An Exciting (?) Weekend

[Roger Jolly]

Avery, 
               Where was your gardian angel over the weekend.
Roger


At 01:35 PM 08/02/00 -0500, you wrote:
>   List,
>
>   Just thought I'd share about my weekend. We just finished
>the International Piano Festival here at the University of
>Houston with artists Abbey Simon (faculty), Misha & Cipa
>Dichter (New York) and Ursula Oppens (Northwestern University
>faculty). Concerts went great and everyone seemed to really
>enjoy them.
>   The fun began last Monday when Abbey's Baldwin was flown
>in from New York (Baldwin Artist). A freight company picked it
>up at the airport here and brought it to the university, then
>my regular movers came to take it out of the road case and set
>it up.
>   We found the fallboard off both its "hooks" and the key slip
>also off the cheek blocks. Also, I found that the keys of app.
>the top two octaves or so, were off their front rail pins and
>shifted to the bass end. Of course, I couldn't remove the action
>because of a bunch of hammers being up in the air.
>   When I got that corrected and tried to remove the action, it
>was wedged somehow and refused to come out. Underneath the piano,
>I found that the soft pedal lever that actually shifts the
>keyboard was wedged up tight somehow. When I pulled on it,
>something sort of "clunked" and then the action could be removed.
>   I saw that the key strip on top of the keys behind the fallboard
>was broken, which is why the keys were out of position, I'm sure.
>I glued it back as good as possible (some wood was missing around
>the screw hole), called Baldwin C & A in New York and told Danny
>about the problems and suggested he have the factory send me a
>new key strip, which was done.
>   Because of the types of problems, his belief was that the piano
>had taken a fall somewhere along the line. After examining the road
>case, I totally agree. It's built from a very hard neoprene material
>of some kind, with metal banding around all the edges and across the
>long sides and on wheels. It had very probably fallen over flat with
>the piano in it, up side down. There was obvious damage to the case,
>with the metal edging pried up/bent in a couple of places and scrape
>marks along the black sides of the case, as if a fork lift had been
>used to pick the case back up.
>   Then early Saturday morning, I went into the hall and discovered
>that the heating had gone off overnight and it was then 63 F. in
>the hall. The Dichters even had to practice that morning in that
>cold. The physical plant called in a technician and they were
>finally able to correct the problem. Then it eventually got up to
>around 75 F., which was "too" much! I called again and they managed
>to regulate the temp. some more. But it sure caused havoc with the
>tunings. They both went fairly flat, so I had to basically do pitch
>raise type of tunings to try and settle them down. Really fun when
>you only have 3 hrs. to tune two pianos together. This is one
>particular time when I was really glad to have the SAT III.
>   Then on Sunday, I had to tune completely aurally for the final
>concert because my SAT locked up somehow and refused to come back
>on. But that's another story. It was good for me to tune aurally,
>anyway.
>   Ah, the life of a "concert" technician (whatever that is). :-)
>
>Avery
>______________________________________
>
>mailto:atodd@uh.edu - Work
>
>mailto:avery@ev1.net - Home
>
>Avery Todd, RPT
>Moores School of Music
>University of Houston
>Houston, TX 77204-4201
>713-743-3226
> 
Roger Jolly
Saskatoon, Canada.
306-665-0213
Fax 652-0505