Book, movies, and other media projects that Marc has been involved in, including:
Grand Obsession
Marc is a central character in Perri Knize’s new book Grand Obsession: A Piano Odyssey, to published by Scribner in January 2008. He is the technician who created the piano voice that Knize falls in love with and is haunted by when she plays a Grotrian grand Marc prepared for Beethoven Pianos in New York, and he becomes her guide throughout her “odyssey.”
“At the touch of the keys, I am swept away by powerful waves of sound,” the author writes of playing a piano voiced by Marc Wienert. “The treble is bell-like and sparkling, full of color, shimmering northern lights. The middle section is smoky and mysterious, as if rising from the larynx of a great contralto. A soul seems to reside in the belly of this piano, and it reaches out to touch mine, igniting a spark of desire that quickly catches fire.”
Mott Music Short Film
Marc is featured in Jarred Alterman’s short film, Mott Music, which received its debut at Austin’s South by Southwest Film Festival in March, 2005, with its subsequent New York Premier occurring in May of that year and its multiple showings on the Sundance Channel in October 2005 and encore performances in January 2006.
Zenph Studios
Marc has worked with Zenph Studios, on a Sony BMG recording of a re-performance of the 1955 Glenn Gould Goldberg Variations at the Glenn Gould Auditorium in September, 2006, entire Art Tatum:Piano Starts Herealbum, before a live audience at the original venue, the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on September 23, 2007. Marc also voiced the piano for Rachmaninoff plays Rachmaninoff, and Oscar Peterson: Unmistakable.
In November 2010, Hi Fi News and Record Review published Ghost in the Machine, an article about Zenph’s Oscar Peterson re-performance recording at Abbey Road studios, with mentions and photos of Marc’s work. Download and read the full article in PDF format.
ProSound Magazine – July 2011 issue, page 22
Piano is Key to Brown’s Studio, by Christopher Walsh
There are few experiences more pleasing than to sit at an ornately carved 1881 Steinway D Centennial concert grand piano as its unimaginably honeyed tones fill the room. Add a brilliant, sunlit view of the Hudson River, and you may just transcend to the astral plane.
“The piano is extremely special,” agrees Louis Brown, principal of L. Brown Recording, located in New York’s historic Film Center Building. “They only made around 400 of these, between 1876 and 1884, for the centennial of the United States. Doing classical music, I have to have something unique, and a Steinway D was a must.”
The Steinway was rebuilt and is maintained weekly by Marc Wienert of Action Direct Piano. “To capture classical music,” says Brown, “it’s very important that it’s tuned and voiced to perfection, and Marc cares for this piano meticulously.”
Download and read the full article in PDF format.