New York institute earns Steinway designation

New York's Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute recently earned designation from piano producer Steinway & Sons as an All-Steinway School, an honor shared with 180 institutions on five continents.
 
“At Rensselaer, we work to ensure that our students and faculty are able to practice, to compose, and to perform on the very finest of instruments,” said institute President Shirley Ann Jackson. “Our Steinway pianos exemplify the seriousness of our commitment at Rensselaer to the arts, and to the connection between the arts and science and technology. We thank Steinway & Sons for recognizing Rensselaer as a university that provides its students and faculty with the most advanced tools for education, for expression, for collaboration, and for innovation.”
 
Steinway & Sons pianos are renowned for their craftsmanship and consist of more than 12,000 individual parts. Rensselaer now boasts six Steinway grand pianos, five that the university purchased and one that was donated by Rensselaer alumnus Philip Maloof. The school also has six Steinway-engineered studio pianos.
 
 “One of my goals when I came to Rensselaer was to expand upon the media, arts, science, and technology signature research thrust and, more recently, to develop programs around Art_X @ Rensselaer, noting the institute’s commitment to advancing knowledge and culture at the nexus of the arts writ large and the STEM disciplines,” said Mary Simoni, dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.