Pianists with small hands?

[Gheorghe]

On 3/24/2023 at 4:37 PM, Jack Pine said:

Man, if your hands are small for your height and you can reach a 10th I must some kind of really special case: I'm just over 6ft myself! 

Well I reach a 10th but I still think that my hands are small if I look at this photo with me on stage 

[Niko]

If tall people had to play larger pianos, you might be in trouble... 

[Jack Pine]

It's funny this thread has been bumped just now. I've been trying some of these stretches mentioned and just last week I realized I can now hit some minor 10ths. Hard to see how I could go much further, but I guess that's what I thought when I could only hit 9s.

[clifford_thornton]

On 3/24/2023 at 6:01 PM, HutchFan said:

I've read that Richie Beirach has small hands.  His fingers certainly appear to be stubby in the photo below.  But I guess he's found ways to work around it -- because one would never know from listening to his music.  It seems like he can play just about anything.

that's a cool photo. I like Beirach a lot -- was just listening to a beautiful duo with him and Masahiko Togashi the other day. Another pianist that Shipp has made me appreciate all the more.

[Gheorghe]

16 hours ago, Jack Pine said:

It's funny this thread has been bumped just now. I've been trying some of these stretches mentioned and just last week I realized I can now hit some minor 10ths. Hard to see how I could go much further, but I guess that's what I thought when I could only hit 9s.

It was bumped by me since I always wanted to post a photo of me on stage but it took me months to have time to manage to make photos smaller, so this and the Peter Pullman-Photo in the "Jazz in Newspapers etc." had to be posted much later, just yesterday. 

Glad you are successfull with stretches. In my case it would hurt my hands, but I think I can reach 10th because of more than 60 years playing piano (I started to lay my fingers on piano when I still was in (how you say, "pampers" didn´t exist in the early 60´s ). My dad could "play" a handful of pieces, one was some sonata in Db by Beethoven or so with very deep notes, and one was I think a funeral march written by Chopin and to the surprise of my fatha I jumped on his lap and played the line with my little hands. At 4,5 I was pissed off that my hands are so small I can´t reach what I have in my head. 

So I think 60 years of playing, 45 years of active playing on stage, and somehow the hands get adapted, especially the left hand for decimes if you play a solo ballad or so.

[Ken Dryden]

Arnold Laubich and Ray Spencer noted Lou Stein's small hands in their Art Tatum Discography on "ImaTatums," explaining that his small hands made it unable for him to successfully recreate Art Tatum recordings on an LP they auditioned.