ROCHESTER — “A piano is just a piano,” says James Baldwin’s narrator in his short story “Sonny’s Blues.” Almost in the same breath, the narrator urges the musician “to try and make it do everything.” ...

Six months of piano lessons can heighten kindergartners' brain responses to different pitches, and improve their ability to tell apart two similar-sounding words. Christopher Intagliata reports.

Piano lessons may teach you how to play Chopin’s etudes, but techniques of a different sort are needed when figuring out where to put a piano in your home. A badly chosen location can spoil the ...