In Sunday’s (2/10) St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri), Sarah Bryan Miller writes, “Technology is changing the ways in which musicians rehearse and perform. Pianist Kirill Gerstein sparked intermission discussions late last year when he performed Thomas Adès concerto ‘Seven Days’ with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra using an iPad with a wireless foot pedal in lieu of a conventional score. In an interview, Gerstein said he’s been using his iPad for 2½ years, the first, he thinks, among classical pianists. He uses it with contemporary music, where memorization is not expected, and in chamber music. … St. Louis Symphony Orchestra section cello Bjorn Ranheim admires Gerstein’s score-on-tablet setup and wishes the SLSO could have the same. ‘We would love to have a screen with (the cello) part,’ said Ranheim. Principal cello Danny Lee ‘could put the markings and bowings on his score, and we would all see them.’ … One small thing has changed Ranheim’s life in a big way: his smartphone. He gets a lot of mileage from his iPhone, which has replaced most of the musical gadgets he used to carry. ‘There are iPhone apps that do those things almost better than the original,’ he said, ‘and are a lot more portable.’ iTunes offers 487 metronome apps and 682 tuner apps, many of them free.”
Posted February 11, 2013
