<p>Check it out:
[Pianist</a> faces 7 years jail for ?excessive practising? | TODAYonline](<a href=“http://m.todayonline.com/world/quirky-world/pianist-faces-7-years-jail-excessive-practising]Pianist”>http://m.todayonline.com/world/quirky-world/pianist-faces-7-years-jail-excessive-practising)</p>
<p>It doesn’t seem to be from the Onion, but it sure does sound like it!</p>
<p>[Spanish</a> Pianist Could Face Jail for Practicing - ABC News](<a href=“http://abcnews.go.com/Weird/wireStory/spanish-pianist-face-jail-practicing-20864983]Spanish”>http://abcnews.go.com/Weird/wireStory/spanish-pianist-face-jail-practicing-20864983)</p>
<p>Friends in Catalunya confirm that this is indeed true! What makes it more absurd is that the young woman pressing the suit attended music school herself. Given the volume level in bars in Spain, I have to assume that the woman must never have gone out of her house because if the piano bothered her, she could never have stood being in a restaurant, bar, or heaven forbid, at a futbol match (or even in the streets in Barcelona when Barca plays Real Madrid! Puigcerda is a small place, so why hasn’t anyone else complained about said, “noise”?
Soundproofing isn’t great in apartment buildings or houses in Spain- it was never a concern, so it isn’t a priority. One grows used to watching one’s own TV while simultaneously being bombarded with the sound of one neighbor’s set, another’s stereo and a pickup game involving a ball down in the nearby schoolyard!
The US culture is litigious in the extreme, not so elsewhere and a lawsuit like this is extremely unusual and an attorney would only have taken it if the plaintiff really insisted. Makes me wonder about the woman’s mental state to begin with and why she never complained about the piano noise waking her sleeping babies? Something isn’t right here, but I’ll post what I find out from closer to the “source”.
Thanks for the good laugh, sopranomom92!</p>
<p>I’m playing in an adult beginner ensemble and some of our work could be called criminal…</p>
<p>Reminds me of a situation I read about several years ago. There is an apartment complex on west 42nd street and 9th ave, that was built back in the late 70’s (when Times Square was at its height of seediness), and it was built as affordable housing for artists, actors, musicians, etc…well, several years ago there suddenly were these rules about practicing for singers and musicians, limiting the number of hours…what happened was as the area changed and became more upscale, suddenly (not so mysteriously) , they had all these non artists moving in, who complained about ‘their’ rights (according to the article, when it was all artists, no one complained because they assumed it as part of living there)…</p>