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SUBJECT: My answer was always that, well, I spent so much time of my life, so many years perfecting certain techniques, certain approach to sound, the way to touch keyboard, that it would be a shame to give it all up and just go to the instrument that reacts to the punch. You can drop a pencil on it. It will make the same sound as if you touch it.

And there it was. And then at one time, a friend of mine, composer [? Lloyd ?] [? Alton, ?] who is teaching electronic music at the university, he told me that they have just received this instrument called MIDI grand piano. And he kept telling me about it. He kept suggesting that I stop by and look at the instrument.

And eventually, I did. And I was hooked right away because I saw that it was a piano. It was just like the piano I have at home, except at the punch of a button, it turns into something magic. I can extract all kinds of sounds out of it.

And I can do all kinds of things with it. I can keep parts of it as a piano and other parts sounding as trumpet or flute or whatever I want. And it appealed to my interest in sound and in orchestration, in coloristic effects of music.

INTERVIEWER: Let's talk about the capacity within this piano, this keyboard. How many different sounds can you play? How does the MIDI system allow you to achieve what you want to achieve as a musician?

SUBJECT: Well, let me just demonstrate for you. For the last performance, the first of the Hot Note series. I had work written by [? Lloyd ?] [? Alton. ?] He wrote it for me many years ago as an acoustic, quote unquote, "piano piece," three preludes. And for example, the first of them sounds something like this.

[PIANO PLAYING]

So when I was thinking about music to arrange, it immediately struck me that these three pieces, they present a perfect opportunity because they sound so orchestral. So what I did, I did the arrangement. And now, if I punch this button, then what I get is this.

[PIANO PLAYING]

All kind of magic things start happening.

INTERVIEWER: You were saying before that this instrument is probably most effective when you're playing pieces that have been written for it. And yet, you redesigned Shostakovitch's preludes. Do you feel strange tampering with the great piano works using this instrument to transform them?

SUBJECT: I would feel very strange, again, if I weren't using it judiciously. For example, I would never attempt to arrange any of the great classical works. I would leave Beethoven alone. I would not touch Schumann or Schubert or anything like this.

The reason I went to Shostakovich is because his music suggested the use of an orchestra. And it was not as well known. It's not something that everybody knows its original version. And it asks for this variety of coloristic effects and, in a way, benefits from it.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

INTERVIEWER: How do people react to this music when they hear this instrument being played? I understand you've noticed a kind of a generational difference in the way people respond.

SUBJECT: Well, in a way, it's almost the opposite. I found, I have noticed a uniformly positive, enthusiastic response from different generations of people. Of course, some traditionally trained musicians will think of it as something of a curiosity.

But I was very encouraged by the way particularly the young people react to it because the way I think about it is that there has been a revolution in sound. And it has already taken place. A lot of people see it. Most people don't recognize it yet. But it's here. The synthesized sound came and is with us to stay.

For me, the way for a traditional instrument, like piano, to survive in the future and for a classically, so to speak, trained musicians to move into the next century is to recognize this fact. And while not switching completely and totally to that camp of the future, try to integrate those things together.

INTERVIEWER: Well, doesn't this instrument render a lot of classically trained musicians, violinists, trumpet players obsolete?

SUBJECT: Oh, well, I don't think so. Nothing will replace a beautiful, sweet sound of violin or-- and nothing would replace the great personality of an artist who plays his or her solo instrument in their own unique way. No, what it does to me, it just supplies a pianist or a keyboard artist, somebody who plays keyboards as a way of expressing music. It supplies with a widely enhanced range of opportunities.

INTERVIEWER: On Monday, at the science museum, you're going to be performing what's being called a piano recital of the future. What is that to you?

SUBJECT: This kind of recital for me will combine traditional piano works and new works for MIDI because I see the recital of the future not segregating contemporary and classical for whatever it means music but blending them together in one recital I see a recital of the future as featuring Brahms' "Intermezzi" and a new work for synthesizer for MIDI grand, and then going to [INAUDIBLE]. And then this all becomes a part of our heritage.

[PIANO PLAYING]