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If music is the universal language, then the message emanating from a Steinway concert grand piano at a concert today in Baghdad, Iraq, was one of friendship and support. The Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra performed its first concert today at the Baghdad Convention Center since its new grand piano arrived last month. Steinway & Sons offered to donate the piano after the orchestra performed here with the Washington National Symphony Orchestra. Steinway responded to a National Endowment for the Arts plea for companies to donate instruments to the Iraqi orchestra, which floundered under Saddam Hussein. Once the donation was made,...

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Government scientists conducted an underground nuclear materials experiment Friday at the Nevada Test Site, the National Nuclear Security Administration said. The subcritical experiment, dubbed Piano, involved detonating high explosives to chart the behavior of plutonium in a non-nuclear explosion. It did not trigger a self-sustaining nuclear reaction, NNSA spokesman Kevin Rohrer said. Scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California completed the test at 1:44 p.m. in a cavern 960 feet below ground, Rohrer said. No abnormalities and no surface damage were reported at the vast site, about 85 miles northwest of Las Vegas....

I don't normally post vanities, but... I was wondering how many FReepers play, or have played, the piano. I just started taking lessons, and I'm into my second month. The pieces I'm currently working on are: Beethoven's Sonatina in F Major (Anh. 5, No. 2), Clementi's Sonatina in G Major (Op. 36, No. 2) and a piece by Schumann, which in my book is titled "Knight Ruppert" (Op. 68, No. 12). That one is a real bear, because it's so fast, but I'm taking it slow, so far. For anybody who knows these pieces and might be unduly impressed by...

I am giving a speech tomorrow and need to know how to pronounce "Czestochowa" as in, "The Shrine of the Czestochowa." The part of the speech is below. It's a great story that shows that the relationship between Poland and the US is indeed heartfelt:Born in Poland in 1860, the legendary pianist, composer, and one-time President of Poland, toured the United States several times during his life. And as in World War I, Paderewski stayed the United States to wait out the war in Europe. After arriving in the US in December 1940 at the age of 80, he performed...

A man, suspected of being a Fedayeen member, is beaten by a group residents on the streets of Basra, Iraq (news - web sites) Tuesday April 8, 2003. (AP Photo/Jon Mills, Pool)

A British musician has designed a device that may revolutionise sound for pianists around the world - and put tuners out of business In what appears to be the musical equivalent of splitting the atom, a British musician has created a device that can adapt a piano to play the "microtones" that are usually beyond the capability of the instrument. Three hundred years after the piano's invention, composer Geoff Smith claims to have revolutionised an instrument that, until now, has relied on only 88 notes from their 88 keys. This limitation has made the piano's "fixed tuning" unable to cope...