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A Jazz Piano Christmas 2025 – But not at the Kennedy Center

For more than three decades, “A Jazz Piano Christmas” at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. has been a quiet highlight of the holiday season for jazz and piano lovers. No fixed formulas, no “seasonal jazz” clichés — just strong pianistic voices working with familiar material. This year, the live concert is on pause. Here’s what changed, and where pianists can still turn for meaningful jazz piano Christmas listening and playing. Read more

Topic: A domra & uprigth piano  (Read 1574 times)

Offline themaximillyan

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A domra & uprigth piano
on: December 13, 2017, 05:17:29 AM
The domra (Russian: домра) is a long-necked Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian folk string instrument of the lute family with a round body and three or four metal strings.
In 1896, a student of Vasily Vasilievich Andreyev found a broken instrument in a stable in rural Russia. It was thought that this instrument may have been an example of a domra, although no illustrations or examples of the traditional domra were known to exist in Russian chronicles (the traditional domra was only known through numerous mentions in folklore, though examples of a related Turkic instrument, the dombra, existed). A three-stringed version of this instrument was later redesigned in 1896, patented, and introduced into the orchestra of Russian folk instruments.[1]
The three-stringed domra uses a tuning in 4ths.
Later, a four-stringed version was developed employing a violin tuning by Moscow instrument maker, Liubimov, in 1905.
In recent times, scholars have come to the conclusion that the term "domra" actually described a percussive instrument popular in Russia, and that the discovered instrument was either a variant of the balalaika or a mandolin.
Today, it is the three-stringed domra that is used almost exclusively in Russia. It is played with a plectrum, and is often used to play the lead melody in Russian balalaika ensembles.