Jazz musicians: celesta
3 jazz musicians in the atlas play celesta, including Tom Waits, Sun Ra and Johnny Costa. Open a profile for dates, discography and line-ups.
The celesta or celeste, also called a bell-piano, is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. It looks similar to a four- or five-octave upright piano, albeit with smaller keys and a much smaller cabinet, or a large wooden music box (three-octave). The keys connect to hammers that strike a graduated set of metal (usually steel) plates or bars suspended over wooden resonators. Four- or five-octave models usually have a damper pedal that sustains or damps the sound. The three-octave instruments do not have a pedal because of their small "table-top" design. One of the best-known works that uses the celesta is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from The Nutcracker. The sound of the celesta is similar to that of the glockenspiel, but with a much softer and more subtle timbre. This quality gave the instrument its name, celeste, meaning "heavenly" in French.
Read the full article on Wikipedia ↗ · From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
