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In 1947, Lester PIano Company decided to pilot a new piano action with the elbows made of plastic. Many of the public schools in Philadelphia have Lester pianos. Lester also marketed a piano specifically for use in schools during music classes and performances.
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This was a popular model because of the size and sound, and it was available in a 37 and 40 inch and a variety of styles. Perhaps the most common the Lester pianos still found today is the Betsy Ross Spinet. Lester marketed their pianos for being better quality than many contemporary brands, while still remaining an affordable option for the everyday American. īased in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, Lester Piano Company was an all-American piano brand in the early 1900s around the time many were beginning to purchase pianos for in-home playing. Some of their later piano names, before going out of business in 1960, were Lester, Betsy Ross, Bellaire, Betsy Ross Spinet, Cable & Sons, Channing, Gramer, Lawrence, Regent, Schilling, and Schubert. Established in 1888, Lester Piano Company manufactured pianos under several different names including Lester, Leonard & Co., Alden, Gounod prior to the 1920s. They just are.A lesser-known piano brand in today’s market, Lester pianos were most popular in the early 1900s. Billy’s creations don’t need to escalate to some pinnacle of expression. While certainly many master improvisers are capable of extraordinary feats of improvisation-building castles of sound from the barest of inputs-Billy apparently won’t even bend his concept to adhere to basic narrative conceits. The beauty of his music (and I find a veritable wellspring of beauty in his playing) comes not from the pursuit of beauty but from the inherent artistry of a moment in time expressed completely. He’s interested in playing exactly what he feels in the moment and nothing else. There’s a radical integrity to Billy’s music. Gradually over the decades his studio filled with notebooks of ideas. He’d then stop, write down the phrase he was hearing in his mind and then play it in all twelve keys. As the first note leads to another, he’d occasionally find himself “hearing” something in his head that his hands couldn’t articulate. Billy says that that moment, in his early thirties, is the moment he became an artist.Įvery day, over the next 40 years, Billy would go through this process of finding “his” interior sound - sometimes sitting in silence and waiting for long periods of time before playing that first note. This experience, of playing one “true” note, flooded him with gratitude. He reached out one hand and found that note on the piano. He found, if he concentrated long enough, that the feelings he had in that moment had their own sound. One morning, contemplating giving up music altogether, Billy sat down at the piano, closed his eyes and focused on his own emotional state. After delving so deeply for so many of his formative years into the techniques of Sal (and Lennie Tristano, Sal’s mentor), Billy had no idea what his own musical identity was. At the age of 32, Billy found himself in a crisis of identity. These were intense lessons devoted largely to ear training exercises, transcriptions, and endless harmonic configurations. Even to play the melody a second time and pretend he had not just played it 10 minutes before, was a bridge too far for Billy.īilly studied with the great pianist and educator Sal Mosca for 16 years. It’s not enough to play something original, you have to play something entirely new to the world.
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“But I played the melody on the first take.”īilly’s approach is one of complete improvisation. “Billy, on the second take, you’re not playing the melody at all, just going straight into solos. After a couple of hours of this, I pulled Billy aside to talk: On the second time through the tune, however, he’d count in the band and then play something completely tangential to the melody. With this session, featuring the legendary all-star rhythm section of Rufus Reid and Matt Wilson, Billy would play just the barest outlines of the melody to start and then take off in whatever direction moved him at that moment. Often on a “standards” record, the band will play each song two times and then we’ll decide later which one we like better.
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The “typical” form for a jazz standard is a statement of the melody or “theme” and then a solo or series of solos (melodic improvisations over the harmonic parameters of the piece), then a return to the original melody before coming to some sort of arranged or spontaneous ending. What if one is completely unconcerned with beauty and holds only truth as one’s musical compass? We strive day after day to create something beautiful and unique. Most musicians I’ve met, myself included, have spent their time searching for beauty in music. By Elan Mehler, Co-Founder of Newvelle Records