Season 3 Episode 17 Part 1: Hannah Reimann -- Pioneer/Advocate of Stretto Pianos and Creator of the International Stretto Piano Festival & Stretto Piano Concerts

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Have you ever wanted to experience what it's like to play a piano that has narrow keys? Keys that could cut your practice time in half and make stretches feel easy? My name is Hanna Reimann, and I'm delighted to introduce you to the world of stretto pianos. Stretto means narrow in Italian. Last couple of months I've had the great joy of working on a keyboard which has a 6-inch octave rather than the standard 6.5.

Immediately I noticed a difference. Such a freeing experience to play what I wanted.

And so I think just having that experience really convinced me that perhaps piano technology needed to evolve a little bit.

It still had some ways to go. I have found that on this smaller keyboard, I've been able to execute various musical ideas and technically challenging sections with much more ease and control. Welcome back to another episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. I am your host Yukimi Song. You know, this show, The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song, is all about bringing the classical music industry forward into the next generation. And so far, I've interviewed incredibly talented pianists and composers, educators, psychologists, and entrepreneurs working tirelessly to do so by thinking outside the box. Today's guest is no exception. She is someone whom I consider one of the pioneers or innovators of our industry. So before introducing you to my guests, please hear me out. A recent study at the University of North Texas found that 75% of their piano students wished they had larger hands. The current piano keyboard was actually not really designed to suit most pianists. It dates from 1880s and suited certain famous European male virtuosos, of that time. And before then, piano keyboards generally had narrower keys, and different sizes were available. So that got me thinking, how many of us pianists worldwide are not reaching our full musical potential due to a keyboard being too big or too wide? According to pascpiano.org, PASC stands for Pianists for Alternatively Sized Keyboards. Recent research into pianist hand spans shows that over 50% of adults have hand spans that are too small for the conventional keyboard. About 87% of women and 24% of men have hands that are too small for the current-sized keyboard. Children are currently forced to learn on the instrument designed for men with large hands. And lastly, given a choice of keyboard, around 75% of adults would most likely choose a smaller size. So after all, the struggles you might have as a pianist are not because of your shortcomings, but maybe the wrong-sized keyboard you've been practicing and performing for your size. Today I invited Ms. Hannah Reimann She is a fellow New Yorker and a pioneer and advocate of stretto pianos. Before getting started, I want to welcome everybody listening to or watching The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song for the first time. I'm a classical pianist and educator from New York City, passionate about creating a thriving and meaningful community of the classical music industry through this podcast. Please visit yukimisongstudio.com to find out more about my work. In each episode of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song, I interview a guest speaker who has been breaking exciting new ground in the industry. Before getting started, I want to thank everyone for tuning in. Please rate the show and review it on your favorite podcast platform because every rating and review will help people find my show. Please stay with me till the end of this episode to learn about stretto pianos from the very person who convinced Steinway Sons to build stretto pianos. So here we go, dear friends. Please enjoy the show. You are listening to The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song, where we talk to the brightest minds in the industry about how they are bringing the piano into the 21st century. I am honored to welcome Hannah Reimann, pianist, vocalist, composer, actor, filmmaker, and educator from New York City. She's also advocate of stretto pianos and creator of International Stretto Piano festival and stretto piano concerts. Nearly 30 years ago, Ms. Ryman felt the need for a different type of piano to accommodate her hand size, so she independently rebuilt her Steinway piano, and that's the beginning of her journey with stretto pianos. Since then, she has performed in Canada and Japan with the stretto piano and contacted and presented proposals and materials directly to executives of all the major piano manufacturers, including Steinway, Yamaha, Kawai, Bosendorfer, and Roland to build these pianos. After 3 decades of her effort, stretto pianos are now available from Steinway Sons on a custom order basis, making Ms. Ryman the only liaison for anyone wanting an original Steinway stretto grand piano. In addition, her success with this instrument has made her the face of the stretto as the producer of concerts. Ms. Ryman was featured on the front page of The Wall Street Journal and described as a, quote, "musician on the mission to make the world safe for small pianists," end quote. So welcome, Hannah. Thanks for being here today. Yay!

It's such a pleasure to be here with you, Yukimi. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you.

Oh, thank you. Now, I was introduced by our mutual friend Ethan Janney. He is a wonderful piano technician from New York as well, and then he owns a company, Floating Piano Factory, Now he is the one who introduced us, and until then, honestly, Hannah, I did not know anything about stripped pianos. Shame on me. So I feel like I was born today.

Please don't feel like there's any mistake if you don't know about pianos with narrower keys because they are just emerging as a large movement now. It's taken a very long time for individuals to embrace this technology. So most people don't know about pianos with narrower keys to accommodate small hands, which is why pioneers like myself and some other lovely people who I'll tell you about have taken it upon themselves to raise awareness by collaborating with different people in the industry and creating concerts and rebuilding their pianos. So it's taken many years for there to be a kind of visibility, and still most people don't know about it. About it. So that's why we're doing this. That's why I'm talking to you, and that's why I created a concert platform.

Wonderful. Now, when I visited your website, strettopianoconzerts.org, and there were several small video clips, and one of them, especially one quote struck me. You, you mentioned that this piano creates creativity, equality, and joy for people. The word equality just meant everything. That's— this is one of the reasons I do this podcast, and that's the 21st century way of thinking about not just only music, but also piano, right?

Piano is the only instrument that doesn't come in multiple sizes in terms of keys for a wood and metal piano. And this, even though it does not seem like an issue to most people, there really is a history of pianists as they play more and more difficult repertoire, getting injuries. I mean, imagine playing a violin or a viola with a really small hand for years and years and playing extremely difficult music, even if you have a perfect technique, you're much more comfortable with something that fits you. And lots of pianists have not had that opportunity yet, including the smallest children who are virtuosos. So, you know, this just opens up a whole other market and a whole other way of thinking as it becomes embraced.

So, dear Piano Pod listeners, here we are today to focus on the topic of stretto pianos. What is a stretto piano and why stretto pianos? Stratopiano, and these questions will lead us to more philosophical discussion later today and why Hannah is here promoting and advocating for Stratopiano. So maybe you already answered this question, but let's start.

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With this simple question, what is a stretto piano?

Okay, so a stretto piano is any instrument with keyboards that has keys that are narrower than the conventional size of piano keyboard, which can be calculated different ways. You know, most piano keyboards with 88 keys are 48 inches. My reduced-width keyboard is 44 inches with 88 keys. But my colleagues around the world and other people have established a new way of measuring, and that is with an octave span. So the octave span of the conventional keys is 6.5 inches. Stretto pianos are different dimensions, but 6.0 or 5.9 or 5.5. And there are even some people making smaller ones. They can be in any kind of keyboard instruments, electronic instruments, wood and metal pianos. They don't have to have 88 keys. I asked my co-artistic directors, Rhonda Boyle and Carol Leone, who participated in creating the festival with me so it could become an international phenomenon. I asked them, you know, let's— why don't we think of a name, a generic term, so we don't have to keep saying pianos with narrow keys. It's just, you know, it's kind of awkward. We need to define it and give it a brand so that people can understand right away that this is something that's here to stay. And Carol Leone, who is a fantastic pianist, virtuoso, and professor at Meadows School of Music, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, she volunteered the word stretto. She speaks Italian. We all know what stretto means in musical terms. It means narrow in physical terms in Italian. So I thought it sounded great, and we all agreed that we would use that word. And then I asked her if it was all right if I, as I formed Stretto Piano concerts as an entity that could receive funding, that could use the word. And we just all agreed that it was a very catchy way to communicate what we needed.

Wow. So actually the word Stretto Piano is your creation?

Well, our team, and we decided it together. We had different words and yeah, it just, it makes, it makes more sense than saying narrow keys. Because it's, you know, for some people they're not narrow, they're just normal. For the other pianist, fat. So it's, I don't know, it gives the definition a little bit more of an artistic flair as well. You know, Italian is the language of music, right?

Yeah, exactly. Do you want to continue with the presentation? I can share the screen.

Yes.

So that's my piano. My parents bought me a 7-foot-4 grand piano that was originally built in 1900 when I became a professional pianist. And in 1997, I had it rebuilt to have narrower keys. And you can see that the cheek blocks are fatter. And, you know, if you zoom in on your computer, you can see that the black keys are a bit narrower than— they look narrower than normal ones. So that's my— that's the keyboard of my piano. So the next one is a chart of pianos from the 1500s until now, showing what the key width is, how narrow they are, and how as you go down the list, you see that the pianos become more and more close to having a 6.0 or a 5.9 width octave. And as we move towards the 20th century, the keys get fatter and fatter with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. And, you know, people like Franz Liszt who influenced how the piano was built and the size the piano was built, and we get closer and closer to a 6.5-inch octave until there's standardization. But you can see if you look closely at this table that there are very many, many varieties of key size before standardization occurred in the 20th century. I got this table from a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of art for the historical musical instruments collections back in the 1990s, because I just wanted to know what exactly had happened with key size. And here are some zones of hand spans showing that males and females have different size hands. I mean, everybody knows that, but here's a graph that can show you, if you look at it closely, that females really— their hand doesn't fit the 6.5 octave piano keyboard the way that it fits men. And here are the current situation of who has large hands, who has small hands, and what's comfortable for people in the current situation and what would be comfortable if pianos with narrow keys were embraced. You know, there's like many, many more females would be playing things that fit their body as we embrace this new technology. This is very interesting. I just want to remark that this data came from Rhonda Boyle and Carol Leone, who are two pioneers of what we now call stretto pianos. They have examined statistics around piano competitions, and unless you're competing with pieces by Mozart and Bach, most of the prize winners are men who fit the larger repertoire like Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, post-romantic material that has much stretchier stuff, that has bigger intervals, different kinds of physical challenges. And it's not that women can't play those things. It's just, it's easier with an instrument that fits you.

Right. But this really shows, you know, I used to think, oh, there's no way I can play this literature. I mean, obviously it's not about my ability. It's a lot to do with the instrument that you're using, right?

That's right. If a violinist was asked to play a really difficult concerto by Bruch or, you know, 20th century composers on an instrument that was too big for them, they may not win the competition either, you know?

Right.

And here is a comparison of string competition winners and piano competition winners by their ages. And as preteens to adults in string competitions, get older, the females are the ones who are winning more prizes. But with pianos, it's the opposite. So, you know, as you play more and more advanced material and you play stretchier stuff as an adult and you don't have an instrument that fits you quite right, you have to compromise. I think that's what Graf communicates.

Yeah, exactly.

Oh, this is the COVID of Piano Today magazine, also back in the 1990s. I wrote an article. I think the next page probably will show the article that says A Modest Proposal, and you can see the two keyboards that I have for my one piano. And, you know, I wanted to discuss this and present this idea to people. It actually was executives at Steinway Sons that made introductions for me to things like Piano Today magazine and other people who were involved with pianos with small keys back in the 1990s. So, you know, I really did get help from Steinway Sons. I'm an official Steinway educator, and I've known all of the presidents since the '90s. And that was how I connected with this journalist. And he was very interested in knowing— the editor and the journalist who publishes this magazine, he's very interested in knowing my take on this. So I wrote an article, and then I think the next slide probably is another article. So after writing articles and networking with people and talking about it, another journalist wanted to interview me for The Wall Street Journal. And lo and behold, my face was on the front page. I was in complete shock and I started getting letters. This was back in the days when people actually wrote letters and put them in envelopes and put stamps on them. I started getting letters from all over the world. I started getting phone calls and there were people in Italy and California who were— they were so grateful that I had rebuilt my piano because they wanted pianos like this too. So this was really exciting for me. And I just knew after this article came out that there was some validation and I had to continue on this quest. I mistakenly thought, you know, in a few years we're just going to have pianos with small keys all over the place. And I wrote a global plan for the development of the narrow width keys for acoustic pianos. I sent it to people, but it really didn't happen. I just had to keep doing research and keep pressing the piano companies for many more years than I thought.

Wow, this is incredible. Oh, what is this?

So one of the things that happened when I talked to Frank Mazurko, one of the presidents of Steinway Sons in the 1990s, he said, "Do you have a patent? If you don't have a patent, we can't do business with you." And I wasn't exactly interested in going into business, but then I realized that was what somebody had to do to make this work. So I acquired a US patent. I spent years and thousands of dollars making this, working with technicians. You could go to the next slide and you'll see some of the images and what the technology actually is.

Oh my God.

A certain amount of time, unless the patent is licensed, it becomes in the public domain. You know, it's not a business proposal anymore. And Steinway told me that they would license this and we were about to start working on it together, but then it expired and they always got a little bit too busy. They've got their timeline, they have the things that they need to do. So this is a technology for converting one piano to have another size of key and the technical things that have to happen. It's about the key pins that hold the keys into place that are connected to the keyframe. You know, anybody can access it online now.

Wow. Okay.

It was a huge effort.

I bet.

After that, I went to SCORE New York, which is a small business advisory, uh, city-run agency down in the financial district. And I got a mentor, a business mentor. And I said, I need help with this. How am I going to make pianos with small keys mainstream. The industry doesn't want to embrace it. What should I do? And my mentor, who is the developer of the first Star Wars action figures, he wanted me to go to the Toy Fair because he thought it needed to start with kids. So I went to the Toy Fair and I found this red piano on display that Schoenhut Toy Piano had made. It's not a toy piano. It's a real string hammer, pedal piano, but it's sized down so that a 4-year-old or 5-year-old can put their feet on the ground. It has narrower keys. I think it has 63 keys. And I just sat down and started playing it. And for several years they hired me to come to the Toy Fair and, you know, advocate this little piano. Unfortunately, it was so expensive to make in China that they had to stop production. It was just more expensive to make because pianos are expensive to make and to sell them. They would have to charge so much money to sell it retail, they had a very limited production run. So this taught me a lot about what people need to do to make pianos and what a challenge it is to change the way things are.

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You're listening to a podcast right now. Driving, working out, walking the dog, If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and hundreds more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads like this, even with just 10 listeners a month. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start free at RSS.com.

This episode is presented in collaboration with our good friends at Forte, a free alternative to Zoom purpose-built for music teachers. Forte offers features optimized for classical music lessons, including audio quality far superior to existing platforms and allowing you to hear every nuance of your student's instrument. Their colleagues at the Royal College of Music, Aspen Music Festival, Curtis Institute and Berklee College of Music have even used Forte in their own programs. Forte's mission is to radically expand access to high-quality music education worldwide. Forte always puts teachers and their students first. This means you can use Forte with your own students for free forever, and Forte will soon introduce paid features allowing you to connect with new students around the world. Sign up for free today at fortelessons.com or click the link in the description. The size of the octave, so conventional size is 6.5 inches, but then the Dretel Piano can come in 5.5 or 6.

Yeah, 5.5 and 6.0 are the, are the two largely selling sizes that a small company in Titusville, Pennsylvania, has been making since the 1990s. They're called Donison Steinbühler DS keyboards. I had my keyboard made by Kluge, which is the company in Germany that makes keyboards for Steinway Sons and many other companies. You know, the technicians I was working with wanted me to have the Steinway standard. So I— it was also very complicated to do this, to communicate in the 1990s with Germany, you know, pre-internet. We all, we did things via fax. We had to do charcoal rubbings of different parts of the piano. It was really like a very elaborate effort. So my keyboard is 5.9-inch octave. I'm pretty sure. I had the smallest size that Kluge was willing to make for me back then. But my colleagues, Rhonda and Carol, and a group of other people, including David Steinbühler, who makes the keys himself, they settled on 5.5 and 6.7. Zero, and lots of people around the world are purchasing the size that they want from him.

Oh, wow. Okay. It comes in different types. Let's say one can be built, rebuilt, you know, just like you rebuilt your piano. And also, as I, you know, introduced you, you are the Steinway Piano Liaison. So if you want, if you have the financial means, you can build your own original Steinway?

You can custom order a piano that has narrower keys. Now, I haven't communicated with Steinway in quite a while because I've been very busy with the festival, and there are supply chain issues, so people should know about that. Everything has supply chain issues these days, and there are backorders even for custom art case pianos. People have been waiting a year. I'll get back in touch with them to find out what's going on now. But, you know, there are not that many people who can spend $120,000 or $130,000 $100,000 for a piano, and the custom order is an additional bit of work and time. So if anybody who is listening to this wants to have a custom-built new piano made by Steinway, they should contact me and I will get in touch with the right people and let them know that there are people interested. I did get— when we first let the world know about that in our network of people who love small keys, I did get 2 orders. But both of the orders were people who wanted Spirio pianos, which most people know are like player pianos, digital player pianos. You can listen to Lang Lang or Horowitz or even Rachmaninoff playing your piano like a ghost, and you can record yourself. But Steinway was not willing to combine the two technologies at once. They thought, you know, we have to perfect this. We don't want to put it out until we have it just right. Innovation takes time in a big company like Steinway that's owned by a billionaire. It's not a simple thing. It's like an electric car that you're asking for a special order before electric cars are available everywhere.

Right, right, right. It just goes so much into it. And I didn't— I don't realize. So, right. Then I'm also curious about the history. Can we talk about the history of piano? Let's say piano, the size of the keys were not this. Big or fat like this conventional modern piano, right?

Mozart and Chopin and Beethoven did not play a 6.5-inch octave. I can't imagine Mozart could have written his operas at age 5 or 6 and all those piano pieces in the way that he did with the big keys that we have today. Well, everything got bigger. Oh, it's— God, I could just talk about this for hours. Let me zero in on the most salient facts, the things that are important. What I learned from the Metropolitan Museum and examining examining things and talking with the curator and, you know, doing some reading, reading books and things, the size of the inch was actually different in different European countries, which is one of the reasons the metric system came to be. Like, you know, I think the inch was either this part of your thumb or some part of your body they called an inch. And fingers, bodies, thumbs were a different size in Italy than they were in Norway or England or Germany. So the Italian inch was smaller than the inch in Denmark, and they had different sizes of keys because they were measuring in inches and they were also just, you know, accommodating their bodies. So as people became more spread out and as industry began to grow and more and more instruments were made in factories, and as people like Franz Liszt told the companies, I need a bigger piano, I need more keys, I need a cast iron plate, I need a bigger sound. He was the first person to say, you know, le concert, c'est moi, I am the concert and I need this piano to fit me. And he was a very large Caucasian man from Hungary. He was like a rock star before there were rock stars. He traveled all over the place and all of many, many countries in boats and horses and then trains eventually, you know, So the world changed, so the piano changed. And by the time the 20th century came around, companies like Steinway said, we just want one size. However, there were always disruptors to this. There were always people saying, I need smaller keys, including the great Joseph Hoffman, who was my inspiration when I was a student. While Joseph Hoffman was a diminutive pianist, he was a small man. He was a great composer. He was a close friend of Rachmaninoff. They were alive at the same time. So, you know, there's Joseph Hoffman and here's Sergei Rachmaninoff. They had different size hands. And Steinway built a number of pianos for him that had narrower keys. I think he was credited to have developed the windshield wiper and other inventions. He was an inventor. His name was on many patents with Steinway and Sons. He was very much a part of the company, and I believe he used to travel with his pianos. He had several, you know, around the country, and he could play Rachmaninoff's music with the ease that Rachmaninoff played his own music. I didn't know who he was until one of my teachers said to me towards the end of my being a student, he said, you know, Hana, you're playing great. You can play whatever you want now. You know, proud of you, but your hand is a little small. Why don't you find a Joseph Hoffman piano? So I called Steinway and I asked them to help me find one. And it was impossible. Frank Mazurko, who I adored and who helped me so much, I mean, he would like send me on this wild goose chase all over the country. Oh, there's one here. Oh, there's one there. And I would call up and have Ephraim Zimbalist, you know, an actor in California, measure the keys on his Hoffman piano. But they were they were all the same size as the conventional keys. So I kept, you know, like it was taking a lot of time to do this work while I'm teaching and practicing and performing and wondering, you know, why is this so difficult? And eventually I talked to Henry Steinway. I had to get to the top of the food chain and I said, where are the Hoffman pianos? And he said, oh, we burned all of those after Hoffman died. We wanted to make sure that there was nothing out there. So we didn't want to have to to deal with making this size for this person and that size for that person. Standardization is what we needed. I was in such shock when I heard that. Now I can't remember exactly. I think that might have been why I really wanted to rebuild my piano. Either that or I had already put it into motion and I knew for sure that it was the right thing to do to do it myself.

Since then, what a long journey, but you've come this far.

It's like 30 years.

Wow. Yes, that's really amazing. Then also there is a group of people or organization with Christopher Donison and David Steinbühler.

Yes, that's— I earlier— DS, that's Donison Steinbühler, DS Keyboards. They started a business together, but Chris Donison is not part of it now. David Steinbühler kept the name, and he has a foundation. I mean, the most important thing to know about, about DS Keyboards is that they're a small outfit in Titusville, Pennsylvania, that makes keyboards that are narrower width than the conventional ones. And David has helped dozens of people all over the world rebuild their existing instruments to have narrower keys. It's really been a very noble effort for so many years. I met them back in the 1990s. And I'm just so impressed with how productive they've been. They're not part of the manufacturing industry per se, the piano manufacturing industry. They're a small cottage industry and they can build— what I last heard is they can build and install one per month. So 12 pianos a year, that's not really enough to make the impact that we need for everybody to know about it, which is why you didn't know about it.

Right. Of course. Hey TPP friends and listeners! The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song is in its 3rd season. Thanks to all of you for watching or listening to every episode since its launch in 2020. I started this show with a simple question I had in mind for quite some time, which is: How can we as classical pianists and music educators present the beautiful classical music tradition to the 21st century audience in a fun, contemporary, and engaging way? It's been an incredible journey for the last 3 years. I love what I do through this podcast, providing a platform for pianists and educators to reflect and discuss freely how we can keep the classical music industry thriving and relevant in this rapidly changing world. Now more than ever, I need your support so that I can continue my work by bringing you highly valuable content biweekly by interviewing groundbreakers in the industry. Your support will go directly to all the costs of The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song with Yukimi Song with Yukimi Song, such as a yearly subscription to the podcast hosting platform, the software I use for high-quality recording sessions and tech gear, as well as all the hours I spend researching and audio and video editing. You can make a one-time donation or monthly pledge by clicking the PayPal link in the show or going to TPP's website at thepianopod.com. As a thank you, you will receive The Piano Pod's fun logo sticker in the mail. So please support my show today and don't forget to subscribe, continue listening, and tell your friends and colleagues about The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. Let's continue with the episode. I want to talk about the challenge to make these this stretch piano known and eventually become— I wouldn't say, but why not mainstream? Why not? Because as I was reading the articles, 75% of pianists say they prefer to have narrower keys. That is insane. Then there's something wrong with this modern piano, right?

Well, you know, it's useful. I love all pianos and I play it. I haven't stopped stopped performing. I've never had any injuries. I don't, you know, I don't hate the big fat keys, as I sometimes call them. But, you know, I really enjoy playing my little keys if I'm playing difficult music.

What's been like to convince a big company like Steinway to build them? What was the journey like?

Oh, well, I mean, it was fascinating. Because they were supportive. They really did help me, but they're afraid of upsetting the industry. Like, you know, I think the electric car is a very good analogy because we don't want to vilify big companies for caring about their stake in business, you know? And it's a complex issue because Steinway is a luxury brand. You know, they are catering to the top 2% of the world and they want to be known as a as a luxury brand and they want all of their products to succeed. So on the one hand, Ron Losby, who has been one of my advisors and who I also adore, he was the CEO and the president for many years. He's retired, but he's still related to the company. I've known him since 2016. He took my proposals to China, to Germany. I made a PowerPoint presentation. I mean, I really did everything that all these presidents asked me to do. I got the patent, I made the presentations, I got myself on the front page of the paper, whatever. I did everything I could as an individual, but they just kept telling me, Hannah, you do it, you do it, you do it. And I finally figured out from looking at all of my own literature and my own analysis of the industry that the way in is with performance and that all of us who have pianos and if we can perform on them, you know, there's only so much talking and presenting and graphs that you can do. The proof is really in the playing. So if I have my piano in a public space, if I found my own concert hall and, you know, raise money to have a hall for 2 or 3 years and invite as many people as I can of all ages to just sit down and make music, we don't have to have these arguments anymore. All of us all over the world, we, you know, there are 40 to 50 people all over the world on 5 continents many of whom have been on our online festival once a year. We all know this is happening. It's not something we're waiting for or praying for. We live with our instruments. We know the difference. We know the comfort. We know the joy and the creativity and the expression. We just need to have a little bit more media exposure and have a lot more playing. So that's how I feel the industry will be affected. I am not interested in knocking on people's doors and trying to persuade them of something that I know in my heart is just wonderful. So I decided to, you know, take it upon myself to create a space in New York City where people can come from all over the world and have the experience to play. Pianos with narrower keys or have a choice of key size, right? So people with big hands can come and play too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, it's really the success is within changing people's perspectives and mindset toward it, right? Yeah, just like you compared this situation with the electric car and how our mindset has changed and an electric car is more becoming more mainstream.

The only way people could really know that is by experiencing them, not by talking about it.

Right.

So, you know, if an electric car was just noisy and clunky and horrible and, you know, uncomfortable, it wouldn't be accepted. But once— and there were a lot of prejudices against electric cars. The first electric car was introduced in 1890. You know, that was a long time ago. Pianos with narrow keys have been around forever. They've never, they've never been eliminated and they will continue to be around. It's just the words you use, mainstream. How does that happen? There are a lot of challenges, but I really do believe that new technologies, new materials, you know, ideas that my colleagues and I have that stem from the experience of playing, it's all happening right now.

Wow, this is exciting. So speaking of that, So next step in your stretto journey?

Well, is I'm raising money if anybody wants to donate. An active fundraising page and we'll launch our campaign end of April, beginning of May, knock on wood, to, you know, I'd like to raise $500,000 or more to rent a space in New York City and put both of my pianos in there and invite people from all over the world to come and play concerts. So, you know, there are two steps. Right now I'm looking for a dedicated space that's temporary, either in a university or a gallery or someplace where we can share the piano with an existing space, or we'll rent one for the festival. I've had my pianos in recording studios and in churches and other places for years. I've done this to raise awareness and then to really have a dedicated space. I have to be willing to give up my teaching studio, to give up a lot of other things. I mean, I've I've given up a lot over my whole career to pursue this because it really is time-consuming. But I'm willing to do that really for the community and for the betterment of other people and also for myself so that I can play concerts on a piano that fits me in my town. And hopefully we can have venues like that all over the world and people can tour around in the designated spots and play on pianos that fit them. That's, you know, step by step. We can put a system into place.

That concludes the first half of this fun episode of The Piano Pod with Hannah Reimann, pioneer and advocate of stretto pianos and creator of the International Stretto Piano Festival and Stretto Piano Concerts. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review it wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can also watch this episode on The Piano Pod's YouTube channel. And don't forget to follow The Piano Pod on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. The links are listed in the show notes. Once again, I'm your host Yukimi Song. Tune in next Tuesday, May 2nd, at 8 PM Eastern to hear the rest of the interview with Hannah Reimann about stretto pianos.

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