NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) is the big musical instrument industry trade show. Technically it’s held twice a year, but the big show is every January in Anaheim, California. Anybody and everybody connected with the musical products industry shows and attends NAMM. This includes pianos of all price points, drums, brass and wind instruments, guitar picks, amps, guitars, disco fog machines, makers of fine hand crafted conducting batons and everything, I mean everything in between. It’s a huge show and the Anaheim Convention Center is one of the only convention centers in the country that can hold it. NAMM is not a consumer show.  Manufacturers display their products and sell them to retailers, who will later sell them to consumers. Therefore it is a wholesale show, not open to the public. Thank god, because it is busy and crazy enough as it is. That being said, there are always

Bosendorfer, in the past, has used NAMM to show some beautiful examples of our cabinet design skills and veneer work. However with business being slow and space smaller, it made more sense to show instruments that have more immediate sales potential. This year we displayed a model 290 Imperial with the CEUS reproducing system, a model 200 Johann Strauss, a model 214 in Jactoba (ya-TOE-ba) and a new example of the CS series. All these pianos, with the exception of the 290, were sold to dealers during the show. The 290 CEUS is going to North Carolina to (hopefully) be used in a recording project that will be discussed later. Our new display room in the Marriott was small, with thick carpet and pipe and drape on the walls, resulting in a very acoustically “dry” room. At first it seemed to be  negative, since good piano sound usually means echo

Yamaha has had a high end “craft built” line for a number of years and has been a very serious builder of concert pianos for decades. The concert grand, the CFIII (CF3) has undergone a number of iterations and experiments, resulting in the model CFIIIS that has been the flagship for the last 8 years or so. This year Yamaha is unveiling, both at NAMM and at the Frankfurt show,  the newest version called the CFX (X, not 10) and 2 smaller models with the same construction techniques, the CF4 and CF6. While there was a lot for Yamaha to talk about at NAMM this year, they did focus a lot of attention on these new pianos, hosting a press conference at which Mitsuru Umemura, the President of Yamaha Corporation global spoke and pianist Frederic Chiu performed. The performance (short but effective) was repeated at the Yamaha Dealers breakfast on

So now you have a major Japanese piano maker with a proven high end approach owning and taking marketing and sales responsibility for a 180 year old Austrian maker of what is generally referred to as one of the worlds finest craft built pianos; what happens next? My prediction is that good things will come out of this for both companies but the road will not be pot hole free. 1. Yamaha understands the high end piano world. Yamaha has beaten their collective heads against the entrenched  base, prejudices and the occasionally less than honorable marketing techniques of the current industry monopolist and they are deeply aware of the sensitivity that surrounds the Bosendorfer brand identity. They have repeatedly stated that they plan no changes in Bosendorfer manufacturing and but will have to take some steps to ensure the continued viability of Bosendorfer as a semi-independent entity. Yamaha also understands,

Namm has come and gone. We did something completely different this year by not showing at NAMM in our customary large booth with nice lighting, Viennese coffee and champagne. Instead we hosted our dealers at the very nice Le Merigot in Santa Monica with the intention of giving them a relaxing break and a chance to talk with them (and take orders) in a more relaxed setting. The result was great..much less work, much less cost and much nicer all around experience. The problem is that my relatively new Canon G9 camera disappeared. Whether or not I just lost it or it was taken out of my room is unclear and,ultimately, not important. But it does mean that a lot of good photos are gone, gone, gone. We showed a revised CS and the new satin lacquer finish. Very well received.

It’s been a busy January. The big annual Musical Instrument Industry trade show NAMM descended on us again, as usual at the Anaheim Convention center outside Los Angeles. I don’t have hard numbers but traffic seemed definitely down…hey, it’s been a tough year and 2008 doesn’t necessarily look any better. The Bosendorfer booth was well attended and I will say that business was not as bad as I had expected (personal opinion, not a corporate statement). We showed a Louis XVI in pommele, a high polish rosewood 225, a 225 CEUS and a couple of other cool cabinets. The mood seemed very sombre on the 3rd floor piano area. Sauter had some nice instruments including a concert grand. Fazioli was in an enclosed area that I did not attempt to enter. Bluthner, on the main floor, had some great eye candy, and some beautiful pianos. I bought a rather expensive