We are at the point monumental scientific, technological and intellectual changes. The post Mechancial Age presents particular challenges for historically focused cultural pursuits deeply rooted in the mechano-crafts of antiquity. Electricity is central to most contemporary technological operations and the vast majority of music related experiences uses electricity as its energy source.³⁶⁶

Unique pianistic techniques and musical concepts of jazz keyboard playing and composition have emerged as a result of the extensive use of electronics.

Any sound I hear in my head I can reproduce with a synthesizer, and this is the greatest blessing, I hear a sound and work with that sound. Not from the aspect of virtuosity , not how fast or slow, but what sort of music you can create from that sound. It’s like a dream world.³⁶⁷

Stuart Piano Sound Influenced by Electronic Sound.

In my jazz improvisations on the Stuart piano I have frequently experienced elements in the Stuart sound that exhibit the stability of electronic enhancement. In the sound excerpt below I play the Stuart piano in an improvised passage of Black³⁶⁸ by Duke Ellington. Ellington composed this music to depict the musical changes of African-American people as their world transformed from slavery and work song to emancipation and the subsequent creation of the contemporary art form, jazz³⁶⁹ . Black was composed in 1943 in the height of the big band swing era for the Ellington Orchestra’s big band sound. Its original swing metre in 4 has been modified for a more contemporary 21st century ‘world music’ metre of 6.

³⁶⁶Wayne Stuart speaks in 12 “Innovations In The Piano,” 2010. (edited by W. Stuart, 1/2/2016).
³⁶⁷ Brian Glasser, In A Silent Way : A Portrait Of Joe Zawinul, (U.K: Sanctuary Publishing ,2001), 241.
³⁶⁸Duke Ellington Black Brown and Biege Iving Mills,New York, 1943.
³⁶⁹‘Jazz’ is frequently described as America’s classical music, a description which emphasizes its blending of African and European musical forms. Billy Taylor, “Jazz: America’s Classical Music,”Black Music PerspectivesVol. 14, No.1, Special Issue: Black American Music Symposium 1985 (Winter, 1986) : 21-25.