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Another music store story,first the background:
I was working as a piano salesman at the local Steinway dealer (for you non-musical types,Steinways are one of the top pianos in the world),all Steinway dealers are required to have a 9' grand in stock for use by Steinway artists when they come to town.
So one day we get word that one of their artists is coming to Albuquerque,so the grand we had gets a tuning & cleaning by our piano techs,then it's tuned again,then packed up & transported to the Kiva Theater,where it's tuned after arrival,then tuned again before the artist's performance that night.Not knowing anything about piano concert artists myself back then I really didn't pay attention.Until the next morning.....
I was "up" that morning,meaning I got the first call for the piano department.
"Hi,this is....." And that's as far as I got before this woman started literally screaming at me,I pulled the phone away from my ear,looked over & said to the owner "Mr. R,I think you might need to take this call"
"What's it about?"
"I dunno,some woman screaming about last night's concert"
He buried his face in his hands,then told me to transfer the call.
All day long this kept repeating,with irate people calling the store,we found out later from Mr. R what had happened:
As the artist was playing,the piano was going out of tune.At the end of the concert Vladimir Ashkenazy stormed off the stage loudly proclaiming in a thick Russian accent "I shall never return here again!"
That was in 1979 & he's never been back to Albuquerque.
OK,what happened,you ask?
The piano in question had been built,of course,in New York & stayed there for about 10 years before coming to New Mexico,where it sat in the store for about 5 years before it went to the concert.This is significant because NY's humidity is much,much higher than New Mexico's,5% is not unusual here in the summer.What happened was that the pinblock had dried out,the pins had just enough friction to hold after a tuning,but not enough for playing.
The piano had to be re-pinned,a fairly major operation that involved getting slightly larger custom pins from the factory & almost a week of work by the piano tech.
for you guitar players,a couple of years before that we had 3 brand new Gibson acoustic guitars,a J-40,a Dove & a Hummingbird that all had top cracks so big I could slip a quarter in 'em
I was working as a piano salesman at the local Steinway dealer (for you non-musical types,Steinways are one of the top pianos in the world),all Steinway dealers are required to have a 9' grand in stock for use by Steinway artists when they come to town.
So one day we get word that one of their artists is coming to Albuquerque,so the grand we had gets a tuning & cleaning by our piano techs,then it's tuned again,then packed up & transported to the Kiva Theater,where it's tuned after arrival,then tuned again before the artist's performance that night.Not knowing anything about piano concert artists myself back then I really didn't pay attention.Until the next morning.....
I was "up" that morning,meaning I got the first call for the piano department.
"Hi,this is....." And that's as far as I got before this woman started literally screaming at me,I pulled the phone away from my ear,looked over & said to the owner "Mr. R,I think you might need to take this call"
"What's it about?"
"I dunno,some woman screaming about last night's concert"
He buried his face in his hands,then told me to transfer the call.
All day long this kept repeating,with irate people calling the store,we found out later from Mr. R what had happened:
As the artist was playing,the piano was going out of tune.At the end of the concert Vladimir Ashkenazy stormed off the stage loudly proclaiming in a thick Russian accent "I shall never return here again!"
That was in 1979 & he's never been back to Albuquerque.
OK,what happened,you ask?
The piano in question had been built,of course,in New York & stayed there for about 10 years before coming to New Mexico,where it sat in the store for about 5 years before it went to the concert.This is significant because NY's humidity is much,much higher than New Mexico's,5% is not unusual here in the summer.What happened was that the pinblock had dried out,the pins had just enough friction to hold after a tuning,but not enough for playing.
The piano had to be re-pinned,a fairly major operation that involved getting slightly larger custom pins from the factory & almost a week of work by the piano tech.
for you guitar players,a couple of years before that we had 3 brand new Gibson acoustic guitars,a J-40,a Dove & a Hummingbird that all had top cracks so big I could slip a quarter in 'em
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