Piano Key founder Kimball Gallagher is a 25 year old classical pianist, a graduate of The Juilliard School and Rice University, and an entrepenuer. He recently purchased his first grand piano for $25,000 by dividing the cost of the piano by 88 (There are 88 keys on a piano.) and asking for donations on a key-by-key basis. He had a large poster of a piano keyboard and donors could sign their name on the keys they wanted to buy. If you bought two keys you had purchased a "trill", 5 keys a Major Third, 8 keys a perfect fifth, 12 keys and you were a member of the Glissando club, and 24 keys and you were a member of the Crescendo Club. In two concerts he raised $20,000 and an additional $5000 came in from additional donations afterward. He has a total of 54 donors.

Now he is creating Piano Key, an ever-expanding nationwide group of homes where he and eventually other classical pianists and chamber music groups, will play concerts in private residences. Applying a similar plan, each home will be assigned a key and the first major milestone in the growth of Piano Key will be the first 88 concerts. Mr. Gallagher is creating the network on his own, offering solo performances of classical piano music and chamber music as well as options for homes without a piano. The opportunity for audiences to sit in the intimacy of a living room and experience the immediacy of music being perfomed just several feet away is a rare and enriching experience.

Mr. Gallagher played his first house concert at the home of a man who decided to start a concert series in his home. Subsequently he played in his students homes, as well as in homes of people where the piano is virtually never played. Piano Key is a grass roots classical music effort to bring music into homes throughout America, to lifetime appreciators and connoisseurs and to those who may have not yet discovered the abundant, imaginative, and life-giving world of classical piano music.