So Cal Party Pics

Well, I'll try this again. This was posted this morning briefly before disappearing into the vast hinterland of cyberspace.

I'm no webmeister, but I did manage to throw together the following page last night. I will try to update it with more pics tonight.

Party Pics

Clicking on the pics will allow you to enlarge them for better detail and clarity.

I also want to thank everyone who attended and helped make the evening so succesful. You were all terrific. A special thanks to Norbert for stopping by. (And thanks, Norbert, for the special Canadian treat! ) He is after all out here on business. And Norbert thank you again for bring Ulrich Sauter with you. I have to tell you, I was more nervous plaing in front of Ulrich than the rest of you combined.

It was a blast. Let's do it again!


Thank you again, everybody.

Looks like we missed lots of fun!

Beautiful piano, by the way. Only hope mine turns out as well.

What did everyone play? I am sure I would be intimidated to play in front of that guest list! :p

Great pics. I wish I had come!

Hey Norbert, have you lost weight. I remember you as being a little heavier. (Maybe the pics took off a few pounds!)

What wonderful photos!

Waah, I want a digital camera, too! I took some snaps with my old fashioned manually operated SLR using fast film (I HATE flash, I like natural shadows on people sans red eye), but I have to relay the film to the processor, so archaic.

Oooooh, what a great under-the-piano-shot! What a motley crew!


John's Steinway was heavenly. Nice light touch, beautiful sound. The piano was in a sunken living room with a vaulted ceiling, surrounded by terrific framed piano art and artifacts. It was fun to peruse autographed photos of Oscar Peterson, a vintage photo of Duke Ellington, and that small ceramic statue of Mickey Mouse playing an upright as a tiny Snoopy peeped from a window frame (we were 10 minutes away from Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm after all!) were enchanted touches to an already colorful Party.

I'll write more later.

Happy happy piano piano,

Joy

Steve Cohen said:

You should have come. We were talking about you.
Buwahahahahaha!!!!

Joy

Those were good, but I want more!!!

It looks like a fun time under the 'B' at John's place! I am now really, officially[/b] mad that I couldn't make it! Better luck next time I suppose.

Now, where are the rest of the pix??

I am sooooo jealous! Looks like you all had a great time! I want to come next time! Pick me up on your way through, Matt? Jodi

No problem, we'll just lower a rope ladder from the jet. You can run pretty fast, right? Meet you somewhere over Nevada! :p

Thanks for the pictures. It is great to put a face with the screen names. Looks like all of you had a great time.

My, my, my, but we are so demanding! Listen, I'm pretty good with Excel, everything else computer related is an adventure. Thank goodness Earthlink has a Click-N-Build tutor to help you make your own web page.

So, tonight I managed to:

1) Upgrade the quality of the pics on page one.
2) I've added a second page of pics!

With a little luck I may add another page tomorrow night. (Sheesh, this is time consuming!)

I've also added links to the bottom of the pages as you may have noticed on page one. I'd just like to call attention to the link on page two called Musicians & Injuries. It is one of the best online resources for the topic. I highly urge anyone to save that link as a favorite. It links to many more pages of extremely interesting health related issues.

Enjoy!

On behalf of Ulrich Sauter and myself I like to extend a very warm "THANK YOU" to John C, our most gracious host.

It was truly wonderful to meet you all finally in person at this very special party!

It is equally heartwarming to know that behind every writer here is a true and real person which we have become so familiar with over time.

And in each and every case, this person was even greater than his/her perceived or imagined image on this Forum.

My special thanks also go to the unsung but most important hero here who makes this friendship amongst all of us possble.

It's Frank Baxter, our webmaster.

THANK YOU, Frank, our special and most important common friend!!

We would never have met without you!!

[Yes, and John's Steinway was an absolute gas!!]

THANK YOU ALL!!

norbert

(long ramble disclaimer)
John
Thanks for opening up your home to us; you are a gracious host.
It was a treat to just be in the company of others who also love pianos.
Imagine if there were only a few other superbowl fans in the world how special finding them would be.

What did people play?
Gosh we didn't stay too late, and at the risk of omitting someone - here's what little I remember -
No I never drink!
Kim played lots of her own wonderful compositions, and another by ??? (I even asked, then promptly forgot).
Ulrich Sauter's Elton John was sincere and heartfelt. Beautiful. Just right. And, yes we *can* feel the love tonight.
I didn't get to hear Friday play, but it was nice to see you and your family again.
Joy, your "Martha" is record-perfect and it's amazing you learned that by ear. You have to get back to playing, you gots talent girl!
Norbet brought the house down with music that was bold and lively. He really made that baby sing.
Penny your Fiona Apple was lovely. I hope you don't get an owwieee in your foot from playing barefoot though. Your choice of words was perfect when you described John's Steinway as sunny. It is a very clear sound.
Mynor is much improved too. You've been practicing!
Niles has memorized the most amazingly advanced music, I think I heard Mozart and Beethoven and others.
Steve - played what I will call inspirational music so effectively that I told him he makes me want to repent.
Brian, who plays beautifully,(welcome to your first piano party) brought a large notebook of pieces he has learned my many composers. I think he could have played for hours. Congrats on your new Kawaii grand at home.
John, another welcome, also has a wonderful feel for the music. Good luck on the piano search. BTW there is a piano forum somewhere that might help .
It was great to finally meet Rick Clark. I have developed much repsect for him over the years. He is a tech who posts on RMMP. When faced with a long thread, I'll read the question and jump to Rick's post for the most professional and quintessential reply.
I played the Sarabande from JS Bach's 5th English Suite, Chopin's Prelude in Bm and Nocture op9#2, a Benda piece, and von Weber Scerzo, then diddled around.
And of course Johnathan treated us to his confident and charming compositions, the names of which, in spite of the many opportunities, failed to permeate my memory brain cells.
John we want the recipe for the chocolate you made. It was like a cross between a heath bar, almond roca and shortbread.

John thanks again for the party and the pix, I know it's a lot of work.
Can't wait for the next one!!!

My only 'beef' was that the long awaited ringside match between Larry [the killer!] and Steve C. [the slugger!] didn't take place!

It was my secret reason for coming.

And,yet, there was so much pie to throw....by us screaming,adoring fans!!

Which went somehow to waste...

.....by simply EATING IT!!



norbert

Thanks for the pics, John. It is nice to be able to visually indentify some of the more familiar screen names.

That's a beautiful piano you have there. BTW, in the picture with Penny's Jonathan, what are those strings (the ones perpendicular to the normal piano strings)?

Trev,

That's fishing line. Used to hold the harp together.

No?

OK It is fishing line. Used to hold my home made string cover off of the strings.

JohnC,
thanks for posting the pix. I enjoy seeing the people behind the posts.

By the way, I notice that you had a link to a webpage on Musicians and Injuries...a site mostly about Carpel Tunnel Syndrome and the like. That site was put together by my very dear friend Paul Marxhausen in Lincoln, NE. I've know him since I was 5, and we still get together every Christmas. A great musician, he is.

David in Champaign, IL

Champaign! I was born and raised there. (Urbana, actually) I miss Papa Del's. Jodi

I'd like to have a party in St. Louis but I think I am the only one here! Plus, if you were under MY Steinway, you'd be squashed flat (it's an upright.)

Ah, speaking of food....

Appreciation of fine food must be a natural result of enjoying fine music-making -- or is it the other way around?

Penny gave an excellent run-down of the splendid spread we had on John kitchen island:

Penny\'s So Cal Piano Party food post

My eggplant dish was prepared by stir-frying eggplant that had been sliced, salted and pressed between paper towels. This preliminary step keeps the eggplant from soaking up too much oil and brings out its own unique flavor. A good eggplant is sweet!

Added to the mix were shiitake mushrooms, wolfberry seeds, sliced bamboo shoots, straw mushrooms, chopped onions, 6 cloves of garlic, olive oil, hoisin sauce plus a dash of hot chili oil (Rick made the oil), whole cilantro leaves, pear organic cherry tomatoes and toasted sesame seeds.

This was accompanied by steamed broccoli rabe (aka rapini) drizzled with oyster sauce and sesame oil.

Rick brought sweet sticky rice prepared with sesame oil and chinese sausage -- it was the rice in the yellow peanut butter bucket , plus a Miami specialty -- a cranberry-colored sorrel drink made from a huge bunch of red hibiscus flowers boiled with ginger root. Very spicy hot or cold. In Jamaica, the natives add rum to this traditional drink during the Christmas holiday season. The Celestial Seasons Tea Company went on to make big bucks packaging this brew as Red Zinger Tea.

John --- THANK YOU SO MUCH for hosting one of the best Parties ever!!! You were a most gracious host. I LOVE those photos too!

Oh boy, a party in San Juan Capistrano! Can't wait. Perhaps we should dub it our So Cal Rites of Spring Piano Bachanale -- so there needs to be at least one jazzy Bach piece in there, heehee.

Joy

FYI,

My husband played "Uninvited" by Alanis Morrisette, I played "Slow Like Honey" by Fiona Apple (more of a torch song) and Jonathan played "Dance" by Kabalevsky, "Soldier's March" by Schumann and "Swift Horses" by ??? (no name listed on the sheet music, but the player is instructed to play "with spirit" and that Jonathan did!)

I wanted to add what a great encouragement you all are to Jonathan. There are times when he just can't stand to practice. But hearing Niles, Brian, JohnC, John the Lurker and Kenny really gave his something for which to strive. Thank you for a gift that cannot be quantified!!!!!

penny
dreaming up menus for the next party ...

Everyone's talked about the fantastic pianists at the party, so I won't add much about that. But the food was really good and I have to laugh about Joy's eggplant dish. I had no idea what it was when I got it, but it tasted very good. I am not a big fan of eggplant but it was certainly delicious!

By the way, Kenny's only played for 3 years, and he was playing a song I played, a Nocturne by Chopin, I'm extremely impressed! Also, that book of music I had was mostly empty and most of the songs I haven't played in years. But now that I actually have a piano in the house I'm going to start working at it!

Oh, and I wasn't nervous playing for Ulrich Sauter, but only because I didn't know who he was, heh. He was a very nice and friendly fellow though, which also helped.

Oh yeah, and I'll bring the name tags again at the next party!

Actually it's 4 + years now and this brings up a very interesting subject.
Reading vs. memorizing music. . .
My sight-reading stinks.

Memorizing comes easier as I have been playing music by ear since birth - even if it was folk music on guitar.
When it comes to this classical music that I have been learning, sometimes I feel like a monkey who has been trained to do one task, almost like an imposter. If you handed me anything simple to sight read you'd laugh.

I've been working on that Nocturne for over 6 months. My sight reading is abysmal. In fact Brian, when you showed me a place in your score for the piece that I play from memory, I may as well have been looking at ancient Icelandic texts.
I admire those who can really read music. I hunt and peck. Once a piece gets into memory and the the tempo picks up my eyes can't keep up with the score any longer.

Weird!

I hate to mention, Jodi, that I was in Urbana last night and made a Papa Del's run while my wife was in a meeting. Party size! I may have to head for boot camp.

I wonder if they do mail order. You know, like live lobster. WAIT, NO! I can't even THINK pizza for the next 10 weeks. :p Jodi

Pics link doesnt seem to work

Yeah, it doesn't work for me either.

I never listen about this site before for learn piano that you given here...this is really helpful for me to learn piano....

Guys... the links are from back in 2003... Did you really expect them to be here?!?!?! Unless it's some spam bot bringing back the thread...