The moment Perri Knize first played her piano, she knew it had to be named Marlene.
Hearing the piano's uniquely tuned sound, Knize, whose book "Grand Obsession: A Piano Odyssey" has just been published, remembered the star of "The Blue Angel" and her throaty rendition of "Falling in Love Again."
"It was like Marlene Dietrich's soul in this piano. The 1930s Hollywood glamour was there," Knize said, taking a lunch break from talking up her book at the NAMM Show in Anaheim, an annual trade event for music products retailers and manufacturers.
Knize's book shows strangers to the piano that each instrument has a personality, and devoted buyers such as Knize will search for the right one with an Ahab-like zeal. "Grand Obsession" traces her long quest for the right instrument, her restoration of its voice, and her discovery of its origins in a European forest.
Her search would have been impossible without the help of an online tribe of piano aficionados who became her social network and her book's supporting characters.
Many of them, like Knize, took up piano later in life -- becoming part of the fastest-growing demographic of new piano students, according to the Music Teachers National Assn. That piano lessons are increasingly the purview of adults means that the recital has receded in importance, often replaced by the piano party -- which has all the piano performance, none of the judgment, and much more alcohol.
Frank Baxter, founder of PianoWorld.com, the chat forum that plays a big part in "Grand Obsession," explained social piano playing.
"The expectation people have of piano is of a concert pianist with the tailcoat and everyone shushing everyone else," he said. "We're not that type of group. There are no snobs among us, and if there are, we knock them off their pedestal. We're here to have fun."
Baxter launched his current site in 2001. Since then, membership has gone from about 100 to well over 28,000. About 150 new members receive their member numbers each week (Baxter claims No. 1). They organize monthly parties in cities around the country, from a two-day affair at four homes each autumn in Cape Cod, Mass., to smaller gatherings with a Southern California-based group that takes credit for launching the trend six years ago in Long Beach. Baxter hopes to organize a piano cruise, with members providing the entertainment.
