Hi Chris, I couldn't help but reply since you have been to SIU. As you know, we have one (1), yes only one recital hall to use for student and faculty recitals. It has one three year old Steinway B and one Yamaha U1 on the stage. I've also moved the two manual harpsichord to the back of the stage due to one new faculty requesting its use. We share the hall with other groups such as the many guitar ensembles that need to practice in a hall situtation. Then there are the "rehersals". The student and faculty recitals are scheduled back to back so I can prep and tune for one at 3 PM but the piano faculty recital at 7:30 follows the voice (or other) recital at 5. Then there are the local teachers that use the hall the following day (Sunday) for their kids recitals. Also the piano grad students can practice on the Steinway whenever. If I wat to pull the action, regulate, voice etc, I have to come in late night or early morning. Now that I've spent some time with the piano and seated the strings on the bridge, voiced, and regulated it the grad students want to use it even more. For clarification, the main auditorium, Shryock, has the two Baldwin SD-10's. The School of Music only uses that facility for orchestra and choir and only because of the size of the stage. Just a couple of years ago they (somewhere in administration) decided to charge the School of Music for recital usage. So everything that can be done in our small hall with the "B" is done there. Is is not a travesty that piano faculty and students are relagated to use and have their performance recordings done on a "B" rather than on a "D" that now sparkles but is used only as a grad sutdent practice piano in the choir room? Henry Nicolaides Piano Technician School of Music, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Illinois 62901 email: henryn at siu.edu From: purdy at ohio.edu To: caut at ptg.org Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 08:38:57 -0500 Subject: Re: [CAUT] Practicing on concert hall pianos piano We have exactly the same policies and identical problems. What infuriates me the most is that it is the faculty that ignore and abuse the policy. Then they are the ones to complain about the condition of the pianos. I have been to faculty meetings and explained the problem. Everyone seems to agree that we need to limit "practice" time on performance instruments, and then go right ahead and do whatever they choose. I find them even giving lessons in the hall or rehearsing for hours early on a weekend or late at night when they can find the hall free. Their arrogance is frustrating but when they then complain about the condition of the pianos, that really burns me. And the hall is always heavily booked. For crying out loud, I have to schedule weeks in advance to get in there to tune. The poor pianos are scheduled for use ten hours a day then add the squatters sneaking in there at all hours. And people wonder why piano tuners are so grumpy all the time. Chris On Feb 24, 2009, at 7:53 AM, Graves, Tony J. wrote: I agree with David....More playing equals more wear and tear. I wish people would understand me here. In our main recital hall it can have up to 8, or more recitals a week. We have 2 piano a D and an old CF, but were an A. S. S. school so everyone plays on the Steinway no matter who or what their playing the piano for. The so called "policy" here is that students get 1 hour and faculty get 2, for rehearsal, but it usually ends up at 2 and 2 and sometimes more. The use of the the piano doesn't stop there. It also gets used for piano studio classes every week we have 4 piano faculty and they each have 2 hours, grant it they may not always use the full 2 hours. Sometimes the faculty use it for their own practice time. Then there are other groups that use the piano too. So the hall is booked heavily everyday. One thing that really made me mad toward the end of the fall semester was one of the piano faculty said it was a "substandard performing instrument" I told him that with all the use it gets it's hard to keep the "Concert Piano" in peak performance with the use it gets and the limited time I have in the hall. So some of you should consider yourselves lucky. Christopher D. Purdy R.P.T. Registered Piano Technician School of Music, Ohio University Rm. 311, Robt. Glidden Hall Athens, OH 45701 Office (740) 593-1656 Cell (740) 590-3842 fax (740) 593-1429 http://www.ohiou.edu/music _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™ Hotmail®:…more than just e-mail. http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_t2_hm_justgotbetter_explore_022009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut_ptg.org/attachments/20090224/60359634/attachment.html>
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