Garrick Ohlsson on Technique

Garrick Ohlsson on Technique

Garrick Ohlsson on Technique

Clavier Companion • September/October 2010 Resilience

This past summer, Dr. John Chong and I had the pleasure of meeting with Garrick Ohlsson. The purpose of our meeting was to obtain quantitative measurements of his playing. Through the use of ProformaVision software that was developed specifically for my work with musicians, we were able to measure Garrick’s muscle tension and biomechanical movement while he played on a Yamaha Disklavier, which generated correlating MIDI data on the music itself. Not only was his playing fantastic, but we also spent the entire afternoon discussing piano technique, form and tension.