Schwob Students Learn from New York Professor Through Disklavier “Remote Piano”

The inaugural Schwob School of Music Remote Lesson occurred without a hitch on Monday, October 10.

The event was the second of five classes from the master class series sponsored by Yamaha, which were made possible by the Disklavier (DCFX), a unique, technologically-advanced black Yamaha concert grand piano gifted to the school by Gail Greenblatt.

The DCFX piano makes it possible to transmit real-time performance data by students (actual keystrokes and subtle gradations of pedal movement) to Dr. Boris Slutsky, chair of the Piano Department at Peabody Conservatory at Johns Hopkins University. Using this new technology, Columbus State piano majors now can study and learn from world-renowned pianists remotely. Slutsky, seated at a similarly equipped piano nearly a thousand miles away at Yamaha Artist Services in New York City, watched students perform through a video interface and gave suggestions for improvement on technique.

Participants were chosen by Kobrin and Slutsky from volunteers. Monday’s participants, each granted 30 minutes, were Elizabeth Tsai who played Beethoven’s Sonata No. 12, Koki Sato who played Chopin’s Scherzo No. 4, and Alexey Trushechkin who played Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 7. During Tsai’s performance, Slutsky said “It sounds like she is just next to me here.”

The sessions, recorded both by the Columbus State communication department and Yamaha, will be archived in the music library as part of the Yamaha Disklavier Education Network. The third master class will be held Tuesday, December 1 at Legacy Hall from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. The classes will continue in the spring with the fourth class scheduled for Monday, January 23 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. and the final fifth class has been scheduled for March 27, also from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Photo: Columbus State University