On January 22, the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music hosted representatives from five Chinese conservatories for a demonstration of the exclusive Yamaha Remote Lesson technology between UCLA and the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China. This event represented the first official connection between an American and a Chinese school. Participating in this event were the Wuhan Conservatory of Music, Sichuan Conservatory of Music, Xinghai Conservatory of Music, Mianyang Normal University and Guangdong Literature and Art Vocational College. In conjunction with Yamaha Corporation of America, the event was sponsored by Yamaha Music & Electronics (China) Co., Ltd.
Dr. Inna Faliks, a Yamaha artist and the head of the keyboard department at the school of music, taught a student at the Central Conservatory of Music from UCLA’s recording studio in the Evelyn & Mo Ostin Music Center. Shana Kirk, a Yamaha Consultant, provided technical support and presented the Disklavier to the Chinese guests.
Yamaha developed this groundbreaking, distance-learning technology, which enables top artists and educators to instruct students remotely, thanks to internet-connected Disklavier, reproducing pianos located miles apart, in different states, or in this case, different countries. The Yamaha Disklavier is a unique instrument capable of transmitting highly nuanced performance data – the actual key strokes and subtle gradations of pedal movement – between similarly equipped instruments over the internet.