The U.S. government's "notice of intent to seek forfeiture of certain assets" also cites a Cayman Islands company called Yacht Bull Corp, three boats valued at more than $10 million, four cars, $65,000 in silverware and a Steinway piano worth $39,000.

Both girls credit their mom with their love of music. She had them try the piano at age 4 for just 10 minutes a day; by the time they were in 4th grade, both had already made their debut with the Madison, Wisconsin Symphony Orchestra. "When we started, it was like, maybe, ten minutes, twice a day or something like that, and there's always candy with it, which was a real plus for a 4-year-old," Christina Naughton said.

Michail Lifits was the most outstanding contestant from the start of the 14th annual Hilton Head International Piano Competition, said chairman of the judges' panel and renowned pianist Leslie Howard. Lifits, a 26-year-old from Germany, won after the final round Monday night at First Presbyterian Church. He performed Tchaikovsky piano concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23. The first prize includes $15,000, a debut recital at Carnegie Hall's Weill Hall in New York and a concerto performance with the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra during the 2009-10 schedule.

For the past 156 years, Steinway and Sons has been manufacturing pianos inside its Astoria factory. Now, it's adding solar panels to collect energy, so the company's future tune will be a little greener. "Basically you have a lot of rooftop, you have a lot of flat rooftop, and also you have the ability to utilize the energy in the winter and the summer, which is very important," said Bill Rigos, Steinway's facilities manager.

Probably the most remarkable thing about The Penguin is the range of music. Regardless of your demographic, you won't feel cheated. These players know seemingly every hit that ever made the charts in the past 40 years: Neil Diamond and John Mellencamp, Jimmy Buffet and Randy Newman, and whatever else you can conjure up. Apparently, the rule of thumb is that these artists should know a minimum of 1,200 songs by heart; the majority know more like 3,000. It's mind-blowing.

South Dakota State University piano students will present a program showcasing the lyric pieces of 19th century Norwegian composer and pianist Edvard Grieg. The concert will take place at Peterson Recital Hall in the Lincoln Music Center on Thursday, March 19 at 7:30 p.m., and is free and open to the public.

The Hugh A. Glauser School of Music started its campaign February 2007 to become an all-Steinway school. They're about halfway toward their mark but still need 19 pianos, which will cost about $700,000, Seachrist said.

Colin Huggins serenades straphangers on subway platforms, leaving the crowd wondering just how he - and his 250-pound instrument - got down there. He takes the elevator - but it's no easy task. "I do it all by myself," said Huggins, 31, who has a day job as music director at the Joffrey Ballet School. He wasn't deterred by Monday's snowstorm and rolled one of his nine pianos out of a storage unit on Spring St. He strapped it onto a dolly, hooking on his backpack, a 5 gallon bucket and a foldup stool.

The global economic crisis has forced world-renowned Czech piano maker Petrof to hit the soft pedal and switch production from grands to lacquered kitchen furniture. "At the time of a crisis, people think about other things than buying a new piano. That's normal," said Zuzana Ceralova-Petrofova, president of the piano manufacturer founded in 1864 by her ancestor Antonin Petrof (1839-1915).

Crazy Pianos, a ''dueling piano bar, restaurant and entertainment venue'' set to open in Coconut Grove's Cocowalk complex next month, has put up a great big ''help wanted'' sign: It's looking for more than 150 servers, bartenders, sous chefs, hostesses, managers and musicians. And there's more: Entertainers and upper management get a full benefits package.

The more you play and the more humid the environment, the more you will need to tune up, Vogelman says. Frequent use (which is a good thing for a piano) inherently means retuning. And humidity, Vogelman continues, expands the wood in the pin block. That's what holds the tuning pins, which in turn maintain the pressure on the piano strings.

A TEN-YEAR-OLD pianist from Sherwood has shown such promise that he has been offered a place at a top music school. Rudi Reed took up the piano five years ago and has already reached grade eight with just two hours of home tuition a week. He now has the opportunity to attend Chetham's School of Music, in Manchester, the largest specialist music school in Britain. But he will not have to pay for a place - which can cost up to £30,000 a year and are taken by students from around the world - because he has been offered a bursary.

The dueling piano concept features two pianists sitting at pianos facing each other as they play song requests from the audience. Requests accompanied by tips go to the top of the list; the bigger the tip, the faster the song will get played. "For the majority of dueling piano bars, there's a list of about 300 songs the player has to know," Alex said. "And we'd love for the players to know most of those."

Playing the piano comforted Liz and sustained her through the many transitions and frequent tribulations of her high school and college years. When she began her law career, though, Liz was so busy that she found little time to play. Although the piano accompanied her wherever she moved, Liz never found time to play it. As Liz told her story, I wondered if playing the piano might once again comfort and support her, especially during this time of transition. When I suggested this, she said that too many years had passed since last she played for her to begin playing again. A few weeks later, Liz reported that she had awakened in the middle of the night and was drawn to play the piano. Soon, she was practicing a melody she had loved as a child. Time flew by and soon it was morning. After that, Liz practiced two or three times a week for the joy and comfort it gave her.

You can own a Washboard Tie yourself (including a set of thimbles) for $18, or watch one in action via 'loopist' Robert Fishbone's video

Typically at live performances, she spins out elaborate fantasies on themes that audi ence members call out on the spot, ranging from melodies by Bach to, quite recently, the fight song of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

"If you have a nice instrument to play, you can get anybody to come play it because people just want to play a nice instrument," said Sherry Williams. Williams, who organizes "Jazz at The Merc," a series of weekly jazz concerts that takes place in Temecula, is trying to raise money to buy a baby grand piano for the Old Town Temecula Community Theater's mercantile building.

Traditional piano lessons emphasize reading music as a means of learning to play, similar to expecting children to read and spell before they talk, Rushold said. Simply Music is a playing-based approach that starts with learning patterns and playing music right away, she said. Rushold teaches students the patterns, or arrangement of keys, and the patterns of their hands moving across the keys as they play. She has her students learn a musical sentence, or section of a piece of music, one at a time, then put the sentences together into a song. "Students leave the first lesson playing a song with both hands," Rushold said.

For far less money, or even no money, he pursued his calling, providing musical accompaniment for silent films at libraries and museums, and eventually writing scores for some of the pictures. In 1968, Mr. Oderman received a call from the Museum of Modern Art. "They asked me to come in and be the silent theater pianist," he said. "It's the one job I had always wanted."

The new invention, devised by music professor Jason Freeman, is said to be one of the most innovative products in a long time to hit the market. Basically, it offers users the possibility to participate in the creation of music scores, and not just by giving hints to professional musicians, but by actually moving the notes in the songs themselves. All of this happens on a website, where all the notes for all songs of interest are listed as small colored blocks. This should be very familiar to those who have worked with loops before, as the same basic principles apply.

Georgia Tech researchers are trying to reinvent how students learn to play the piano by developing a glove that vibrates to cue a budding musician which finger needs to be played at a given moment. The goal is to fuse music with muscle memory to teach pianists their craft. "You can literally feel the notes," said Kevin Huang, the Georgia Tech graduate student who came up with the idea.

"People think you just sit down and make music," said Mark Burbey, a student at the School of Piano Technology for the Blind in the Hudson's Bay neighborhood. "But there are literally thousands of parts that have to work together."

The instrument has been a year and a half in the making and is a "grand collaboration" between L. B–sendorfer Klavierfabrik GmbH of Vienna, Austria and Jon Kuhn, the world's foremost cold glass sculptor. Kuhn's work is known for its unusual intricacy and extraordinary reflective light. His cubes, circles and works of varied sizes and geometries are included in the permanent collections of over 35 museums.

Breyer is one of three professors who collaborated to create a six-DVD series entitled "3-D Piano." Part documentary, part instructional video, "3-D Piano" serves as an aid for pianists to teach others how to play, from the beginning to the more advanced levels. The series will be launched today in Setnor Auditorium as its collaborators perform and showcase over two years' worth of their work.

She studied classical piano as a child and became interested in jazz while playing in her high-school dance band. Moving to New York in the late 1940s, she mixed with some of the rising jazz musicians of the day, including Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Gil Evans. She became a member of the Blue Flames, the harmony vocal group attached to Woody Herman's band, and recorded with the cult bebop vocalist King Pleasure.

In keeping with that commitment, the church is donating six pianos to local public schools that did not have a piano to promote music education. Some member of the congregation suggested donating some old Yamaha pianos that are not being used at the church anymore, Hoekstra said. "This is just another way" to help promote music education, he said, adding that music should be an integral part of a child's education. "When I went to school every classroom had a piano," Hoekstra, 51. "We sang goofy little songs and that was part of the education process."

Yurie Farnsworth, a freshman at Tualatin High School, has won a finalist spot in the Music Teachers National Association's Junior Piano Competition.

Presented in both high- and low-res versions, these are snippets from David Sprunger's Playpianotoday.com, a Web site that offers a series of fee-based piano courses. The host Web site is pretty heavy-handed, making you sit through a long ad and then demanding an e-mail address so that you can gain access to the free material, but the guy can clearly play.

Months ago, Jan Ramsey, publisher of Best of the Beat Awards presenter OffBeat Magazine, solicited Baldwin, parent company Gibson and affiliated philanthropic organization Music Rising to donate a piano to a musician during the Best of the Beat Awards. Ramsey asked the non-profit Sweet Home New Orleans, which assists musicians with housing and other needs, to select the recipient.

Steinway & Sons launched the William E. Steinway Limited Edition piano on January 14, 2009, at the company's annual convention in Newport Beach, California. This exquisite piano is a reproduction of the Steinway Centennial Piano, which was first introduced in 1876 at the nation's Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.

The piano baby, generally assumed to be a late-19th Century invention of German doll makers like Heubach Brothers, were marketed as porcelain weight to keep silky piano shawls from slipping off highly polished pianos.

Carved Rosewood Piano Stool, c. 1825, Baltimore, upholstered circular adjustable seat above a basket of fruit carved standard on a giltwood collar

The SDSU Music Department, along with the Boys and Girls Club of Brookings and the Brookings Music Teachers Association (BMTA), has been offering free piano lessons to at-risk children in the Brookings community since October.

Tokusen Kogyo Co., a specialty steel wire producer in Hyogo Prefecture, has developed piano wire with a diameter of 0.009mm, the finest in the world.

If you're in the market for a grand, take a look at this Collard & Collard burl wood art case grand piano up for auction. This Empire style piano (Serial #54089) has been restored and is in mint condition.

"But when you're a little boy, you look upon those kinds of tragedies in a different way, so when the Americans came in to liberate us in June 1944, for me it was an extraordinary adventure. I was so excited to see them I almost followed them everywhere! It was like a continuation of the adventure, the US army coming in and beating the villains."

Working with a piano specialist named Ben Stallman in Berlin, the artists reconfigured an early-20th-century Bechstein by removing a section of strings and cutting a hole through the center of the cabinet. They have asked musicians hired for the show to perform standing inside the hole, which means they have to play the keyboard upside down and backward. And while they play, they walk, propelling the instrument, set on casters, slowly through the gallery.

The more you play and the more humid the environment, the more you will need to tune up, Vogelman says. Frequent use (which is a good thing for a piano) inherently means retuning. And humidity, Vogelman continues, expands the wood in the pin block. That's what holds the tuning pins, which in turn maintain the pressure on the piano strings. And the newer the piano, the more frequently you will need to tune it, as well. A new or restrung piano may require up to six tunings the first year because the piano isn't quite settled yet, Vogelman says. "It needs time to find its groove."

PlayPiano.com's course, "Runs and Fills Galore" is the easiest and best way to spice up your playing. The 6 CD course covers a number of techniques including "Cocktail" runs, embellishments, piano "tricks," and cascading fills and endings. Also included are samples of turnarounds, trills, and instruction on how to create counter melodies as you play. Each technique is written out (music notation), demonstrated, and explained in detail on its own CD.

The contest's namesake, Mindell, was a tireless advocate for music and arts education in San Mateo County for more than four decades. This year, for the first time in its four years, the contest added a junior division of musicians ages 9 to 12 to help further its educational mission. Unlike the senior competition, where entrants are selected after submitting a CD of their performance, the "more approachable" junior circuit accepts a broader range of applicants.

There's a cautionary tale in this situation. Since reputable stores were offering the rebates, there wasn't an initial warning sign; however, the details of the rebate should have cast a cloud. The long waiting period to file followed by a brief application period, suggested something shady. In general, consumers should be leery of rebates that require long waiting times. The best rebate is the instant rebate.

At Winter NAMM 2009 in Anaheim, Calif., Garritan announced the release of its Authorized Steinway Virtual Concert Grand Piano, Basic Edition ($99.99), a sample-based software piano instrument developed in collaboration with piano manufacturer Steinway & Sons and available as a download.

OTR88 is an electric piano physical emulation developped by Devine Machine. It aims to offer in a few drags and clicks what used to take hours with a screwdriver and lots of sweat with a real electric piano.

Pittsburgh native Paul Cohen makes a brief appearance in Brad Pitt's new movie, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." You can watch the movie a thousand times, but you still won't see his face anywhere in the film. Instead, it's Cohen's hands that get all the attention.

Eight local pianists gathered Wednesday to practice for Thursday's "88 x 8" concert at First Baptist Church in downtown Jackson. The concert will feature eight different grand and baby grand pianos on stage, all being played at once. This is the second year the event has been held in Jackson. Organizers say the pianos being played together sound like a symphony.

Roland is pleased to introduce the latest in its line of upright digital pianos, the RM-700 Digital Piano. Featuring Roland's finest piano touch and sounds, innovative educational and entertainment features and a compact design, the RM-700 is a great centerpiece for any home.

Kate Moss and Jamie Hince are reportedly set to take their fledgling relationship to the next level - by making sweet music together. The British supermodel - who recently celebrated her 35th birthday - is keen to learn how to play the piano, so has asked Jamie - a guitarist in Brit band The Kills - to help her.

The 16ft (4.9m) piano Tom Hanks walked on in his 1988 hit film Big has been given to a US children's museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The instrument was offered to the Please Touch Museum by a US couple who bought it after the film's release. It was built in Philadelphia by Remo Saraceni, who called his invention a Walking Piano.

Nationally known pianist and composer Donn Rochlin will teach a Just for Fun Piano class in Keizer on Wednesday.

An all-Mendelssohn organ and piano concert will be presented at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 23 on the campus of Dordt College. The theme was chosen in celebration of the 200th anniversary of composer Felix Mendelssohn. Artist-in-Residence Dr. Robert Horton will perform, along with clarinetists Dr. Karen DeMol and Dr. Beverly Gibson.

So to fit it all in to a filled-to-the-gills schedule more and more students have turned to taking their piano lessons on the Internet. They've proven that not only is it doable, but that they have the brains and musical ability to improve and learn, and they have a blast at the same time. And the online instruction is even more personal than one would expect.

Sensing the dad was genuine, McPherson, now a professor of music education at the University of Illinois, agreed to meet his daughter. Upon first hearing Tiffany, then only 7, the professor was deeply impressed. She played from memory - not just the notes, but with great expression.

A family in the church recently donated the eight new Roland digital pianos and provides a fund for their ongoing maintenance, says Michael Elsbernd, the church director of music ministry and head of the piano lab.   The lessons are designed to reach students who otherwise would not be able to afford private piano instruction, he says.

When the e-mail arrived, Miriam Snyder figured it was a joke, or maybe even a computer virus.   There was no way that Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band could really be asking Miriam's husband, David, to repair their touring piano.   "I almost deleted it," she said of the e-mail.   But the message turned out to be the real deal, sent by a band technician.

Smoke curls from the chimney of a log cabin as strains of "Over the Rainbow" drift from a nearby barn. Inside, Darrell Fandrich plays at an upright piano, surrounded by disemboweled pianos that soon will bear his name.

Stanislav Khristenko, a Russian pianist, and Qi Kong, of China took first places in their respective contests and age groups at the fourth annual B–sendorfer USASU and Schimmel USASU piano competitions held recently at Arizona State University.

Korg unveils the LP-350 Digital Piano, featuring rich and expressive, realistic piano sound based on the latest Korg sampling technology. This full 88-note keyboard is specially designed to complement the modern lifestyle in a fashionable and functional, yet unobtrusive way. Measuring a mere 10.9" deep, the slim-line cabinet design fits easily into nearly any environment, and two available finishes complement nearly any decor „ chic black or elegant white.

The songbook in Schuler's head is comprised of more than 3,500 tunes, and the number keeps growing.   "If I can whistle it, I can play it on piano," said the musician.   If Schuler doesn't know a requested song by the title, hum a few bars and he can pick it up. Schuler, who taught himself to play piano by ear, remembers beginning at a very young age. He also played the trumpet for many years. Though he's now made a career of playing piano, it was his trumpet skills that scored him a place on stage at the famed Carnegie Hall.

Yamaha Keyboard Division announces the Winter NAMM 2009 launch of the AvantGrand Piano. With its highly advanced sound reproduction and sampling technology, the AvantGrand is the first piano ever crafted to truly capture the sound, touch, action and physical resonance of a concert-quality grand piano without the tuning, cost or footprint of a comparable stringed instrument.

The Platteel School of Piano and Voice recently relocated to the First Congregational Church in Squantum. The owner and instructor for the school, Eniko Konye Platteel, 45, has been teaching for 20 years.   She fell in love with music at a young age.   "My mom said I could sing before I could talk," Platteel said.   Platteel, who has lived in Holbrook since 1994, grew up in Hungary.

From the conductor's stand in Millsaps College's Ford Center recital hall, Timothy Coker instructs eight pianists, each sitting behind a grand piano, to turn to the song, "For People With Long Ears." At his countdown„and amid a few chuckles„they attempt to play together, producing a sound resembling a donkey's hee-haw rather than a melody. With the music becoming increasingly difficult, the maestro takes a different approach to rehearsal. "Who is the cuckoo?" he asks the pianists. "I'm the cuckoo!" resounds from an invisible pianist on the other side of the stage.

While the riverfront estate was under construction in the mid-1920s, Jessie duPont asked the Steinway Co. to build her "a very fancy unusual grand piano," Murphy said. What Steinway created was a six-legged instrument known as an "art case piano" because of its ornately decorated sides resembling a coat of arms, she said.

The first recorded monster concert was held in 1830 in Vienna, when Carl Czerny provided an arrangement for a multiple-piano concert to benefit families displaced by a Danube river flood. They were especially popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, Mrs. Wyatt said.

WYCHAVON District Council is appealing for information about where a fly tipped piano came from.   The piano which is an old upright which was originally supplied by W H AUSTIN, Worcester was deposited in a hedgerow on the Wadbourgh to Abbotts Wood Road.

On Saturday afternoon, 85 piano students, aged between 5 and 65, joined together for their annual piano playathon to benefit the homeless at First Parish Unitarian Church in Norwell.   When all their tunes were played, the group harmoniously raised $4,000.

Charles Merkel is a piano tuner.   This is the busiest time of the year for him.   There is a timelessness to that, I said, and I mentioned something about people standing around a piano singing Christmas carols.   Merkel shook his head.   A piano is a wooden acoustic instrument, and it is affected by humidity, he said matter of factly.   The air is drier in the winter.   That's why they need tuning now, he explained.

Was it a theft?   A prank?   A roundabout effort to bring some holiday cheer to the police?   Authorities in Harwich, Massachusetts, are probing the mysterious appearance of a piano, in good working condition, in the middle of the woods.

Discovered by a woman who was walking a trail, the Baldwin Acrosonic piano, model number 987, is intact -- and, apparently, in tune.   Sgt. Adam Hutton of the Harwich Police Department said information has been broadcast to all the other police departments in the Cape Cod area in hopes of drumming up a clue, however minor it may be.

Rex Lewis-Clack then, as now, was a study in contrasts: blind and full of enthusiasm, yet unable to dress himself, or even carry on a basic conversation. But with everything Rex couldn't do, he could perform a musical feat.   Stahl played him a song he had never heard, with his old piano teacher singing along.   Rex, who can't see the keys, was able to replay the entire sequence, after hearing it only once.   Rex is a musical savant, one of a handful of people in the world who share a mysterious combination of blindness, mental disability, and musical genius.

Piano faculty members of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music were in New York last week, selecting some of the 165 new Steinway pianos that will grace concert halls, practice rooms and teaching studios at CCM soon.   Thanks to a deal struck by CCM's new dean, Douglas Knehans, the music and media school will become an "All Steinway School."   On Tuesday, UC's board of trustees approved the purchase of the new pianos to the tune of more than $4 million, saving more than $1.8 million off the retail price.

Brand name piano dealers will tell you that "Grey Market" instruments are not good risks.   Grey market pianos are instruments that are bought at auction in Japan; they are crated up and shipped over here by the container load.   You can spot a grey market Yamaha instantly it will have two pedals instead of the customary three.   It seems that North American customers need an extra pedal even though most piano players do not play music that requires it!