The origins of some of these National Whatever Days/Weeks/Months are a bit hard to trace. September was deemed National Piano Month, though, by the National Piano Foundation in 1991. So there.
Sure, it seems as if you just finished or got through putting up your decorations from World Piano Day, March 29 (or March 28 in leap years. It’s celebrated on the 88th day of the year.). But it’s an instrument worth celebrating twice a year.
If the thinking behind the previous statement seems, to you, colored by the fact that we work at a performing arts center with a conservatory, you’re absolutely right.
The piano is a staple of dance classes and musical theater rehearsals. It’s a staple of classical music performances and pop concerts. All told, we have seven grand pianos (five in Straz, two in Patel Conservatory) and 13 uprights (four in Straz, nine in Patel).
That’s 20 pianos. That’s 1,760 keys.
Pianos inhabit churches, school music classes (when schools had music classes) and living rooms. They’re in the lobbies of expensive hotels and, supposedly, were once common in seedier environments as well. As piano-playing U.S. President Harry Truman once said: “My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference.”
Billy Joel and Elton John are probably the pianists most familiar to pop and rock fans. Their success surely fueled the dreams of many would-be rock stars who weren’t drawn to the guitar.
The guitar is now the instrument most associated with rock & roll, but the piano was its equal, if not its better, in the early days.
Sure, Chuck Berry looked cool duck-walking with his Gibson six-string, and Buddy Holly made the Fender Stratocaster an object of desire for generations of guitarists.
But alongside them were the piano men: Fats Domino, who Elvis Presley called the real king of rock ‘n’ roll; Little Richard pounding and screaming under a skyscraper of a pompadour; and Jerry Lee Lewis, who brought all the craziness and violence in his life to bear on so many poor keyboards.
Example: Angry at being second-billed to Berry, and determined to steal the show, Lewis filled a Coke bottle with gasoline which he brought onstage with him. As his set neared its end, he poured gas on the piano and set it on fire. And kept playing. Sort of makes Pete Townshend or Kurt Cobain smashing their guitars seem a little, well … (yawns).
Maybe Jimi Hendrix was taking a cue from Lewis when he burned his Stratocaster on stage at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. Hendrix’s resume already included a stint in Little Richard’s band, so he knew a bit about showmanship.
Alas, by the time of Monterey, the guitar was well-established as rock’s preeminent instrument. The Beatles ascendence sealed the piano’s fate, even though John Lennon and Paul McCartney both played piano. The guitar was portable, could be transported in a compact car or crowded van, and its six strings looked less daunting to beginners than a piano’s imposing 88 keys.
But if the guitar overshadowed it in rock, the piano still has its place there, and remains a mainstay of jazz and classical performers. So, we offer our salute and Happy Piano Month to all piano players, virtuosos to beginners to no-hopers. It’s got 88 keys. The right note has to be on there somewhere.