Navy veteran Michael Bryant has spent decades restoring forgotten instruments, but as he retires, his rare skills fade, leaving fewer experts to keep old player pianos alive in town. Molly Gilbert ...

TEXARKANA — Texarkana’s Regional Music Heritage Center will keep on scrolling with the acquisition of 27 piano rolls’ worth of native son and composer Conlon Nancarrow’s work. After they’re made by ...

The first thing you notice at Nate Otto’s Anoka house is the hearse in the driveway, a 1967 Olds 98 with tattered curtains and a rusted body. Inside is a small, 100-year-old reed organ built for a ...

The QRS Music Roll company is the last remaining mass producer of player piano rolls in the country. They churn out around half a million rolls a year, but a surprising number of them are songs ...

The first thing you notice at Nate Otto's Anoka house is the hearse in the driveway, a 1967 Olds 98 with tattered curtains and a rusted body. Inside is a small, 100-year-old reed organ built for a ...

ANOKA, Minn. — Microsoft was born in a garage. Nate Otto’s garage is home to some much older tech. “Especially if you're in 1916, it’s the top tech of the day,” Nate says as he pumps the foot pedals ...

What do you do with 100 player piano rolls but no player piano? You come up with a way to digitize the information for MIDI playback. The rolls have 90 columns worth of holes, 88 for the keys and two ...

Before radio, before the phonograph and before the jukebox, there was the piano roll. An ingenious invention dating back to the 1890s, the piano roll was the first way in which the public could hear ...

IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. Visit the IIIF page to learn more. arrow-up Back to top ...