Hannah Reimann: Stretto Pianos

Crushing Classical

I had always assumed that piano keyboards were standardized and unchangeable. That it was our job as musicians to adapt to the instrument, rather than making it adapt to us. I'm delighted to find that I was mistaken!

Pianist, vocalist, composer, singer-songwriter, actor, and entrepreneur, Hannah Reimann began her career as a concert pianist with a pedagogical lineage that traces back through generations to Beethoven via her teachers, German Diez, Arminda Canteros, Kenneth Cooper etc. and a touring history with violist Paul Coletti with whom she performed together with internationally in the 1990s and early 2000s. She is currently completing both a solo piano album of new music and a pop EP of original songs. Her show, Both Sides Now, The Music of Joni Mitchell, has been heard in four states for the past 12 years. She has led a multi-genre life since she was a teen, singing in bands, playing Beethoven Sonatas and Mozart Concertos, and competing in a piano competition.

In 1997, Hannah independently rebuilt her Steinway piano to better accommodate her hand size. Her success with the instrument has made her the face of the stretto piano as a producer of concerts. Ms. Reimann was featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal as a “musician on a mission to make the world safe for small pianists.”

For more than 30 years, her goal has been to influence piano manufacturers worldwide to offer narrow-key pianos (which we now generically call “stretto”) and to produce concerts with them everywhere. She created the nonprofit Stretto Piano Events in 2024 after founding the festival and concert series in 2021.

Read more at the website, instagram, Facebook, or see the concert schedule online. You can donate to Hannah's initiative HERE.

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