The Global Piano Roll Meeting is excited to announce a fourth virtual conference on 11 September 2021. It aims to continue the communication and collaboration sparked by the 2018 gathering, and to be a fourth prelude to a planned 2022 conference in Switzerland. The prelude will be held online via Zoom and will offer interactive opportunities for questions and group discussion.

Full Program (pdf)

The meeting will be recorded and the organisers intend to post the sessions online for access by the worldwide piano roll community. By turning on your camera and microphone you agree to appear on the recording and grant a license to the organisers for irrevocable, non-exclusive use, including copying, transcribing, displaying, broadcasting (including webcasting) for non-commercial purposes.

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, 17–20 June 2022. The conference will include papers, presentations, and performances.

Proposals (maximum 350 words) for papers, panels, presentations or lecture-recitals must be received by 1 November 2021. Proposals that had been accepted for the cancelled 2020 meeting can be resubmitted and will be given preference for the 2022 meeting. Topical areas may include but are not limited to the historical study of piano and organ rolls, pneumatic instruments, roll manufacturing, archival preservation and access, performance studies utilizing rolls, and descriptive/investigative work with collections.

The call for papers (pdf) is now open.
Please send your proposals to daniel.allenbach@remove-this.hkb.bfh.ch by 1 November 2021.

Contacts:
Sebastian Bausch
Kumaran Arul
Marc Widuch