A new low cost hotel for artists opens in London

The Green Rooms, a new “arts hotel”, is opening in north London in May 2016.
The project was conceived by the social entrepreneur Nick Hartwright, who felt the need of offering artists and musicians a low cost hotel in London. The Green Rooms also aim to be a creative lab, including several studios and performance spaces to encourage collaborative work in the creative industries.
Climbing the four floors of the building, work is underway on several dormitories, charging £18 a night for beds, small double rooms and a handful of larger ensuites. Several areas have been set aside for communal workspace, social areas for collaborative working and individual studios for artists to rent for longer periods. The first booking has already come in, for a troupe of 36 Japanese performance artists, dressing as their favourite popstars as part of an arts festival in Soho early next year.

More details in the full article, available click here

A new app for Mendelssohn

iMendelssohn is an informative tool dedicated to the German composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809 – 1847). It is the first app that provides such a wide range of information about a classical composer. It presents the full catalogue of Mendelssohn’s works, based on the new catalogue by Ralf Wehner (published by Breitkopf in 2009), a wide selection of Mendelssohn’s letters and a selected biography and discography. Several facsimiles of music manuscripts and handwritten letters are also included. The Media section provides a selection of Mendelssohn’s own watercolors, several portraits of him and many audio and video files of live performances of Mendelssohn’s music, interpreted by the Mendelssohn specialist, pianist Roberto Prosseda, and other internationally known performers. A further section is dedicated to the Mendelssohn-Haus in Leipzig, and gives information for visitors and a gallery of the rooms of the house where Mendelssohn lived from 1844 to 1847.

The app was coproduced by Associazione Mendelssohn and Mendelssohn-Stiftung and was realized by Ubyweb&Multimedia.

iMendelssohn is now available for free download at the Google Play Store (for Android devices):
click here

and at the App Store (for iPhones and iPads).
click here

A piano lesson by Oscar Peterson

Canadian pianist Oscar Peterson (1925 – 1987) is a legend in the history of jazz. The Oscar Peterson Estate published a video from Peterson’s TV appearance on the Dick Cavett Show in 1979. In that occasion, the great pianist gave a short “piano lesson”, with fascinating examples at the piano. A treasure for all jazz piano lovers.
click here

More information about Oscar Peterson in his official website:
click here
and his official Facebook page:
click here

A new automatic guitar tuner

Bassam Jalgha is a young engineer from Beirut, who created a gadget that could be attached to stringed instruments and tune them automatically.

The project started in 2009, when Mr Jalgha took his pitch for the gadget onto a reality-TV competition in Qatar, where it won first place and a $300,000 prize.

The hand-held device, called Roadie, attaches to a tuning peg on a stringed instrument. After the user plucks the string, Roadie analyzes the sound and automatically adjusts the tension to get the string tuned properly. An app stores profiles for different kinds of guitars and custom tunings and keeps track of the elasticity of the strings, telling the musician when new ones are needed.

Roadie hit the market in November 2014 and costs $99.

More details in this article, published on the Wall Street Journal on January 24, 2016:
click here

Official site:
https://www.roadietuner.com/

Henle launches the Henle Library app

On Feb. 3rd, 2016 German music publisher Henle Verlag launched its new app “Henle Library”, which represents a radical improvement to read music scores on iPads or other tablets.

Henle Library offers new features that are not present in other apps to read pdf music (such as ForScore or PiaScore). In fact, the Henle Library includes many options to customise the music scores according to the musician’s needs: it is possible to change the number and size of staves per screen, to add or remove the piano score in chamber music and to add own notes to the musical text, using a specially developed annotation programme (pen and text field). On the other side, it is also possible to remove all fingerings and bowings with just one tap or to choose the preferred fingerings and markings among several alternatives offered by Henle. For example, the Urtext score of Bach’s Solo Sonatas and Partitas comes with bowings and markings by Igor Ozim, Midori Seiler and Christian Tetzlaff; the Beethoven Piano Sonatas have fingerings by Conrad Hansen, Murray Perahia and Eugen d’Albert.

With a two-finger tap on repeat signs it is possible to jump back to the beginning of the repeat. The Da Capo sections (for instance in scherzos or minuets) are always written out again after the “B” section, to avoid to turn back pages.

And, last but not the least, all of the reproductions, illustrations and accompanying written texts in the printed Henle editions are included in the edition in the app, and can be seen directly on the passages in the musical text for which there is additional information, by tapping on a highlighted passage.

More information here: www.henle-library.com