Scott Holden, a piano professor at BYU, traveled to the Fazioli factory in Italy to select a Fazioli piano for BYU. The $250,000 piano, funded by donors, is one of only 100 of its model in the world. It has interchangeable keyboards and a special fourth pedal. At over 10 feet long, it barely fits in the concert hall but produces a powerful yet controllable sound according to Holden.

1. It was love at first sonata. After testing out a bor-
rowed Fazioli piano, BYU music staff and students
knew they had found the one. “We were smitten,”
says piano professor Scott L. Holden, who later trav-
eled to the Fazioli factory near Venice, Italy, to hand-
pick the model now filling the Harris Fine Arts Center
(HFAC) with music.
Valued at a quarter of a million dollars but
available toBYU thanks toinstitutionaldiscountsand
generous donors, BYU’s newest piano is the crown
jewel of Fazioli’s collection and one of only 100 in the
world. BYU’s F308 model features interchangeable
keyboards designed by BYU piano technicians—one
to pound out concertos, another light enough to
accompany vocalists—and a fourth pedal to reduce
volume without changing timbre. At 10 feet 2 inches
long, it’s the world’s longest piano, barely fitting in
HFAC freight elevators.
“It plays like it will do anything you ask it to,”says
Holden.“It has a lot of power,but it’s easy to control.”
Scan the QR code or visit magazine
.byu.edu/Fazioli to hear the piano and
see it in action.
web: Get tickets to listen to the
Fazioli in its inaugural concert, on Feb. 13, at more.byu
.edu/philharmonic.
Keys to BYU’s Heart
THIS past fall, a brightly painted tree
stump was planted on the Harold B.
Lee Library’s fifth floor.
The stump was just one part of the art
exhibit Age of Godz: Transcendentalism
Technicolored by art history and cura-
torial studies major Kevin W. Nemelka
(’14). Nemelka created a simple but col-
orful realm of nature, complete with a
nostalgic 8mm film projection of water
and other natural landscapes, Pacific-
hued painted wood panels with sparkly
metallic strips, and outer space paint-
ings—one of which popped out with
provided 3-D glasses.
The concept for the colorful tree
trunk came to Nemelka after research-
ing different color theories. While some
scientists claim that color is merely a
reflection of light, others believe that all
objects innately contain color; Nemelka
chose to embody the latter theory in his
tree stump, with its rainbow-colored
loops manifest only on the inner rings.
He says, “I wanted to represent this idea
of people having divine qualities that
aren’t very visible here on this planet but
that will become visible later.”
— Natalie Sandberg Taylor (’14)
web: kevnemelka.com
bradleysladebradleyslade
Planting Color
> art beat
Nemelka’s tree trunk, discovered in a junkyard, took nearly four months to get just right.
10 byu|magazine winter 2014