Hello, all Thank you for your responses. It is good to know that some places actually have "policies" because here at SFSU's School of Music and Dance the concept has proved to be unworkable. But then in the five years that I have worked here we have had 3 Deans of the College of Creative Arts and the third Director of SMD just got fired yesterday (so we'll have to break in a fourth one next semester). Any concept of "policy" or "management" really goes out the window under such circumstances. The administrators that I have worked with have all been very reasonable, quite receptive to the needs of piano service/maintenance and willing to implement suggestions. But because of the administrative set up here and also due to the lack of management stability, everything is always done on an ad-hoc basis and any kind of continuous policy is impossible to implement or enforce. So at best everything and anything is done through a process of continuous negotiation, where all interested parties try to gain whatever advantage they can. And at worst, professors and administrators preemptively establish "facts on the ground" - and dare anyone to do anything about it. Many thanks to all who responded. Now that I know how things are handled elsewhere, I have accurate information for the next negotiation with the next Director whenever issues come up. And the next, and the next.... By the way, the #1 instrument (Hamburg Steinway D from around 1989) is horrendously overused, since everyone wants to play the "good piano" - often it's a matter of status more than anything else. We try to limit it to classical pianists and chamber music - but it's difficult. And one of the piano faculty has a "Young Pianists" competition here every year - when a bunch of 14 and 15 year olds pound away at the poor thing for three days straight. (Of course she insists on using the #1 Hamburg). Another piano faculty member was aghast at what he saw and heard being done to that piano at this competition... (Last year I pulled it out of service for "emergency repairs" to force her to use another piano). And the concert hall is badly overbooked - since it's used for classes and rental events also - so recitals have to be booked whenever time is available. And if the performer wants rehearsal time before the concert - well, that's even more complicated. Eliminating performance slots simply isn't an option here. And, BTW, until last year juries were held in one of the teaching studios, on Steinway B's. Moving them to the concert hall has made a really bad situation worse... Another factor that is going to impact this piano is that due to the California budget crisis and the furlough policies imposed by the Governator, the building will be closed when classes are not in session. This was the time we used to get the stage instruments back into shape - during the semester we just don't have the access to do much beyond tuning and minor voicing. Not the best time to add more stress to an already overstressed instrument... Israel Stein -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20091222/f6b87837/attachment.htm>
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