Piano

Though for millions of American families pianos have carried overtones of European cultural roots, the modern piano is in many ways a product of good old American know-how. The piano, originally gravicembalo col piano e forte (harpsichord with soft and loud) and later pianoforte (soft-loud), was invented in Italy in the last decade of the seventeenth century by Bartolomeo Cristofori, an instrument maker employed by the Medici family in Florence. Its distinguishing feature is that its strings are struck by hammers whose force the player can control, producing gradations between soft and loud, whereas the strings of its main predecessor, the harpsichord, are plucked. Through the eighteenth century, the piano gradually displaced the harpsichord and its smaller relative, the clavichord. The early nineteenth century saw the introduction of iron frames (they are cast in wet sand) and other structural reinforcements that permitted a bigger sound. But it was American factory methods, pioneered in part by the Steinway firm founded in 1853 by German immigrant Heinrich Steinweg, that put the piano in living rooms around the globe. American manufacturing cut the cost of pianos substantially, and the piano was one of the first items supported by what we would now call marketing, as extensive advertising campaigns (complete with the first-ever installment payment plans) promoted the piano as a family pleasure, technical marvel, and indispensable status symbol. Though Japanese manufacturers competed successfully with their American counterparts in the post-World War II era, the nineteenth-century Steinway was the true prototype for most of the grand pianos in use today. The first electric pianos to produce piano-like sound appeared in the U.S. and Germany in the 1930s.

Artist Highlights

Artist	Active	Styles
Fletcher Henderson	1920s - 1950s	Big Band, Early Jazz, Swing
Johnnie Johnson	1950s - 2000s	Piano Blues, Rock & Roll, Early R&B
Pinetop Smith	1920s	Boogie-Woogie, Piano Blues
Billy Strayhorn	1930s - 1960s	Swing, Mainstream Jazz, Jazz Instrument, Piano Jazz
Earl Hines	1920s - 1980s	Big Band, Early Jazz, Swing, Stride, Jazz Instrument, Piano Jazz
Oscar Peterson	1940s - 2000s	Swing, Mainstream Jazz, Bop, Jazz Instrument, Piano Jazz, Concerto, Keyboard
Bud Powell	1940s - 1960s	Bop, Jazz Instrument, Piano Jazz
Hargus "Pig" Robbins	1950s - 2020s	Nashville Sound/Countrypolitan, Traditional Country, Western Swing
Scott Joplin	1890s - 1910s	Keyboard, Ragtime
Dave Brubeck	1940s - 2010s	Cool, West Coast Jazz, Jazz Instrument, Piano Jazz, Choral, Keyboard
Cecil Taylor	1950s - 2010s	Avant-Garde Jazz, Free Improvisation, Free Jazz, Jazz Instrument, Modern Creative, Piano Jazz, Progressive Jazz, Poetry, Spoken Word
Sun Ra	1930s - 1990s	Avant-Garde Jazz, Experimental Big Band, Free Jazz, African Jazz, Global Jazz, Mainstream Jazz, Mixed Media, Progressive Jazz, Swing
McCoy Tyner	1960s - 2020s	Modal Music, Post-Bop, Progressive Jazz, Modern Big Band, Avant-Garde Jazz, Global Jazz, Hard Bop, Afro-Cuban Jazz, Jazz Instrument, Modern Creative, Piano Jazz, Standards
Thelonious Monk	1930s - 1970s	Bop, Hard Bop, Modal Music, Post-Bop, Jazz Instrument, Mainstream Jazz, Modern Big Band, Piano Jazz, Progressive Jazz
Tori Amos	1970s - 2020s	Adult Alternative Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Alternative Pop/Rock, Contemporary Singer/Songwriter
Little Richard	1940s - 2020s	Rock & Roll, Early R&B, New Orleans R&B, Black Gospel, Gospel
Willie "The Lion" Smith	1920s - 1970s	Stride, Swing
Allen Toussaint	1950s - 2010s	Early R&B, New Orleans R&B, Soul, Southern Soul
Duke Ellington	1910s - 1970s	Big Band, Early Jazz, Swing, Modern Big Band, Progressive Jazz, Standards, Orchestral
Jelly Roll Morton	1900s - 1940s	Early Jazz, New Orleans Jazz, Dixieland, Jazz Instrument, Piano Jazz, Keyboard
James P. Johnson	1910s - 1950s	Early Jazz, Ragtime, Stride, Jazz Instrument, Piano Jazz, Keyboard

Keyboard Instruments