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Show rJ^ , ^-u^w LETTERS Send to: Contemporary Keyboard, [C r> 20605 Lazaneo, Cupertino, CA 95014. y" I am gratified and humbled to be notified by CK that I have been awarded, for the fourth year, the Best Classical Organist award in your poll [see CK, Dec. 79]. I thank you and all those who were kind enough to make this award possible. I also hasten to mention that it is a delight for me to trace the progress CK has made as a magazine and to be a part of such an outstanding publication that is of such a tremendous value to the keyboard world. Virgil Fox Palm Beach, FL Thank you very much for your telegram informing me that I have been voted Best Classical Pianist by the readers of CK. I am looking forward to receiving the award. Greetings and good wishes. Vladimir Horowitz New York, NY I am very happy to hear that the readers of CK have voted me Best Studio Synthesist in your annual Keyboard Poll. This news brings great joy to me-probably a greater joy than most musicians might feel, because unlike those who perform live before audiences, I work alone in my studio for months at a time. I wish to express my sincere gratitude to you and to the readers of your magazine. Isao Tomita Tokyo, japan Many thanks for the mailgram telling me about the 79 Poll, and-1 want to thank all the fans and readers of CK for making me a winner again. In all my travels both here and in Europe, I have found many readers of CK, and they are all very happy with the,various articles that cover all aspects of music for ail keyboard players. Wishing you continued success, and my thanks again to all of you. Art Van Damme Northridge, CA I want to congratulate you people on the fantastic interview with Wendy Carlos [see CK, Dec. 79]. Wendy is a truly amazing person, and the first to have put into words what I have often felt about synthesized music. You put together a super article, and should all be very proud of your work. Mike McDonald Eugene, OR In regard to some points raised in your Wendy Carlos story, as long as synthesizer designers use AGO manuals and musicians use synthesizers for live performance (Keith Emerson, what have you started?), the synthesizer will not progress. There is only so much one can do with bussbars and J-wires. Digital synthesis can create very accurate voicing at a great expense, but not accurate nuance if designers use manuals as controllers. The effort to employ computers to generate music goes to waste when one tries to control subtle timbre changes using only pushbuttons. If Wendy Carlos wants to see synthesizers evolve, then we must change our priorities from sound generation to sound control. I feel that there is nothing wrong with analog synthesis, but an AGO keyboard is not the best controller. However, I can make more money cranking out cheap lead and poly string synthesizers than by working on my computer controllers. I hope more musicians take their synthesizers off the road, hook them to microcomputers, and explore. Paul Schreiber MicroMusic Associates Austin, TX I looked over the "Good King Wenceslas" variations [see CK, Dec. 79] with much interest. I think it is an effective set, and I have recommended it to one of my students who is particularly interested in contemporary compositions. Tom Darter's variation, for example, develops the idea of the tune in augmentation, diminution, and other respects, in a most interesting fashion, and-most important-the piano writing is effective. This sort of collaborative effort should be of much interest to your readers, and it makes for a contribution of lasting value too. Walter Schenkman Greeley, CO I hope many people will appreciate the real nature of David Burge's three variations on "Good King Wenceslas." They are actually also variations on the last movement of the Bartok Piano Sonata, itself a set of variations on a theme which is remarkably close to "GKW," presented in a fashion that uses Bartok piano writing styles from both within and without the Sonata. Way to go, Dave! / Barney Childs \/ Redlands, CA Oscar Peterson's winning your Best Jazz Pianist award shows how unsophisticated your readers are. Oscar must hold the world's record for the greatest number of bland renditions of popular songs; in addition to those many songs he has simply ruined with his pathetic sense of arranging. He completely destroyed Bill Evans's "Waltz For Debby" [from Return Engagement, Verve, V3HB-8842], for instance. Poor Oscar has such a limited vocabulary of voicings that he has to rely on speed to wow his audiences. Your Poll perpetuates the assumption that technique, which we all know Oscar has plenty of, has something to do with jazz. It also reveals the inability of many jazz listeners to hear vertically. There is great confusion among jazz educators and even musicians themselves about the difference between European and American music. European music is horizontal, whereas American music (jazz) is vertical. From Bach's voice leading to Schoenberg's tone rows, European music is once and for all horizontal. It took American music to put the music of Western civilization into the vertical, where it belongs. American audiences are still trying to listen to jazz hori-Continued on page s A fOMTFWPriBABv ftvnniDn/ftnoiiiov i |
