Happy Fingers: An Oscar Winner
After playing piano for a century, Holocaust survivor Alice Herz-Sommer looks back on her life in the Oscar-winning short documentary The Lady in Number 6. »
After playing piano for a century, Holocaust survivor Alice Herz-Sommer looks back on her life in the Oscar-winning short documentary The Lady in Number 6. »
After playing on 88 different Sing for Hope pianos around New York City for his video, veteran pianist Gregg Kallor offers his piano performance tips here. »
Frazzled after forgetting her sheet music for a planned session at a Sing for Hope Piano in Central Park, Nancy M. Williams switches tacks and finds calm. »
A news story about a missing grand piano brings to mind August Wilson's 1990 play The Piano Lesson, about a family's complex relationship with their piano. »
Sing for Hope Pianos, all over New York in June 2013, gave songwriter Steven Turner the chance to perform his original compositions outside in Central Park. »
When Julliard students performed to raise funds for a young Georgian actor with leukemia, the Beethoven sonata seemed to echo his vulnerability and pain. »
Emily Sun, mother and pianist, needs stem cell donation from an Asian donor to survive; the author, playing Schubert's appoggiaturas, realizes how to help. »
A personal essay by Nancy M. Williams about how the memory of her father teaching her the words to "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" helped her find mercy. »
Preparing for a performance at her brother's wedding propelled amateur pianist Joanna Eng from feeling depressed about the piano to finding purpose. »
I picked up the sheet music from the floor and said, “Whoops! Sorry about that,” and the audience was hysterical: Shirley Gruenhut's adventures performing. »
Committed to an act of justice each day during Lent, an amateur pianist begins to understand what it all means while practicing the thirds in Clair de Lune. »
In the summer of 2011, I learned Debussy’s First Arabesque. The ending—arpeggios waxing and waning, placid whole notes edging towards a healing E-flat—transported me. I did not know that at the same t... »