Mason & Hamlin CC94 Concert Grand

The world’s finest concert grand piano is now calling the Hi-Desert Cultural Center “Home”

The Hi-Desert Cultural Center has received a truly extraordinary donation from celebrated American piano manufacturer, Mason & Hamlin – and with it comes new concert series’, new educational programs, and untold new opportunities for the Cultural Center and those it serves. At 9 feet, 4 inches in length, weighing nearly three-quarters of a ton with its unique Crown Retention System and full-perimeter cast-iron plate, and carrying the prestigious label as the “piano of choice” by some of the world’s most acclaimed virtuoso pianists and composers including Sergei Rachmaninoff, Franz Liszt, and Maurice Ravel, the new concert grand piano is arguably the world’s finest. It’s also a rare handcrafted instrument, chosen to bring its world-renowned sound to the stages of not only Disney Hall, Lincoln Center, Smithsonian Institute, Juilliard School, Berklee College of Music, Harvard University, Yale University, Brigham Young University, Boston Conservatory, Carnegie Mellon University, and University of California Berkley, but also now, the Hi-Desert Cultural Center in Joshua Tree.

Not only is this the finest piano to ever grace the Cultural Center, but it is also of a quality simply not found in most performing arts venues.” – Jarrod Radnich, Mason & Hamlin Artist
Cultural Center President, Jarrod Radnich, who recently became a Mason & Hamlin Concert Artist, was personally introduced to their pianos in February 2012 when he was featured on NBC’s Today show with Mason & Hamlin and PianoDisc, the manufacturer of the world’s best-selling piano player system. The segment highlighted Radnich’s coaching of a Miss America contestant from over 2,000 miles away using a PianoDisc-equipped Mason & Hamlin. Now, thanks to this enormous donation the Cultural Center will make this type of music instruction available more widely and will serve as a hub for this type of distance learning. The new concert grand is fitted with PianoDisc’s state-of-the-art player system, the SilentDrive HD, that is completely invisible to the audience. With this special enhancement, the new concert grand can, quite literally, allow a pianist to perform not only for an audience at the Cultural Center, but also simultaneously for audiences around the world as every nuance of the performer’s movements is reproduced on another piano of any make that has a player system installed. The system will also allow the Center to record the performances of world-class pianists for re-performance at another time or location, and will facilitate the back-and-forth type of exchange between the Center’s piano and pianos at other educational institutions that is necessary for high-level distance music education.

While these opportunities are new to many, it is not so with the Cultural Center or Radnich. In 2010 he performed a first-of-its-kind long-distance concert at the Music Center at Strathmore – from across the country at the Cultural Center. It was also from the Center that participants in the Intel Visionary Conference that same year in Washington D.C. saw Radnich’s demonstration of long-distance music instruction in what Intel’s Government and Education Strategist, Eileen Lento, called “the zenith of Intel’s event on innovation in education.” A new pilot project involving the Cultural Center, the Conservatory of the Plains, PianoDisc, Mason & Hamlin, and Google-YouTube will soon open the door for advanced music education and instrumental performance to even the most remote locations, overcoming traditional geographic barriers.

While the educational opportunities are enormous, even more so are the music concert and performance opportunities. “A piano of this consequence is rare and is the type of instrument on which the most accomplished artists truly desire to perform. We intend to utilize this drawing power and our recording system to bring in artists who otherwise simply would not be attainable,” Radnich explains. “As a composer and concert pianist, it’s paramount that my sound be incomparable and that my creativity not be limited by the constraints of antiquated piano manufacturing techniques. I find this piano to be the acme of depth and warmth of tone, and, with Mason & Hamlin’s 150-year-old heritage for technologically innovating the industry, their use of the WNG advanced composite action enables me to compose and perform original piano pieces with a nuance and precision that simply cannot be performed or replicated on any other piano available today.”

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GREAT NEWS FOR SEASON PACKAGE TICKET HOLDERS! Should your schedule change and you find yourself needing to attend a performance on a different date — if you give the Box Office at least 48 hours notice prior to your ticketed performance, management will attempt to exchange your ticket for a different performance of the same show!

 

 

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