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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Jazz Piano

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      We asked Samara Joy, Hanif Abdurraqib, Vijay Iyer and others to share their favorite tracks showcasing what might be the most nuanced instrument in jazz.Over the past few months, The New York Times has asked all kinds of experts to answer the question, What would you play a friend to make them fall in love with Duke Ellington? How about Alice Coltrane? We’ve covered bebop, vocal jazz, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra and the music of the 21st century.This month, we’re focused on the piano, perhaps the most nuanced instrument in jazz. At the hands of an artist like Thelonious Monk or Shirley Scott, Herbie Hancock or Geri Allen, the piano captures a vast range of emotions — some easily identified; others more textured — while blurring the lines between jazz, ambient and classical. It’s an instrument so equally subtle and pronounced that even one of the most celebrated pianists in jazz still has trouble assessing it.“I’m trying to figure out what the black and white keys do after 86 years!” Ahmad Jamal said in a 2020 interview. “I first sat down at the piano when I was 3 years old, and I’m still trying to figure out what they do!” Indeed, there’s no other instrument that heightens and soothes like the piano, its melodic chords a worthy complement to stronger-sounding drums and horns.Below, we asked writers, critics, musicians and D.J.s to recommend their favorite jazz recordings that put the piano in the spotlight. Enjoy reading their commentary and listening to the excerpts, and find a playlist at the bottom of the article with full tracks. As always, be sure to leave your own favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Dan Tepfer, pianist and composerSome people are attracted to what they know, others to what they don’t know. If you’re the second kind of person, I think you’ll find the deep mystery of this track fascinating. There’s something about the exquisite density of the harmonies, about Thelonious Monk’s subtle variations in phrasing, about his overall attitude, that transforms the simple melody of the original song into a whole universe, one you could lose yourself in. Then, at 1:49, he does something seemingly impossible: He bends a piano note. Even though I know the trick to doing this, I’m always amazed at how effective it is in his hands. But what’s even more remarkable is Monk’s ability, throughout the track, to extract a sound out of the piano that’s like nothing else. It’s at once angular and approachable, bold and vulnerable, complex and childlike. Perhaps more than anyone, Monk embodied jazz’s highest calling: to sound radically like yourself.“Just a Gigolo”Thelonious Monk◆ ◆ ◆Samara Joy, vocalist“Father Flanagan,” a song composed and played by the great Barry Harris, is one of my favorite songs highlighting the piano. Although George Duvivier and Leroy Williams play on this tune as well, Barry starts the song in a rubato fashion with his deeply lyrical interpretation of the melody before bringing the band into time for the top of his solo on this beautiful walking ballad. A special element of this particular track that proves his superior sense of melodic playing is the fact that Barry sings as he’s soloing, which can be heard if you listen closely. He played with so much soul and melody, everything cohesive yet free flowing. From intro to ending, solo to comping, Barry Harris on this recording showcases an incredible command of the instrument and details exactly how the piano should be played.◆ ◆ ◆Hanif Abdurraqib, writerThe title track to “Money Jungle” is one of my favorite jazz piano moments. I love “Money Jungle” as an album, because it sounds, in a way, how it felt to make. Duke Ellington tossed Charles Mingus and Max Roach in a room for a day, and committed to making a recording, clashes of style be damned, the generational gap between he and the other two be damned. Mingus and Roach got into it constantly; at one point Mingus stormed out and had to be coaxed back into the session by Ellington. The title track works to me as a great piano song because of how unwavering Ellington’s playing is, even — or perhaps especially — in the moment in the middle of the song, where it seems Mingus grows impatient, his bass attempting to push its way into the brief silences between Ellington’s bursts of piano. I like players who aren’t afraid to live out the tensions of a session, of a day, of a life, within the music. Ellington was always, but especially by that point, a consummate professional. He steers the song into a perfect landing, even as Mingus’s bass fades, sounding entirely exhausted.“Money Jungle”Duke Ellington◆ ◆ ◆Vijay Iyer, pianist and composerGeri Allen showed up in the 1980s with powerful grooves, exuberant melodies and astonishing polyphonies between her anchoring left hand and her wry, fluidly inventive right. This composition, named for her friend Kabuya Pamela Bowens-Saffo, feels like a sturdy, splendid palace built entirely from the peculiar details of her musical language: the splayed intervals proliferating and surrounding you as ostinati; the asymmetric rhythms stacked in contrapuntal towers; the jagged, exploratory right-hand lines weaving around and across these patterns; all of her mercurial tendencies solidified and given full force. This was the music of Geri Allen: clear, ebullient, and resoundingly complete. Her premature passing in 2017 broke our hearts, and we are all still catching up to her artistry.“When Kabuya Dances”Geri Allen◆ ◆ ◆Keanna Faircloth, writer and podcast hostHip-hop is a half-century old this year and one artist that has provided a treasure trove of sample material for some of the most significant tracks in the rap canon is Ahmad Jamal. His compositions are a pot of gold. With the recent passing of David Jolicoeur (a.k.a. Trugoy the Dove or Plug Two) of De La Soul, I am reminded of how the title track from that group’s 1996 album, “Stakes Is High,” is anchored on a segment derived from Jamal’s “Swahililand,” composed over 20 years prior and released on the album “Jamal Plays Jamal.” The track’s haunting and percussive chord progressions provide a perfectly ominous backdrop for De La Soul’s reality-rooted lyrics. The song’s co-producer, J Dilla, was heavily influenced by jazz — not unlike his contemporaries Pete Rock, Q-Tip and others — and his contributions further solidified the genre as the mother of hip-hop.“Swahililand”Ahmad Jamal◆ ◆ ◆Marcus J. Moore, jazz writerIn 1964, one year into his post as the lead pianist in Miles Davis’s band, Herbie Hancock released the concept album “Empyrean Isles,” a tribute to an imagined world in the Great Eastern Sea. On “The Egg,” the LP’s improvised centerpiece, Hancock and the drummer Tony Williams open with a mesmerizing loop of keys and percussion, over which the trumpeter Freddie Hubbard blows triumphant wails, giving the song a pronounced majesty. But it isn’t until the midway point that Hancock’s genius shines through: A classical pianist, his notes pivot between light and dark, joy and melancholy, setting up the second half’s more traditional fare. Such ingenuity would typify Hancock throughout his career. To this day, he’s still a wandering soul embracing the youth movement, still bending genres while expanding the idea of what jazz can entail.“The Egg”Herbie Hancock◆ ◆ ◆Cosmo Baker, D.J.On “Maimoun,” Stanley Cowell (a jazz giant who hasn’t gotten his props) accompanies the great Clifford Jordan on his tour de force album, “Glass Bead Games,” released in 1973 on the Strata-East label. While this version isn’t a “piano song,” one cannot overlook the power and pulse of the instrument here. There’s an almost solemn feeling to the introduction, which quickly transforms to a melody filled with immense joy and restraint against Jordan’s towering sax. Though Cowell’s piano helps construct the magnificent cathedral Jordan is building, the true possibilities unfold once his role shifts. It’s leading Jordan’s tenor, then sparring with it, feigning, teasing, until the 2:16 mark when Cowell takes the reins and leads the listener to the very soul of the composition — that feeling of peace and nostalgia. With some art, the aim is to invite one into a place. On “Maimoun,” Cowell is letting the listener into a very magical place — tender, vulnerable and exquisitely gorgeous — through his keys. And keys open doors.“Maimoun”Clifford Jordan◆ ◆ ◆Atiyyah Khan, D.J. and arts journalistI first heard this track by Abdullah Ibrahim, formerly known as Dollar Brand, only a few months ago but was immediately hooked. What drew me to it was the title “Sathima,” a dedication to Ibrahim’s former partner, the late singer Sathima Bea Benjamin, who was an incredible artist in her own right. Funk is not the first association with Ibrahim, and yet this tune is incredibly funky, one that would work easily on dance floors. The groove chugs rhythmically and steadily forward toward freedom, but there is enough space left for those striking horn solos to come in, and Ibrahim’s piano flourishes situate it in the spiritual realm. It’s head music that moves the body, too.The tune appears on the 1975 album “African Herbs,” one year after Ibrahim’s hit “Mannenberg” was released; this composition follows with a similar sound — 11 minutes of uplifting joy. Though Ibrahim was predominantly based in the United States, this album was recorded in South Africa, giving it that signature sound thanks to the incredible musicians he gathered for this session.“Sathima”Dollar Brand◆ ◆ ◆Jacqueline Schneider, writerIf music were a meal, “Lonely Woman” would have Michelin stars. Despite its name, Horace Silver’s seven-minute composition leaves me feeling the opposite: quite attended to, emotionally full — even sentimental. The kind of song that transports you into a meditative state, its melodic chord pairings recall possibility, self-reflection and optimism. The piece progresses as a conversation in the language of piano — each key enunciated as its vibrations pan soulfully to distribute the sound. When I want to pay homage to an entire genre, I play this song. Silver, who started as a saxophonist, reinvented himself as a pianist with Stan Getz and went on to join Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers collective, representing, to me, legacy, hope and potential.“Lonely Woman”Horace Silver◆ ◆ ◆Ashley Kahn, writerThink soft, languid splashes on the mirrored surface of a pond at twilight. Minimal gesture, maximum effect: nearly seven minutes of lyrical serenity and hushed, harmonic stillness. It’s a deep cut — you won’t hear it played onstage — but also a landmark of modern jazz, one that defied the typical form and flow of chord changes, while echoing the guileless air of a Satie “Gnossienne,” or the insouciance of Chopin’s “Berceuse.” Bill Evans considered “Peace Piece” a one-time, impromptu moment, never revisiting it after recording it in 1958. Intending to deliver a take of “Some Other Time” from “On the Town,” he found himself entranced by the opening chords, which he looped into a meditative ostinato, layering sharp statements that grew in density and weight, the moody effect morphing into profound emotion. It still feels pristine and stands as a stellar example of at least three ideas: Evans’s brilliance at weaving together jazz piano with Romanticism and various 20th-century classical sources. The ascent of modal jazz — slow-moving harmony, pedal-point bass lines — that crystallized a year later with Evans’s participation on Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue” (“Peace Piece” provided the foundation for “Flamenco Sketches”). And the covalent nature of jazz, eager to bond with worthy musical elements from all corners, edges, paths.“Peace Piece”Bill Evans◆ ◆ ◆Nduduzo Makhathini, pianist and improviser“Vukani, vukani madoda ilanga liphumile” — opening chantThrough the sun, as a metaphor, Bheki Mseleku invites the listener to awaken to a new consciousness. Symbolically, this record marked the dawn of democracy in South Africa, and its inherent rhetorics. The song title “Sulyman Salud” refers to the African American jazz pianist McCoy Tyner’s Islamic devotion name. Given Mseleku’s connection to modal music, one could read this offering as an expression of the continuities in the spiritual pursuits in Black arts across the Atlantic. It is also a nod to one of Mseleku’s greatest piano heroes.“You are the sun of the soil, Sulyman Salud” — chant before piano solo“Sulyman Salud” enables us to hear the sonic affinities over the Atlantic Ocean. It says to us: “The erasure project did not entirely succeed; some parts of our collective memory still hold intact.” Here, the listener is invited to hear how jazz, as a memory, reverberated back in the continent. In this sense, jazz not only inspired Africans here at home, it also reminded them of the inherent “jazziness” — it invoked community. Traces of such claims are found in this piece as it indexes a long lineage of pianism in Africa and its diasporas.“Sulyman Salud”Bheki Mseleku◆ ◆ ◆Martin Johnson, writerIn a jazz world that passionately reveres its pantheon, the great pianist Mal Waldron (1925-2002) is often overlooked. He has a compelling back story: tenure with Billie Holiday, Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy and Max Roach, an onstage nervous breakdown, and a series of magical collaborations with the saxophonist Steve Lacy. He’s a premiere interpreter of Thelonious Monk, and like that jazz great, he’s among the artists hailed in Matthew Shipp’s iconic essay on the Black Mystery School Pianists. Mal had a unique and compelling style. His left-hand playing was insistent and brooding; his tempo might best be described as unhurried. His approach suggested a man who had something profound to say and a disrupting urgency to say it. “Snake Out,” one of his signature compositions, showcases this intensity beautifully. It goes beyond the traditional tension and release and becomes incantation and ecstasy.“Snake Out”Mal Waldron◆ ◆ ◆Michael J. West, jazz writerYou can’t really bend notes on an acoustic piano; that’s just the physics of the instrument. Andrew Hill instead bends the principles of harmony and rhythm around the piano. On “East 9th Street,” from his 1975 album “Divine Revelation,” he starts while comping Jimmy Vass’s soprano saxophone solo. Hill falls out of key and so far behind the beat that he displaces it — as if he were on tape, being played back at slow speed. When it’s his turn to solo, he veers in wide curves around the harmony and seems to be fighting with the bassist Chris White and the drummer Art Lewis over where the syncopation should be. But he’s always in control: bending the music, but to his will. To top it off, Hill’s ebullient, Afro-Latin composition is terrific.“East 9th Street”Andrew Hill◆ ◆ ◆Giovanni Russonello, Times jazz criticStanding at the interchange between the stride piano he’d learned growing up in Pittsburgh, and the hot pot of bebop he landed in after moving to New York, Erroll Garner felt his way into a playing style that was as sharply subversive as it was irresistible. All that, without ever learning to read music. The mid-20th century was a good time for visionary subterfuge in American music; just because Garner conducted his revolutions gently doesn’t mean he wasn’t on the front lines. His left hand thrummed guitarlike chords, chased bass lines into the mud, leaped through harmonies like a stride pianist’s would. His right hand could zip and add bright dashes of color, or join the left in thick rhythmic smudges of harmony. Recording the old popular tune “I Don’t Know Why” in 1950, for his outstanding Columbia Records debut, Garner’s fingers lick at the keys and he drags the melody along, dandling it, relishing it. The song itself is unremarkable, but the playing amounts to unmitigated pleasure. White journalists liked to portray him as a simple-minded savant, but the real Garner was a fighter as well as a genius: He and his manager, Martha Glaser, would later sue Columbia for releasing an album without his permission, winning a first-of-its-kind decision and drawing a hard line for musicians’ rights.“I Don’t Know Why”Erroll Garner◆ ◆ ◆◆ ◆ ◆ More

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      Lars Vogt, Acclaimed Pianist and Conductor, Is Dead at 51

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      Piano technique for Mr. Vogt was a means to expression, not an end in itself. He avoided repertoire that called for mere virtuosity.Lars Vogt, a sensitive, communicative pianist whose warmth as a collaborator made him an outstanding chamber musician and a conductor of growing stature, died on Monday at a clinic in Erlangen, Germany. He was 51.His manager, Celia Willis, said the cause was esophageal cancer, which Mr. Vogt had learned he had in March 2021. He had spoken frankly about his prospects while continuing to perform, up until a few weeks before his death.“Music is just such an amazing thing. I find that even more in these times, when I spend a lot of time in hospitals and with doctors, and of course wondering how things are going to go,” Mr. Vogt said in an online interview with the pianist Zsolt Bognar in July, “and yet in music you get transported into this world where you forget everything.”Mr. Vogt created and shared those worlds in sublimely free, quite personal detail, and he had little interest in show for the sake of show. His was a “loving” approach to the piano, he told Pianist magazine in 2016, one that tried “to get the sound out of the keyboard, rather than into it.”If the results could sometimes seem idiosyncratic, at his best he played with “a sense of perfect equilibrium, a balance of lines that sounded simple and natural, but could only have been the result of thoughtful calibration,” as Allan Kozinn of The New York Times wrote in a review of a recital in 2006.Technique for Mr. Vogt was a means to expression, not an end in itself. He avoided repertoire that called for mere virtuosity — he once recorded an album of pieces written for children — and he eventually unburdened himself of the pressure placed on pianists to memorize the works they learn, so he could perform without the nervousness he had long felt onstage.He took the time to involve himself deeply in the works he played solo, which came mostly from the high Germanic tradition — ranging from Bach, whose “Goldberg” Variations he recorded to acclaim, to contemporary composers like Thomas Larcher. It was the music of Brahms, however, that was always closest to Mr. Vogt, for the solace of its melancholy.Mr. Vogt’s last public appearances, in which he played Brahms, were in June at Spannungen, a chamber music festival that he founded in 1998 that takes place in an Art Nouveau hydroelectric power plant in Heimbach, Germany. (Its name translates to “Voltages” as well as “Tensions.”) And it was in chamber music that he excelled, especially with the violinist Christian Tetzlaff and his sister, the cellist Tanya Tetzlaff.Mr. Vogt recorded Brahms and Dvorak with the Tetzlaffs as a trio and, with Mr. Tetzlaff, set down fervently expressive accounts of violin sonatas by Mozart, Schumann and Brahms. Those exquisite recordings, made for the Ondine label, were widely judged worthy of reference status not because they aimed to be a final word on the works involved, or even appeared to be, but because the audible generosity of their partnership made for a unique focus and intensity.“This is chamber-playing at its most humane,” the critic Richard Bratby wrote of their recording of Beethoven’s Opus 30 sonatas in Gramophone last year, “impossible to hear without feeling a renewed love and admiration for music and performers alike.”It was also as an avowed collaborator, rather than as a more forceful leader, that Mr. Vogt took on conducting, which he decided to explore after stepping in at short notice to lead Beethoven from the keyboard with the Camerata Salzburg early in the 2010s.“There was no conductor, just a very good concertmaster, and it was so much fun, so easy,” he recalled of that concert in an interview with Gramophone magazine in 2017. “I rang my agent afterwards from the taxi to the airport and said, ‘I need to know how far I can go with this. It doesn’t matter which orchestra it’s with, I just love it so much.’”Hired after a single concert, Mr. Vogt became the music director of the Royal Northern Sinfonia, based in Newcastle, England, in 2015; together, they recorded the Beethoven concertos with a sparkling pliancy and the Brahms with an unusual tenderness of touch. He took the same post with the Chamber Orchestra of Paris in 2020 and remained there until his death.Conducting is “like chamber music,” Mr. Vogt told Gramophone. “I want to encourage the character of the music, encourage people to go to their limits of expression, and ideally get them to the state that they want to do that, enjoy searching to the depths.”Mr. Vogt performing a program of Mozart, Schubert and Brahms at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2007.Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesLars Vogt was born on Sept. 8, 1970, in Düren, near Cologne, the third child of Marie-Luise Vogt, a secretary, and Paul Vogt, an engineer who also played soccer to a high standard. He and his siblings learned music as just one of many youthful activities, soccer included.But Mr. Vogt’s first piano teacher saw promise soon after he had started at age 6. He won a national competition for young musicians at 14, and at the same time began studying with the renowned pedagogue Karl-Heinz Kämmerling at the Hanover University of Music and Drama (now the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media). Their lessons continued informally until Mr. Kämmerling died in 2012, when Mr. Vogt succeeded his teacher as professor of piano at that university.Suitably firmed up technically under Mr. Kämmerling’s demanding tutelage, Mr. Vogt took second prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition in 1990. That experience proved as important for the personal relationships it brought as for the international tours that followed.On the podium during the Leeds final for Mr. Vogt’s intelligent if introverted reading of the Schumann Piano Concerto was the English maestro Simon Rattle; their partnership became one of the many friendships through which the pianist thrived musically, not least during a stint in the 2003-4 season as the pianist in residence at the Berlin Philharmonic, which Mr. Rattle then led.Mr. Rattle also planted the seeds that bloomed into Mr. Vogt’s podium career. He told him after a joint appearance with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in 1991 — an American debut in which the pianist “exercised his command with personality and poise” in Beethoven, John Henken wrote in The Los Angeles Times — that he would be a conductor within a decade.That comment “hit me like a lightning bolt, because I’d never thought of it,” Mr. Vogt told The Scotsman in 2015. “I guess he noticed how curiously I observed what he was doing. I was fascinated at what miracles can be achieved by something that doesn’t — ideally — produce any sound.”Mr. Vogt’s first marriage, to the composer Tatjana Komarova, ended in divorce. He married the violinist Anna Reszniak, the concertmaster of the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra, in 2017. She survives him, as do his parents; his siblings, Karsten Vogt and Ilka Fischboeck; and his daughters, Emma Vogt, Charlotte Kuehn and Isabelle Vogt, an actress with whom he recorded melodramas by Schumann and Strauss.“He was at once the wildest and most sensitive musician I know,” Mr. Tetzlaff, who performed with Mr. Vogt for 26 years and considered him his “closest comrade,” said of the pianist in an interview with Van magazine shortly after Mr. Vogt’s death.“I’ve met a lot of musicians who have become very successful by talking about themselves, presenting themselves well, and who seem to have no experience with doubt,” Mr. Tetzlaff went on. “But I learned that music can only speak fully in freedom and love. It’s a thing you only experience with very few musicians, artists like Lars.” More

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      Franz Mohr, Piano Tuner to the Stars, Is Dead at 94

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      “I play more in Carnegie Hall than anybody else,” he said of his career adjusting instruments for Horowitz, Gould and others, “but I have no audience.”Franz Mohr, who in his 24 years as the chief concert technician for Steinway & Sons brought a musician’s mind-set to the mechanics of important pianos and the care of those who played them, died on March 28 at his home in Lynbrook, N.Y., on Long Island, where he lived. He was 94.His son Michael, the director of restoration and customer services at Steinway, confirmed the death.“I play more in Carnegie Hall than anybody else,” Mr. Mohr said in 1990, “but I have no audience.”Sometimes a string would snap or a pedal would need adjusting during a concert, and he would step into the spotlight for a moment. But he did much of his work alone, on that famous stage and others around the world. He might have been mistaken for a pianist trying out a nine-foot grand for a recital — until he reached for his tools and began making minute adjustments, giving a tuning pin a tiny twist or a hammer a slight shave.For years, he went where the pianists went. When Vladimir Horowitz went to Russia in the 1980s, Mr. Mohr traveled with him, as did Horowitz’s favorite Steinway. Mr. Mohr made house calls at the White House when Van Cliburn played for President Gerald R. Ford in 1975, and again in 1987, when Mikhail S. Gorbachev was in Washington for arms-control talks with President Ronald Reagan.Mr. Gorbachev’s wife, Raisa, wanted Cliburn to play one of the pieces that had made him famous — Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 — but there was no orchestra. Instead, Cliburn played some Chopin and, as an encore, played and sang the Russian melody “Moscow Nights.”“I was amazed that Van Cliburn, on the spur of the moment, remembered not only the music but all the words,” Mr. Mohr recalled in his memoir, “My Life with the Great Pianists,” written with Edith Schaeffer (1992). “The Russians just melted.”He also attended to performers’ personal pianos. The pianist Gary Graffman, whose apartment is less than a block from the old location of Steinway’s Manhattan showroom, and Mr. Mohr’s home base, on West 57th Street, recalled that Mr. Mohr would come right over when a problem presented itself.“If he came because I broke strings, he would replace the strings,” Mr. Graffman said in an interview. But if more extensive work was needed — if Mr. Graffman’s almost constant practicing had worn down the hammers and new hammers had to be installed, for example — “he would take out the insides of the piano and carry it half a block to the Steinway basement. He would work on it and carry it back.” (The unit Mr. Mohr lifted out and took down the street is known as the key and action assembly, a bewildering combination of all 88 keys and the parts that respond to a pianist’s touch, driving the hammers to the strings.)Franz Mohr was born in Nörvenich, Germany, on Sept. 17, 1927, the son of Jakob Mohr, a postal worker, and Christina (Stork) Mohr. The family moved to nearby Düren when he was a child; in 1944, when he was a teenager, he survived an air raid.His interest in music began not with pianos but with the viola and the violin. He studied at academies in Cologne and Detmold and, in his 20s, played guitar and mandolin in German dance bands.He was playing Dixieland music one night when he spotted a woman on the dance floor. “I fell in love with her as soon as I saw her and said to my friends, ‘That is the girl I’m going to marry,’” he recalled in his memoir. Her name was Elisabeth Zillikens, and they married in 1954. Besides his son Michael, she survives him, as does a daughter, Ellen; seven grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. Another son, Peter, died in 2019.Tendinitis forced Mr. Mohr to give up performing when he was in his 20s, his son said, and he turned to pianos, answering a want ad from the piano manufacturer Ibach that led to an apprenticeship. Another advertisement, in 1962, sent him to the United States.It said that Steinway was looking for piano technicians — in New York. A devout churchgoer, he had made a connection with a German-speaking Baptist church in Elmhurst, Queens, that showed him the ad. He contacted Steinway and was soon hired as an assistant to William Hupfer, the company’s chief concert technician.Before long, he was tuning for stars like the famously eccentric Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, who came to New York to make recordings. (In Toronto Gould relied on another tuner, Verne Edquist, who died in 2020.)Mr. Mohr not only worked on the piano at the recording studio, he also rode around New York with Gould. “He loved Lincoln Town cars,” Mr. Mohr wrote in his memoir. “That is all he would drive. He once said to me: ‘Franz, I found out that next year’s model will be two inches shorter. So, you know what I did? I bought two Town Cars this year.”He succeeded Mr. Hupfer as Steinway’s chief concert technician in 1968. The job made him the keeper of the fleet of pianos that performers could try out before a concert in Steinway’s West 57th Street basement. They could choose the one they were most comfortable with, but there were pianos that were off limits — Horowitz’s favorite, for example.Sometimes, maybe with a wink, Mr. Mohr would let pianists try it out.  “He’d regulate Horowitz’s piano to make it feather-light and capable of an enormous range of sound,” the pianist Misha Dichter recalled. “When I’d see Franz in the Steinway basement, I’d ask to try that piano when it was parked in a corner. He’d conspiratorially look over his shoulder and then give me the OK. It was like starting up a Lamborghini.”Mr. Mohr, who retired in 1992, said in 1990 that the first time he tuned Arthur Rubinstein’s piano, before a recital at Yale, he cleaned the keys. Then he proudly told Rubinstein what he had done.“Young man,” Rubinstein told him as they stood in the wings with the audience already in their seats, “you didn’t know, but nobody ever cleans the keys for me. It makes them too slippery.”Mr. Mohr had to find something to gum up the keys and find it fast, before the lights went down. The stickiest thing he could get his hands on backstage was hair spray. “I went pssst up, pssst down,” he said. “The audience laughed. But he loved it.” More

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      After a Tornado Blew His Roof Away, He Played Piano Under an Open Sky

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      The morning after Jordan Baize’s house in Kentucky was destroyed, he turned to his Yamaha piano. It was a moment of calm that his sister recorded on video.Jordan Baize returned to his house in Bremen, Ky., on Saturday to find that it had been badly damaged in a tornado. His piano was still intact, though, and he played a Christian worship song as his sister filmed.William Widmer for The New York TimesAfter emerging from his basement in Bremen, Ky., where he had sheltered during a tornado, Jordan Baize saw that the roof of his house had blown away, doors had come off their hinges, and shattered glass and insulation were scattered everywhere.His Yamaha piano, however, was still intact. Under an overcast sky the next morning, Mr. Baize sat alone in his living room and started to play a song that had been stuck in his head for days.Whitney Brown, Mr. Baize’s sister, said she heard her brother playing on Saturday while she was in his bedroom packing clothes into boxes. As she started recording Mr. Baize, she recognized the tune as a Christian worship song, “There’s Something About That Name,” and recalled the words:“Kings and kingdoms will all pass away, but there’s something about that name,” a reference to Jesus Christ.Ms. Brown said those lyrics seemed apt for the situation. Her brother’s house, his “kingdom,” had been destroyed, but his hope had not been, she said.“It was healing, just to know that he was still clinging on to the hope of Jesus,” said Ms. Brown, 32, a massage therapist and doula and an owner of a saw mill.At least 88 people were killed as tornadoes tore through Kentucky, Arkansas, Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee on Friday. Twelve people were killed in Bremen.Mr. Baize’s daughter’s chicken Betty atop his Yamaha piano after the tornado.Whitney BrownMr. Baize, 34, said he had not realized that his sister was recording him but was heartened by the response after she posted the video on Facebook.“In these times, whether folks all around the world have suffered a tornado this past weekend or not, we all are facing storms of some kind,” said Mr. Baize, an accountant and consultant. “That little bit of peace and perspective that I was dealing with, in what I thought was a personal, private moment, I think has spoken to people across the world.”Mr. Baize said that he rushed into the basement with his two children, his ex-wife and her husband, and they huddled under a mattress just before the tornado was expected on Friday night. Three or four minutes later, it arrived, he said. It lasted about 30 seconds.After the storm passed, he and his children spent the night at his parents’ house nearby. When he returned to the house the next morning, he took stock of the wreckage: debris everywhere, five or six inches of rain in what was left of the house, and damaged trees that three generations of his family had grown up climbing. He turned to the piano, which was covered with water.“I thought I might just see what shape the piano is in,” he recalled thinking. “If it’s in awful, terrible shape, I can at least play once more.” He started playing and felt a sense of peace.Gloria Gaither wrote the lyrics to “There’s Something About That Name,” and her husband, Bill Gaither, composed the music. She said she was overwhelmed after seeing the video clip of the song they wrote decades ago.“A song appears in somebody’s life when they need it, evidently,” she said, “in circumstances we never could have dreamed.” More

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      Passing the Time With a Piano-Playing Pilot

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      As a pilot with United Airlines, Beau Brant flies North American routes. At every layover, he looks to play a mix of jazz, classical and more for his crew and strangers.It’s after midnight at the Palm Court in Cincinnati and staff is trying to close. Lights are dimmed as the last of the martini glasses and beer bottles are scooped up. But Beau Brant is still at the piano, playing for stragglers.Finally, a waitress gives him the “wrap-it-up” sign. Probably a good idea, since he has a flight to catch the next day, and he can’t be late.He’s the captain.Perhaps there are other piano-playing airline pilots, but how many have cut seven albums, performed for a U.S. president and had an original song used by Oprah Winfrey?Mr. Brant, 41, has been playing — and flying — most of his life. He started on the piano at age 3 and was flying by 12. A pilot with United Airlines for 17 years, Mr. Brant considers flying job number one. But with every layover, he looks for a place to play, just for the fun of it.A regular performer now at many of his layover hotels, Mr. Brant flies domestic routes from his homebase in Denver to the likes of Madison, Wis.; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; and Jackson Hole, Wyo. He still has the occasional gig back home — his house piano is a Yamaha Grand — but gets most excited about playing on the road for his crew and strangers. And he’s fallen in love with the Bar at Palm Court, a soaring Art Deco venue in the Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza: “The piano area reminds me of the Titanic’s ‘grand staircase.’ ”His sets are a rambling mix of jazz, blues, classical and show tunes. His style features a flashy right hand and plenty of bounce but no sheet music. And he loves talking about his two passions.The following are excerpts from conversations with Mr. Brant, edited for clarity.How did this fly-and-play routine come about?It started on a long-haul in 2005, New York to Frankfurt. We arrived early at the hotel, the rooms weren’t ready, and there was this beautiful piano in the lobby. I started playing for the crew and wound up playing happy hour.You used to play professionally?I grew up in Evergreen, just outside Denver, and played restaurants there when I was 12. Then hotels, weddings, birthdays — sometimes four or five nights a week. I wouldn’t be where I am today without music: Flight training is expensive.Beau Brant on the tarmac outside Jackson Hole Airport in Jackson, Wyo. “One of my favorite approaches anywhere,” the pilot said, is “landing next to the Grand Tetons.”Ryan RoweWhat are some of the most exotic places you’ve played?Paris, Zurich, Lisbon, Sydney, Shanghai. I flew international for much of my career. In 2019, I upgraded to captain on the Airbus 320 and now fly North American routes. But in the U.S., many hotels have retired their pianos, and they’re harder and harder to find.Your layover sets can last for hours — no charge?Sometimes I get food and drink, but that’s already covered by the airline. The tip jar can get anywhere from $20 to $200, but I use that to treat the crew to something. It’s definitely not about the money.What’s your drink of choice while playing?I enjoy a nice red wine, but there’s the 12-hour rule [the F.A.A. prohibits pilots from consuming alcohol 12 hours before work], and I’m very respectful of that. At the Plaza, it was soda water with lime.United knows about your double life, right?They used me in a social media commercial playing our theme song, “Rhapsody in Blue.” I play that at pretty much every performance.Are there similarities between flying and playing?There’s an art to music and an art to flying. Pilots have to operate under very strict procedures, but we can put our own touch on things — “finesse” the aircraft. With music, you can play a composition exactly like it’s written, but I like to take it and add my twist. I encourage my first officers to hand-fly — turn off all the automation. Hand-flying can be much smoother — small, gentle movements, like with music pieces.So, the president and Oprah Winfrey — how did those happen?I performed for President Ford in 1992 in Vail, Colo. In 1999, one of my songs was in a video presentation for a fund-raiser sponsored by Oprah, in Chicago, for her “Angel Network.”52 Places to Love in 2021We asked readers to tell us about the spots that have delighted, inspired and comforted them in a dark year. Here, 52 of the more than 2,000 suggestions we received, to remind us that the world still awaits.What’s flying been like since the pandemic?There’s still the masks, but we’re finally getting back to normal, bringing back food and drinks. I remember a flight last year when we had five crew and nine passengers.What would be your dream gig?I’d want to go back in time, to those Pan Am 747s that had a lounge with a piano. On the long-hauls, pilots get a break. I would have loved to play one of those lounges.Beau Brant’s music can be found on beaubrant.com.Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places list for 2021. More

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      For Chloe Flower, the Décor Always Serves the Music

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      With a few exceptions, the composer and social media influencer’s walls are bare. But who needs art when you have Liberace’s piano?The test of a first-rate intelligence, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time while still managing to function.Chloe Flower (neé Won), the composer, pianist and influencer can relate: For the past three years, she has lived happily on the 63rd floor of New York by Gehry, an apartment tower in the financial district. And yet, she is also “really scared of heights.”But Ms. Flower, 35, the spirited, couture-clad presence at the keyboard when Cardi B performed “Money” at the 2019 Grammys, is nothing if not pragmatic. The music videos she shoots in her two-bedroom rental — the cityscape a key element — have helped her build a robust following on social media.“I took one for the team because of Instagram,” said Ms. Flower, whose repertoire includes hits by the likes of Drake, Nicki Minaj and Kendrick Lamar, played in the style of Bach and Beethoven — or, as Ms. Flower characterizes it, pop-sical. “But really, when you look out the window and straight across, you don’t have a sense of depth.”Chloe Flower was born Chloe Won, but was nicknamed Flower as a child, and flowers are always close at hand. An arrangement sits atop the bedazzled Baldwin concert grand, a loaner from the Liberace estate.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesChloe Flower, 35Occupation: Composer and pianistSpecial Delivery: “During Covid, I was buying cabinets online from Restoration Hardware, and I forgot to remove the bed I had put in the shopping cart. When the guys from the shipping company arrived, they said, ‘We have your bed,’ and I said, ‘What bed?’ So now I have an accidental blue bed.”Also, up there in the stratosphere, Ms. Flower is at a considerable remove from ambient street noise. She was, thus, able to record most of her self-titled debut album at home. It’s due out July 16.Location. Location. Location. So goes the real estate mantra. To which Ms. Flower responds: Who cares? Who cares? Who cares? “Whenever I’m looking for an apartment, I’m never concerned where it is, because I’m either working from home or working in a studio,” she said.“I prefer certain areas of New York, of course,” added Ms. Flower, who previously rented in Union Square and Gramercy Park. “But New York has everything everywhere. Same with Los Angeles.”In fact, she was living in L.A. when she and her boyfriend, Michael Sepso, a New York-based entrepreneur, decided to move in together and began looking for suitable quarters.It was the musician Questlove who introduced his pal Ms. Flower to New York by Gehry. He is a tenant, “and when I saw his place, that was it,” she said. “I was, like, ‘Wait. Hold on. The view.’ I was so excited.”One attraction was the bay window in the living room, which “makes the apartment feel much bigger,” Ms. Flower said of the space, which is almost 1,400 square feet.Much of it is ceded to the Steinway Spirio|r, a piano that can record and play back performances, and to a Baldwin SD10 concert grand with a transparent lid and a cladding of hundreds of glass tiles, a loaner from the estate of Liberace to add flash to those Instagram videos. The man known as Mr. Showmanship often took it on tour. “Aesthetically, it doesn’t look like any piano you’ve ever seen. It’s really, really cool,” Ms. Flower said.“I love Liberace,” she added. “I know he’s not a traditional classical pianist, but he used his flair and drama and passion to break into the mainstream pop world. I like to celebrate him.”Ms. Flower loves having friends and family visit. Pre-Covid, everyone in her orbit referred to the second bedroom, now an office-slash-workout area, as Hotel Chloe. But visitors don’t have too many places to perch. There are no easy chairs, and Ms. Flower ditched her purple Ligne Roset sofa two years ago, when the Liberace joined the Steinway.“It was beautiful,” she said. “But when I had to choose between a second piano and a couch, it was, like, ‘A piano, of course.’”To be sure, there are other things in the living-and-dining room: a wood dining table; a teak tree-trunk console, a Yamaha keyboard, a pair of sculptural bookshelves, a vase or three of flowers, and many white candles. Ms. Flower buys them by the dozen from Amazon, lighting and shuffling them around as the spirit moves her.“I love their glow. I like the way they look when they’ve burned down,” she said. “They’re romantic and I think they set a mood, especially at night against the city lights.”But the décor must always serve the music. “When I’m composing, I don’t like to have a lot of distractions, and clutter is distracting,” she said. “I like the space to be clear, so I feel I have a clean slate.”Ms. Flower wrote her latest composition, “Tamie,” on the Steinway.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesConsequently, with the exception of a gilded mirror and a TV screen that doubles as a canvas to display digital art, the walls are bare. So are most surfaces.The annotated piano books and sheet music that Ms. Flower has had since childhood — “if there were a fire, I’d take them out first” — were briefly on a shelf in the living room.“But they just looked a little messy, a lot of loose paper,” she said, so she consigned them to a Restoration Hardware cabinet in the couple’s bedroom. She even turned down the offer of a candelabra from the Liberace estate because it would block the view — a key source of inspiration during the creative process.Ms. Flower describes herself as a homebody. But she would be that much happier at home if it had a dedicated recording studio and sufficient space to show off some of her mother’s artwork.“And,” she said, “there’s a third piano I want to buy. I asked my boyfriend, ‘What if we got rid of the dining table?’”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More