Give Me Liberty, Give Me Song: America's Journey at 250

Tom Strange, curator of the Sigal Music Museum, will offer an overview of the piano’s history in the United States, highlighting how builders working in a new cultural and economic landscape developed innovations shaped by local conditions and evolving musical tastes. He will then introduce several of the Piano Performance Museum’s landmark instruments—Geib (1824), Nunns & Clark (1833), and a Steinway square grand (1865)—discussing their makers and what makes each instrument distinctive. Musical examples will be performed by Patricia García Gil, Postdoctoral Associate and Artist-in-Residence at Cornell’s Center for Historical Keyboards.