Pianos and Christmas trees
@BartK I get that. For me, I want to enjoy the tree throughout December. But it takes a while to get things up (right now I finally go the trees set up, but no ornaments yet) and I like to have the tree up on Thanksgiving, so I usually start decorating during Thanksgiving week. But this year, Iām playing the concert the week of Thanksgiving, and my mother is coming, so I want to have the trees decorated by this coming Monday. Which means I started this week.
macuaig I always take my down by Jan 6th, which is the feast of the epiphany. If I have to work on the 6th, then the tree gets put away before then.
Thereās commercialism, and then thereās personal enrichment, and one really has nothing to do with the other unless you choose it. I havenāt put up decorations in decades, but Iām in a new place, physically and enthusiastically, and Iāll be decorating next week. Itāll be well into January before Iāll be wanting a change of scenery. Roll the holiday cheer!
Perpetual Beginner, Yamaha P115
We don't bother to put up Christmas decorations in our living area because it's just us here, but it's kind of required to have them in the theatre lobby because we usually do a free admission movie for Santa Claus (with Santa coming to visit and so forth) so it would be kind of odd if there were no Christmas decorations.
I actually have four really unique and quite pretty two-foot snowflakes that look like they date back to sometime in the fifties that I hang over the candy counter (far enough back that the kids can't reach them). I found them in the basement here when I was cleaning out junk shortly after I bought the building thirty years back.
Gosh, thirty years now. I must be getting old....
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Looking at those pictures makes me wanna play Charlie Brown Christmas music. 
I usually wait until after Thanksgiving to set up a tree. My picture was from a Christmas Past like ShiroKuro!
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Bellyman I have a great book of transcriptions of the music from the Charlie Brown Xmas show. I don't know who made them but they are really close to the originals....the one thing lacking is the piano accompaniment when the bass takes off for it's solo - it just gives bars of rest - and I'm not good enough by ear to pick out the chords
danno858, yeah, it kinda depends on the transcription. The original Charlie Brown music was a trio, piano / bass / drums. And often, transcriptions are trying to at least fill in an approximation of the piano and bass, sometimes more effectively than others, for piano solo.
Something else I find is that Vince did a lot of improv that I have a hard time getting my head wrapped around completely (and sometimes don't even like) but am more and more OK with that of late because I wanna be a good player in my own standing and not just a Vince mini-me, or an Oscar Peterson mini-me, or an Art Tatum mini-me. It's good to figure out, know, and maybe even be able to do something exactly as someone else did, there is value in that. But repeating it over and over exactly the same way? If I wanted to do that, I'd be playing classical music, and that, I do not do anymore. It doesn't take long, when playing a classical piece and playing it the way I feel it, before someone "good and proper" will tell me how "wrong" I'm doing it... (probably a bunny trail, and some won't agree with me)...
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Thereās a guy in DC who brings his trio every season to a dinner music stage. As youāre finishing up your meal, they project the Charlie Brown Christmas tv show in its entirety, then the trio (piano, bass, drums) picks up for a full loose performance mix of that music and a bit more. When I saw them a few years ago, his young son came out for his first stage performance singing a couple of poignant holiday songs. It was a really lovely evening. I have friends coming in next weekend, and now Iāll be introducing them to the new tradition.
Perpetual Beginner, Yamaha P115
Are these real trees or artificial ones? I always cut a young tree from the back yard for Christmas (they grow like weeds so I usually only keep about 6 years worth of seedlings and saplings at various growth stages around), so it's a real one and it has not been engineered to not drop needles, or sap for that matter. Obviously I am loathed to put such a tree close to my piano. How do you protect from unwanted moisture and other problems?
Iāve used an artificial tree for years now.
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Ok, our trees are up. (This might be the earliest Iāve decorated everā¦ 
Living tree with lights out (full disclosure, no piano in this pic!)
Pencil tree in the piano room:
View from the bench (see the living room tree in the distance)
Another view from the bench
Random comment: I took these photos with my iPhone. When you go to edit a photo, thereās an āautoā option that tweaks the brightness and contrast, maybe it does some other things. Anyway, I use that option a lot and I used it with all of the photos shared here.
Look at photo number three. I used the auto edit for that one, and look at how the Yamaha logo really pops (esp compared to photo number four). There was no light source behind me, although the lettering is brass and I polished all the brass when I first bought the piano (so about 5 years ago). So itās interesting how the logo really pops in photo 3 but not photo 4.
Iām sure there are editing options where you can bring out or brighten one spot in a photo but Iāve never tried to figure out how to use them. Still, as a piano lover, photo number 3 is a not unwelcomed result 
1890 Steinway C (Piano Craft), 2019 Grotrian 208 Charis, Kawai Novus NV10S
Southern California
ShiroKuro I love those reflections as well! What a beautiful arrangement!
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Beach L168, Wish, baCh, WOW Petrof, Fake Steinway, VS
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APianistHasNoName Wow. What a perfect composition and such a lovely mood you've created.
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Beach L168, Wish, baCh, WOW Petrof, Fake Steinway, VS
TIME
