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Hanging on the wall above my DP in my den/music room is a reproduction of a painting by Daniel Pollera titled "Coastal Harmony".

The painting depicts a walnut grand piano in a light filled sunroom at the beach. There is music on the stand, but the door to the room is slightly ajar, as if the unseen pianist had just gone for a relaxing walk on the beach after a long, intense practice session.

I often look at the painting during breaks in my own practice sessions and my mind drifts off to imagining me as the pianist in the scene walking along the beach at one of my favorite real-life vacation spots: Cape May Point at the very southern tip of New Jersey (with some of the most beautiful sunsets you'll ever want to see).

I would love to make this fantasy come true some day - but the harsh reality of the staggeringly prohibitive costs of both grand pianos (walnut or otherwise) and beach-front property (even in a depressed real estate market) has all but put this dream totally out of reach (speaking of depressing!).

Do you have a very special place that you fantasize about playing the piano and would love to have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to do so someday (other than, say, on one of the world's great concert stages with a full house of piano aficionados)?

Regards, JF

P.S. Here's the aforementioned painting:

Daniel Pollera\'s Coastal Harmony

Seeing as I'm on Day 6 of a business trip away from home and piano, where I want most to play at this moment is my piano in my living room.

Probably playing a nice dark grand piano on the upper floor of a large townhouse in the centre of Prague.

It's not my favourite place, and I don't have a desire to make it come true; but it was part of a vivid dream I had one night. So i pick there.


JF - to get around the sheer cost of your idea, is it possible to hire both a property and a piano, just for a week?

Nice picture, by the way!

Anywhere I can play a 9' grand.

The few times I've stopped in a piano store (we have a Bosendorfer showroom here !) and played on a 9' grand it was just unbelievable. It really is a different instrument from smaller pianos.

In Heaven, because I hope I get there and they have pianos.

Plus I'd hate to waste all this practice...

I would like to play a beautiful grand piano with gorgeous, scantily-clad women sprawled over the lid. The setting isn't actually that important! :rolleyes:

Of course they have pianos in heaven. Otherwise it would be heck.

I would love to play in a concert hall with a group of people who just like to enjoy playing music. Not professional players, just our own band! And of course, I want to play in heaven on the grand celestial organ

Every time I sit down at my digital piano I'm happy. Would I like my own grand? Sure. Do I currently have one? No. I try not to worry about the things that won't happen any time soon and just go on. I'm lucky enough to be in the position I'm currently in.

Euan - yes, you can rent a seaside house with a sunroom for a week (or longer) at many different locations along the coast with, of course, highly variable cost (the variation taking place in the upper price range) depending on size, location , time of year, etc. - one with a grand piano in place would probably be rare - to rent a piano would certainly pad the cost appreciably (assuming the owner would allow it).

Good idea though and I think I'll start a fact-finding search now

Robin - your comment reminds me of the old Righteous Brothers hit from a number of years ago which went, in part: "And if there's a rock 'n roll heaven they've got to have a helluva band . . ." Good luck with the books!
Regards, JF

Why do all people want to go to heaven, but no one wants to die?

And I'm surprised no one wants to play in a brothel or a bar with a dirty martini on the piano, 'shaken not stirred' Either that, either anywhere else but with an audience that haven't had experience in playing anything, but like to listen, as to not comment on my butcher-ish technique

Well I'm sure if I sat around and really thoughts about it there would be many places that would pop into my head. However, since I'll go with the "what's at the top of my head" it would be this place..

Front view


Side view (showing garage access)


This amazing house is actually right opposite the Palace of Fine Arts (San Francisco). The grass in the first pic is the lawn of the POFA. I didn't get a pic at night but its one of these places that likes to show off it's interior (no curtains drawn) and in the top left of the 2nd floor was a huge grand piano.

So there I would be staring at the Palace of Fine Arts (where wifey and I first courted) and playing my grand piano. If ever I had a influx (aka lottery) of money I would happily purchase this house regardless of the market. When we saw it in Feb of 07 it was actually on the market for a cool $14.5m!!

The interior was amazing and the view from the upper balcony (great for parties) had some crummy redish bridge it in

That was the first thing that occurred to me. I'm playing in a smokey jazz club with slinky dames leaning on the piano and cooing at me in low sultry voices. There's a neon sign out front with a few unlit letters. It's in a really dangerous part of town. A fight breaks out and the bouncer, who looks like Herman Munster, tries to 86 the guys, but someone breaks a chair over his head and pretty soon there's a battle royale going on around me. I don't miss a beat. I start playing Joplin, and next thing I know there's tommy guns going off and bottles shattering. The bartender dives behind the bar as a line of bullets blasts the mirror into a million pieces. Cops stream in and haul everyone off in a paddy wagon. Then it's quiet again, so I go back to some slow sultry jazz and a sax player joins in as the scene fades away and I'm back in my living room practicing arpeggios.

Ah, fantasy.

bluekeys - nice fantasy, good imagination, literate narrative (did the slinky dames dive under the piano when the tommy guns started to fire?) - ever thought about doing screen plays? There's a desparate need . . .

Regards, JF

We were in the Owens Valley in a dying little town called Big Pine. We had just spent the day on the Sierra crest dodging lightning on Dragon Peak, and were tired and hungry. The only place in town was a spaghetti joint called Rossi's. It was less than mediocre food and expensive. But there was cold beer and...

There was an old upright. It had probably been there since the '20s. There didn't seem to be a right angle anywhere on the cabinetry and it had been refinished with house paint. But there was a guy playing it. At first I thought it was Sonny Barger. He was a big dude, with the look of a biker: denim, leather, chains. He'd spent time in Folsom, hard time, there was no doubt of that. You wouldn't want to meet this guy in a dark alley, for sure.

But he was playing. The Munster's theme song, Adam's family theme, Tin Pan Alley stuff, modern pop. Sadly, quietly. Then he played the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. He played it beautifully, too. Like Kempff, no kidding. When we left I threw $5 in the tip jar, trying not to make eye contact. It was the only bill in the jar.

So now, this is my dream. To sit in a dusty dive in a lonely high desert town, playing tunes to people who don't care on a 60 year old Cable.

JF --
...A slinky dame draws her final breath and crumbles on the keyboard. She emits a deathly contralto gasp in perfect harmony with the arpeggio of her luscious breasts tumbling across the high C octave. I react quickly and improvise a left hand chord inversion that adds a suitable bottom and prevents disruption of the rhythm....

No screen plays, but I can spew trashy fiction all day.

Originally posted by RobM:

I would like to play a beautiful grand piano with gorgeous, scantily-clad women sprawled over the lid. The setting isn't actually that important! :rolleyes:

"Scantily clad", come on, who are you kidding!


My dream location would be ontop of the Mohegan Bluffs looking out at the sea. Block Island RI.

Trashy? No way! Your stuff reads like Pulitzer Prize winning literature to me (and my standards are very high) - I can almost hear that "contralto gasp" and see those arpeggio generating assets you describe so vividly . . .

Perhaps you and Gary Schenk (see his very creative post above) should team up on a steamy graphic novel or cynical degenerate-detective style screen play - the Nobel Prize or an "Oscar" would be a foregone conclusion!

Regards, JF

Genius

(should be added to your signature line!)

Raymond Chandler has nothing on bluekeys!