Foundation / Projects Ledger
The Foundation’s work in the field, recorded as it happens. Keyboard placements, university partnerships, student research, and the concert stages where alternatively sized actions earn their keep.
The mandate of the Foundation runs deeper than advocacy. We place proportionately sized keyboards inside conservatories, concert halls, and research centres, and we watch what happens next. The cases gathered below represent our working portfolio: partnerships in motion, instruments in residency, and pianists finding their hands again.
Some entries are decades old, some are a few months young. Each one marks a place where the Standard moved off the page and into somebody’s studio, competition stage, or thesis.
In 2000 Dr. Carol Leone began the first university study of alternatively sized keyboards in a collegiate setting. The DS6.0R has remained in active use at Meadows since, and the room is now a reference point for every institution that follows.
In March of 2015 Anna R. Arazi arrived at the Dallas International Piano Competition on a Wednesday. Anna’s hands are small and she suffers from pain in her forearms when playing conventional keyboards. She was eager to participate in this particular competition because it offered pianists the opportunity to compete using the smaller DS Standard keyboards. She had never played on a smaller keyboard before, but immediately took to the DS6.0 size. On Thursday she advanced to the semifinals, on Friday she advanced to the finals, and on Saturday she gave the performance where she won the third place prize. The amazing fact is that by the end of the competition the pain in Anna’s arms had completely disappeared.
Finals repertoire: Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 1, 2015 Dallas International Piano Competition.
Pianodrome, the Scottish company that builds small amphitheatres from decommissioned uprights, hosts DS Keyboards inside its Royal Pianodrome; a public venue in which any visiting pianist can sit down and try the geometry for themselves.
Read the Pianodrome blog postUniversities and music schools are invited to apply to the Foundation to borrow a DS Keyboard for up to twelve months, with the option to purchase at any point during the residency.
We read each inquiry against three quiet priorities: a piano faculty that wants the instrument, administrative backing that will keep the door open for it, and a technician who will actually tune it.
Department chairs and faculty representatives are welcome to open correspondence with the board. We will respond with current inventory, shipping arrangements, and the formal terms of a twelve-month residency loan.
Justine Pelletier, guest Professor of Piano
Alan Chow, Chair of Piano
Elizabeth Schumann, Assistant Professor of Piano
Kathryn Mientka, guest Professor of Piano
Florian Worschech, Postdoctoral Researcher
Min Kwon, Head of Piano
Camila de Oliveira
Sarah Morris
Ceren Su Sahin
Leah Williams
Since the life-changing moment I started practicing and performing on an alternatively-sized piano keyboard, I experienced a whole new level of artistic and technical freedom.
The use of DS Standard keyboards has opened up new artistic realms for my students with smaller hand-spans, including expanded repertoire, enhanced musical possibilities, greater physical ease, and even recovery from pain and injury.
The DS Standard keyboards offer all musicians, regardless of hand-span, the opportunity to focus on what matters most: making music with ease, imagination, and joy.
In 1996 Linda Gould was the first to purchase a DS Keyboard. Her video “My Piano Has a Secret” powerfully describes the crying need for alternative keyboards to be adopted in the world of the piano.
In 2000 Dr. Carol Leone at SMU Meadows School of the Arts in Dallas was the first to study the practicality of using alternative size keyboards in a university setting.
Universities such as Texas Tech University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have collectively purchased many DS Keyboards, but today there no longer is a piano faculty member, the university’s “champion,” to study them. Lionel Yu’s video “Piano’s Darkest Secret” describes some of the problems confronting adoption.
From 2014 through 2016 the Foundation supported the Dallas International Piano Competition by contributing to keyboard preparation. This competition was the first in the world to provide DS5.0 and DS6.0 keyboards for the contestants; a small logistical act with an outsized effect on what the entrants could attempt.
The Foundation will consider supporting any competition that allows contestants to compete on DS Standard sized keyboards.
The Foundation has supported the promotion of Dr. Carol Leone’s CD, Change of Keys: One piano, three keyboards, through MSR Classics. As a result the CD received much media exposure and airplay, and the disc remains a useful artifact when a conversation with a new institution needs audible evidence rather than argument.
Institutions exploring a loan, competition organisers considering an alternative keyboard category, and researchers looking for a subject population are all welcome to write to the board.