Klavierhaus Unveils a New Fazioli F-228 Piano at UCPAC in Rahway, New Jersey.

Jim Luce of Klavierhaus addresses the crowd on February 21, 2010.

 A Fabulous Sight.

A beautiful piano in the middle of the WInter Garden at the World Financial Center in New York.

Jeffrey Swann Plays The Fazioli F-278 Concert Grand Piano during the historic celebration of 200 years of the life and music of Frederik Chopin at the WInter Garden at the World Financial Center.

 A WIlh. Steinberg Piano just off the runway from Eisenberg Germany making a lot of people happy.

Klavierhaus

The G- Sharp Duo

Emilie-Ann Gendron, violin

Yelena Grinberg, piano

MONK AT 92

PIANO MARATHON
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9, 5:00 PM
WORLD FINANCIAL CENTER WINTER GARDEN
Program Order
5:00 pm                Joan Stiles
5:10 pm                Peter Bernstein | Armand Hirsch
5:20 pm                Aaron Diehl
5:30 pm                Rob Rodriguez
5:40 pm                Christian Sands
5:50 pm                James Weidman
6:05 pm                Emmet Cohen | Armand Hirsch
6:15 pm                Armen Donelian
6:30 pm                Junior Mance
6:45 pm                Geri Allen
7:00 pm                Harold ONeal
7:15 pm                Rodney Kendrick
7:30 pm                Emilio Solla
7:45 pm                Osmany Paredes
8:00 pm                Elio Villafranca
8:15 pm                Dan Nimmer
8:30 pm                Arturo OFarrill
8:45 pm                Clarice Assad
9:00 pm                Randy Weston
9:15 pm                Zim Ngqawana Quartet

Tonight, many of the greatest pianists from the world of jazz gather to pay
tribute to America’s preeminent jazz pianist of the 20th century.
Each year on this date for the next decade, pianists will gather to honor
Thelonious Monk and his contributions to American music on the march to
the centennial of his birth in 2017.
We thank the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, Adventure Music, Devore
Fidelity, Fazioli Pianoforti, Tone Imports, Klavierhaus, Sennheiser, and Duke
Markos Audio.
Jim Luce, Producer.
worldpianosummit.com

A message from pianist, Richard Goode.

At Klavierhaus, the Reisinger brothers, Gabor and Sujatri, have made a unique haven for pianos and pianists. A varied and extraordinary assortment of historic instruments, restored with the greatest of care and skill by the Reisingers, mingle with superb new Faziolis. Some of the greatest old Steinways I've ever played are here, as well as Pleyels, Broadwoods, Erards and others, in beautiful condition.

This is also very much a House of Music; there are frequent concerts, master classes and recording sessions in the resonant room in back, and visiting pianists are warmly welcomed.

The devotion and generosity of the Reisingers and their helpful and friendly staff make this a special place.

For me, Klavierhaus is a musical treasure.

Richard Goode

New York Times, August 2003 21 Rare Pianos Sought For Feat of Grand Intent By James Barron Published: August 3, 2003 Sujatri K. Reisinger, who sells pianos for a living, has been working the phone, trying to borrow a few. Actually, more than a few: 21 grands, for a total of 1,848 keys. And all built by a relatively obscure Italian manufacturer that makes only 100 instruments a year. Mr. Reisinger, an owner of Klavierhaus, a piano shop on West 58th Street between Broadway and Seventh Avenue, is looking for the pianos that will star in a concert during the opening week of the 15th season of the Winter Garden at the World Financial Center. The pianos he is looking for are not Steinways, not Mason & Hamlins, not Baldwins, but Faziolis. So far, he said, he is two-thirds of the the way toward meeting his goal. Faziolis are shiny, expensive instruments made according to the designs of Paolo Fazioli, a concert pianist who went into engineering before he discovered his life's work: trying to reinvent the modern piano. The most talked-about of his company's six models is the F308, at least one of which will be among the 21 pianos Mr. Reisinger is rounding up. At 10 feet 2 inches and $140,000, it is 14 1/4 inches longer and almost $50,000 more expensive than a Steinway concert grand. It has an extra pedal, for very, very soft playing. Whether it is needed for one piece that will be played on Sept. 25 -- the world premiere of "Threnodia for 21," a piece by Daniele Lombardi, an avant-garde Italian composer, and dedicated to the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks -- remains to be seen. Also on the program is the first performance in this country of Mr. Lombardi's Sinfonia Nos. 1 and 2 for 21 Pianos. In some passages of "Threnodia," Mr. Reisinger said, the pianists are to stand up, reach into the pianos and strum the strings. In other passages, they are to pound the keyboards. It will be something to see -- and that, Mr. Reisinger said, is just what Mr. Lombardi had in mind. Debra Simon, the executive director of the World Financial Center's arts and events program, said the 21 pianos would be the largest collection of pianos played at the same time in one place since the 1939 World's Fair. And those pianos were uprights, not grands. Mr. Lombardi knows what it is like to have more than one Fazioli on hand. Mr. Reisinger said Mr. Lombardi once asked Mr. Fazioli to send him two. Mr. Fazioli did so, Mr. Reisinger said, but only after asking this question: "Can't you compose something for 3 or 4 pianos instead of 21?"

New York Times, October 2007 Jangly Runs and Other Unmistakably Monkish Moves By Nate Chinen Published: October 12, 2007 Wrapping up his solo performance at the World Financial Center’s Winter Garden on Wednesday night, the pianist Randy Weston tossed off a scrap of “Happy Birthday to You.” That gesture, which followed a free-associative medley of Thelonious Monk compositions, came at a good time: about three hours into a nearly five-hour concert in honor of Monk’s 90th birthday. As played by Mr. Weston, it felt like a patently Monkish move. Naturally it wasn’t the only one on a program that featured 19 pianists in solo formats, mainly drawn from across the New York jazz firmament. But the most interesting aspect of “Monk at 90” — produced by Jim Luce and Sujatri Reisinger in conjunction with Fazioli Pianoforti and the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz — was the panoply of approaches toward Monk’s music, which abides its own logic and inhabits its own climate. Monk himself was a formidable solo pianist, and an unmistakable one. During the prolific middle period of his career, in the 1950s and ’60s — he died in 1982 but had withdrawn from the spotlight in the previous decade — he made a handful of terrific solo recordings, editorializing on standards as well as his own songs. His gripping solo style, both artful and seemingly casual, poses a unique challenge to any inheritor. Mr. Weston, who mastered this negotiation long ago, began his mini-set with “Zulu,” one of his own vintage tunes. (“You can hear the Monk influence,” he advised by way of introduction, and indeed you could.) He was one of only a few pianists on the program who seemed keen on channeling Monk whole, as a physical force as well as an idea. Rodney Kendrick was another. He delivered “Body and Soul” as a ceremonial prelude, gently elasticizing the time. On “Crepuscule With Nellie” he played several jangly runs that brought Monk clearly to mind, though the patient exposition was his own. “Crepuscule” also provided the crux of Frank Kimbrough’s expressive performance, which began and ended in a spirit of dramatic indeterminacy. Through jarring clusters and rumbling drones, he illuminated Monk’s influence among modern successors like Keith Jarrett. It was beautiful, and unnerving. Of course few people, in jazz or elsewhere, can do what Geri Allen did: turn a jutting melody, like the one from “Epistrophy,” into a high-voltage tour de force, precarious and dazzling. Future iterations of this piano marathon, which is scheduled to repeat annually until Monk’s centennial, would do well to keep Ms. Allen close at hand.

New York Times, August 2007 The pianist Simone Dinnerstein had an unorthodox journey to concert success and her first CD. How Do You Move a Career Into High Gear? By Breaking the Rules By Anne Midgette Published: August 28, 2007 If you want to be a concert pianist when you grow up, there are certain rules. You do start playing as a young child. You don’t drop out of Juilliard. You do win competitions and get the attention of managers at a young age. You don’t end up at 30 with no management and no bookings, raising the money yourself for your first recording. And you definitely don’t make your New York recital debut with Bach’s demanding “Goldberg” Variations, which are supposed to reflect the wisdom of long experience, and Baroque style. Simone Dinnerstein, 34, has made her career by breaking every rule in the book. When she learned that she was expecting a baby, she wanted to find a piece of music she could learn to accompany her pregnancy. When she told her husband she had decided to work on the “Goldberg” Variations, he tried to dissuade her; they both knew the Gould recordings by heart. He has since apologized, she said. And “with all my idolization of Glenn Gould,” she added, “it turned out I didn’t play it like him at all.” After the birth of her son, Adrian, the “Goldbergs” became a calling card, so much so that Ms. Dinnerstein wanted to record them. The freedom of recording for its own sake — of doing something she loved and getting it exactly right — turned into a kind of intense spiritual journey, she said. Sujatri Reisinger, owner of the Klavierhaus piano workshop, provided the 1903 Hamburg Steinway and voiced the piano himself; the recording technician, Adam Abeshouse, understood which variation she should play next. “I was even having private yoga lessons,” Ms. Dinnerstein said. “I was only eating certain foods.” As soon as the first five variations were mixed, she sent them to four managers. All called back, wanting to meet her. But they also wanted to hear her in person, and she already knew that she hated auditions. Instead, she gave a concert. Having already raised the money privately to finance the recording in the first place, she found another patron willing to pay for the rental of Weill Hall. And so began what appears to be a Cinderella story. Ms. Dinnerstein is now represented by IMG Artists. Her concert schedule is suddenly packed with orchestral engagements, solo recitals, debuts in Paris, London, Berlin. She is finding herself living out her childhood dreams of glamour, and trying to balance it with what she calls real life. “I feel it’s really important not to focus too much on this,” Ms. Dinnerstein said of her sudden success, “because I really just want to focus on my playing. And I also want to always think about the fact that if for some reason it all collapsed, I would still be able to play the ‘Goldberg’ Variations.”