MOVERS & SHAKERS
I think Harrods decided to run with Edelweiss because we’re different. We appeal to the millennial generation, piano players and interior designers. We are flexible and our pianos can be adapted to any specification, or any interior"
early 20th century, these self-playing pianos come preloaded with thousands of songs to choose from. “Beethoven, James Blunt, Led Zeppelin and whatever’s in between”, says Ross. “There’s a speaker concealed, and we can also merge in an MP3 track, so you can have vocals and the full band playing along through the speakers if you want.” Edelweiss was, Ross says, a product designed to act as a ‘recession beater’; borne out of an eagerness to keep business buoyant in an increasingly tough market – but the history of the company goes back much further. It’s an offshoot of 1066, a revered Cambridge firm specialising in designing, creating and restoring custom pianos, which was founded by Ross’ grandfather, John ‘Roy’ Norman. A Cambridge University research physicist graduate and talented pianist, John took up tuning pianos in the 1970s to earn some extra money on the side. “He soon realised the pianos he was tuning were poor in terms of their maintenance and how they played; like a car with a badly tuned engine. So, using his skillset as a physicist, he was able to analyse how he could make them better,”
explains Ross. “He quit his job, bought a piano and redid it from his lounge, selling it on to somebody. Then, with the profit he made from that, he was able to buy two more and keep a bit back for himself, he then bought four more, and so on – and that’s how he started.” “I think we're unique,” he adds. “We’ve been founded on the highly unusual combination of a research physicist who also has the artistic ability. Those two skill sets don’t usually come together.” As the business grew, Roy ran out of space in his home for the many pianos passing through, and set up shop on Cherry Hinton high street, gradually building an international reputation for his work on piano restorations. The move to the current Fulbourn site came in 1989, where the business remains very much a family one to this day. Roy’s son Mark is head of production and design, while Chris, another son, looks after restoration and aftercare. “Between the two of them, there’s not any piano they don’t know,” says Ross with admiration. “The knowledge we have in-house is amazing.” Building on the heritage of the company while adding a decidedly
electromagnetic solenoids to convert electrical signals into a mechanical action; moving the keys as though they were being struck by a human hand. Songs are recorded by a live pianist, with an infrared rail tracking how fast the keys move, how far down they’re pushed and how many times they’re played, recording every touchpoint and datapoint so it can be fed through Edelweiss’ software and processed into a MIDI track. Each solenoid has around 1800 gradations of touch, meaning the pianos can recreate the nuances of a song perfectly, each and every time. A sort of high-tech successor to the pneumatic pianolas popular in the
ISSUE 02 18
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