The Global Piano Roll Meeting is excited to announce a second virtual conference on 27 March 2021 at 21:00 CET (20:00 GMT, 13:00 PST, 07:00 AEDT). This three-hour meeting will include lectures on Hupfeld DEA and Aeolian, discussion groups and a listening session. It aims to continue the communication and collaboration sparked by the 2018 gathering, and to be a second prelude to a planned 2021 conference in Switzerland. 

The conference will be held online via Zoom and will offer interactive opportunities for questions and group discussion.

Full Program (pdf)

Music rolls and pneumatic instruments are a vital part of the history of recording and mechanical music. They provide a rich window into the technological, musical, cultural and economic history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Recent projects to preserve rolls by scanning and digitization have sparked wider interest in the field. This has allowed for technical studies of rolls, which are an early digital record of music making. Archival documents are also yielding insights into the business and technology of roll manufacturing. These are among the many diverse topics that have brought individuals together from around the world to share their work with rolls.

This conference continues the work of the 1st Global Piano Roll Meeting in Leipzig, 2018.  The conference will be conducted in English.  It is an international forum for enthusiasts and professionals working with paper rolls and pneumatic roll playing instruments.

The 2nd Global Piano Roll Meeting will take place as an international conference in Switzerland at the Hochschule der Künste Bern and the Museum für Musikautomaten Seewen 10–13 September 2021. The conference will include papers, presentations, and performances.

The call for papers is closed.

Contacts:
Sebastian Bausch
Kumaran Arul
Marc Widuch