhao.
I love the people who came from a lots of different contry to make one of the best piano, it’s also very interessting to listen pianists.
I’m now more and more fancy of Hélène Grimaud, who also played Arvo Pärt at the Tate Museum in 2007 (one of my favorite museum and favorite classic composer).
Thanks again, for your link.