I wanted to share about some of the situations I have had when called on gigs that had a piano onsite.

I got a call to play with a duo at a hotel banquet room for an afternoon business owners networking event. This was several years ago and I was to be paid $100 for 2 hours. The agency that sent me out said I didn't need to bring a keyboard, so that saved me some packing and loading my rig. So I got to the hotel early and wanted to do some warm up on the piano, expecting at least a decent Yamaha grand. The manager walked me over to the event room and I asked him where the piano was. So he flagged one of the busboys to roll out the piano behind the curtain and I couldn't believe what I was looking at!

The piano they rolled out was an ancient spinet with some white and black keys missing in the bass and mid area! Cigarette burns all over it, sticking keys, and it smelled like a raggy beer joint, etc. At first I thought it was a joke, but the manager said that was it. I sat down and wanted to see if there was any possible way to play it, even with a few keys missing. Several octaves looked ok so I played a C scale and instead of do, re, me, the middle C key nearly had the same pitch as the E key a third interval. After that i got up, went to find the manager and said that piano was unplayable. But he said, "other pianists can play it, what's the problem. I was disgusted with his attitude and if that was the case, call one of the other pianists and walked out. I called the agency and explained what happened, and they understood, but of course I didn't get any percentage of pay just to show up at the gig.

Another time I got called into a lounge gig that had a brand new Baldwin grand and my hopes went up until I sat down to play it. It was unplayable, absolutely the stiffest, unresponsive action, out of tune. The manager said it was brand new, first week at the bar. I wasn't used to a weighted action and mostly played an unweighted synth. Anyway, even though I needed the gig, there was no way i could play 4 hours on that monster!! I would have sprained my wrist or worse.

Since then, I only play gigs with my rig, no exceptions. I'm used to the 88 weighted action, sound and it only weighs 26 lbs. Also I play a lot of Rhodes, organ and string sounds which the acoustic piano can't deliver the versatility.

As piano/keyboard players, unless we take our own keyboard, there is no way to predict what kind of piano might be waiting to play when arriving at the gig.

Have any players here had similar experiences with club pianos?

katt

Yea, I realized that it's important not to assume anything, because people really don't know what they are talking about. I remember doing this gig where I was asked to play a synth and they wanted me to use the preset rhythm as an accompaniment. Well it turns out that the synth they brought was actually a toy casio keyboard... and I had to explain that those casios are they are not meant to be use for gigs.

A saxophone player told me a story where he was asked play a wedding.. and on the day of the gig he went there, and there was a piano, and the guy in charge asked him to sit on the piano bench. The sax player asked what the piano was for and the guy said "well you know how to play the piano don't you?" The guy in charge was clueless... just because he was a really good sax player, it doesn't mean he is able to play piano on wedding gigs.

So the sax player did the only thing he could think of.. he started playing the saxphone and walked from table to table as he played.

I learned that it's important to be prepared for anything on a gig.. a lot of times the actual playing part is the least of your concern. Lately I am starting to realize that you need know how to setup a sound system.. because most people don't know how to set up the sound and you'll be miserable if you are at the mercy of these people.

I went to a New Year's party and was told there was a piano that would be fine. I was accompanying a soloist. I had the song worked out using probably five octaves during practice (it was 'Summertime'). Well what we got was a little keyboard, probably three octaves, with no pedal. It was also far too loud. Ugh. It was the keyboard that was being used by the band that evening. It might have been okay for a fast piece, but Summertime the way we were doing it needed a pedal and the performance really lacked for it. Thankfully we did have one fast piece we finished with, and the rock-blues riffs sounded okay.

Another time I was working in a hotel and usually I had a Kawai GE-30, downstairs in the bar, but they wanted me to play upstairs for brunch. They had a digital and I wasn't used to a digital at all. It also felt like I was more vulnerable to the audience since I didn't have a big piano between me and them. Had I been more skilled those days it would have been fine, but it was pretty awkward at first. I stayed for the whole gig and ultimately it was okay.

Yep, bass players, guitarists, sax players, flute, violinists have their own instruments they are used to and keyboard players are at the mercy of what piano might be waiting for them if they don't take their own rig

I would rather cart all my stuff and get a good reliable sound than play some disaster outta tune wooden box.

When Oscar Peterson showed up at a recording session with a full orchestra to record his album with Claus Ogerman, here is what he did

on Motions & Emotions to cow-tow to the mere cliché of going for pretty or lush. Ogerman doesn’t “cushion” with strings here so much as provide the pianist with effective counterpoint. Peterson, a force of nature on the piano, is not so easily cradled by other sounds. And Ogerman gives the pianist something inspiring to spring forth from with his own ideas, clearly in the jazz realm.

However, it almost didn’t come to be. “The piano available at A&R Studios [the New York studio where the album was scheduled to be recorded],” Ogerman remembers, “was not to Oscar’s liking.” Peterson refused to record on what he considered an inadequate piano, stating very simply, in his ever-inimitable way, “I don’t like the box.”

Gene Lees further relates in his book, Oscar Peterson: The Will To Swing (Cooper Square Press, 1988): “[MPS Records owner Hans Georg] Brunner-Schwer faced a dilemma. He had committed substantial funds to this recording, including Ogerman’s arranging and conducting fees, the cost of A&R studio, and the salaries of the musicians who sat there waiting, and would be paid whether they played or not. He made a decision; to record the orchestra now and overdub Oscar’s part in Villingen on the piano Oscar liked. Oscar instantly agreed, the session proceeded, and he completed the album later in Villingen.”

Of course what Oscar wants (or wanted) Oscar gets. He was very picky about his pianos, and that's cool

And now what Bill Evans had to say about pianos he used in concerts/recordings

Bill Evans to François Postif (Jazz Hot): "The trumpet player plays on his trumpet, the bassist on his bass, they reach such a knowledge of their own instrument as they are married with them. The pianist however, he discovers every night a new fiancée with whom he must come to an agreement"

Do you prefer any particular brand of piano?

Bill E

"I love the old Steinway action. The Steinway action for the last ten or twelve years however has been a great problem. In fact, I tend to avoid those pianos - the newer Steinways. I prefer a Yamaha to a new Steinway. I don't like an extremely heavy action and I don't like a slow action. However, you find that if you play any kind of action for a while, unless it's really really sluggish or something, you just begin to compensate and get used to it and learn how to handle it. But ideally, I like the old Steinways."

Do you request particular pianos when you play, or do you have to deal with whatever you find?

Bill

"We always try to set things up in front. The instructions are that unless it is a proven Steinway, preferably an older proven Steinway, then I would rather have a Yamaha. Of course, in some places, like in Europe, you get German Steinways, which are marvelous. And once I had a wonderful Bösendorfer in London for a few weeks - one of those really large ones with the nine extra keys at the bottom. The action is really different on the Bösendorfer, but you get used to it soon. It's a more direct kind of feeling - an even feeling; whereas in the old Steinway there is a little break in the action. If you push the keys half way down on the Steinway, there's just a little catch in it, and then it goes the rest of the way down. Anyway, that's where I stand on preferences now. Of course you sometimes hit other make pianos that are good, but they are few and far between. You can get a good Mason & Hamlin; or possibly a good Baldwin, but I don't think they work as well - especially the big ones." (Interview by Michael Spector, Contemporary Keyboard, March 1977).

THE STEINWAY CD 318 OF GLENN GOULD

Bill Evans was Gould's favourite jazz pianist. His record collection contained seven Evans albums as "Conversations with Myself", "Symbiosis" and "Further Conversations with Myself". Glenn Gould's obsessive quest for the perfect piano was a particular instrument, a Steinway concert grand, known as unit number CD 318 (C to signify its special status as having been put aside for the use of Steinway concert artists, and D, denoting it as the largest that Steinway built). Glenn Gould's beloved Steinway piano that he used exclusively after 1960 is the instrument that Bill Evans used when he recorded the album "Conversations with Myself" in 1963 in Webster Hall. Soon after Bill's recording Gould finished his recording of Bach's "D major Partita" on this beloved piano nearby in the the old CBS East 30th Street Studio in Manhattan, a deconsecrated Greek Orthodox church with peerless acoustics. This studio was the venue for many classic sessions including Glenn Gould's two recordings of the "Goldberg Variations". One of the first recordings happened in 1947 when Robert Casadesus recorded a Mozart piano concerto. Miles Davis with Bill Evans on piano recorded here in 1959 the famous "Kind of Blue" album. The grand piano CD 318 came to Ottawa's Library and Archives Canada auditorium in 1983 and was used for the concerts of the Ottawa International Jazz Festival. In the years as the Jazz Festival has staged concerts here, several jazz pianists have played on this CD 318, like Fred Hersch and Brad Mehldau. At a jazz festival concert in 2004, pianist Bill Mays, joked: "I sat down to play a bebop piece on the CD 318 and Bach's F-major Invention came out." Nowadays it resides in the Canadian Museum of Civilization and no pianist is playing this famous grand piano. After hearing a concert of Bill Evans on a Yamaha piano Glenn Gould, the most loyal of Steinway advocates, switched to a Yamaha piano, because the clarity and touch of Evans' piano style resembled his own. Bill Evans was also impressed by a number of late Yamaha's and chose on request of Max Gordon a new Yamaha house piano for the Village Vanguard. (The pictures represent the outside and inside of the CBS studio, below Bill Evans and Miles Davis in the studio during the "Kind of Blue" recording session.

It's unlikely that many of us keyboardists will play gigs where there is a German Steinway, fine Yamaha/Kawai grand, Bechstein available, a rarity I'm sure. I have this CD by a great female jazz singer with a trio and the acoustic piano is weak, tinny and out of tune, awful. The playing is fine, the piano sucks bigtime. Better to run a digital or VI software for a serious recording date.

katt