Madame Piano
Madame Piano, born Ljiljana Rančić, is a Serbian retired jazz/world music singer and songwriter.
Musical career
Ljiljana Rančić got her classical music education by learning to play violin. In the early 1990s, she started performing as a jazz singer, having her debut performance as a singer singing with actress Ana Sofrenović. In 1993, she won the first place at the Belgrade Spring Festival with the song "Sanjam" ("I'm Dreaming"). She performed on the festivals in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, regularly performing in jazz clubs in her homeland.
Her debut recording was Vlada Maričić's composition "Caravan", which she recorded with bass guitarist Dejan Škopelja and percussionist and keyboardist Boris Bunjac, with which she appeared on the 1993 various artists compilation album Beogradska džez scena 1993. (Belgrade Jazz Scene 1993). After long work, in the autumn of 1997, she released her debut album, entitled Predeli (Landscapes). The album was produced by Madam Piano herself and Dejan Škopelja, at the time her husband and a member of the band Babe.Predeli featured a mixture of jazz, popular and ethnic music. Beside Madame Piano's own songs, the album featured songs written by Nebojša Zulfikarpašić and Nebojša Kostić, the song "Cvetak žuti" ("Yellow Flower"), a cover of a song by Loreena McKennitt, a cover of Duke Ellington's song "Caravan", and a cover of Native American song "Niya Niya Ni". The album also featured the song "Galija" ("Galley"), which she recorded with the band Orthodox Celts. She appeared on the 1998 Music Festival Budva, performing the song "Moj Jasmine" ("Oh, My Jasmine") with flutist Bora Dugić. The song was released on the festival album Budva 98.
Piano
The piano (Italian pronunciation: [ˈpjaːno]; an abbreviation of pianoforte [pjanoˈfɔrte]) is a musical instrument played using a keyboard. It is widely employed in classical, jazz, traditional and popular music for solo and ensemble performances, accompaniment, and for composing and rehearsal. Although the piano is not portable and often expensive, its versatility and ubiquity have made it one of the world's most familiar musical instruments.
An acoustic piano usually has a protective wooden case surrounding the soundboard and metal strings, and a row of 88 black and white keys (52 white, 36 black). The strings are sounded when the keys are pressed, and silenced when the keys are released. The note can be sustained, even when the keys are released, by the use of pedals.
Pressing a key on the piano's keyboard causes a padded (often with felt) hammer to strike strings. The hammer rebounds, and the strings continue to vibrate at their resonant frequency. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that amplifies by more efficiently coupling the acoustic energy to the air. When the key is released, a damper stops the strings' vibration, ending the sound. Although an acoustic piano has strings, it is usually classified as a percussion instrument because the strings are struck rather than plucked (as with a harpsichord or spinet); in the Hornbostel-Sachs system of instrument classification, pianos are considered chordophones. With technological advances, electric, electronic, and digital pianos have also been developed.
Dynamics (music)
In music, dynamics are instructions in musical notation to the performer about hearing the loudness of a note or phrase. More generally, dynamics may also include other aspects of the execution of a given piece.
Relative loudness
The two basic dynamic indications in music are:
More subtle degrees of loudness or softness are indicated by:
Beyond f and p, there are also
And so on.
Some pieces contain dynamic designations with more than three f's or p's. In Holst's The Planets, ffff occurs twice in Mars and once in Uranus often punctuated by organ and fff occurs several times throughout the work. It also appears in Heitor Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras No. 4 (Prelude), and in Liszt's Fantasy and Fugue on the chorale "Ad nos, ad salutarem undam". The Norman Dello Joio Suite for Piano ends with a crescendo to a ffff, and Tchaikovsky indicated a bassoon solo pppppp in his Pathétique Symphony and ffff in passages of his 1812 Overture and the 2nd movement of his Fifth Symphony.
Piano (Wynton Kelly album)
Piano, also released as Whisper Not, is an album by jazz pianist Wynton Kelly released on the Riverside label featuring performances by Kelly with Kenny Burrell, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones recorded in 1958.
Reception
The Allmusic review by Scott Yanow states "Kelly became a major influence on pianists of the 1960s and 1970s and one can hear the genesis of many other players in these swinging performances".
