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Oops I forgot to sign my last post........Robin Olson RPT
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I thought I had done just about everything there is to do in my 25 years as a piano tuner,but wednesday I achieved a new level of tuning insanity. I live in Wash DC and as some of you might know we had an Inauguration this week. I work for the local Steinway dealer and do our Concert and Artist tunings. The Inaugural Committee decided it would be nice to have an outdoor concert on the Elipse across form the White House.That's okay I guess,if the weather is moderate. Wednesday of this week we had a high in the low twenties a brisk wind and 2 inches of snow. They didn't call the event off!!!! The stage was uncovered and the 9ft S'way we provided had spent most of the previous day and the entire night outside with just a quilted cover and a plastic tarp on it. Van Cliburn was supposed to play this piano!! After waiting in a heated trailer for an hour and a half,by 12:30 ! I finally contacted the stage manager and said snow or not I am going to tune this piano and leave.They were suggesting I wait till three when the snow was supposed to stop.Well I had other Inaugural related tunings to do so I had to get going.Also there was no guarantee how much time I would have once the snow stopped because of all the acts that needed to sound check. So I crawled under the plastic tarp and took my gloves off and tuned the piano. Thanks to a class I took by Guy Nichols I wasn't surprised when I found the piano to be sharp, espescially down towards the tenor break. I tuned it rather quickly and didn't pay a whole lot of attention to how close the piano was to A-440. I just wanted it to sound half way decent if Van Cliburn was actually going to play it. I was also starting to loose feeling in my fingers. So after about 40 minutes I packed up and crawled out from under the tarp back out onto the snow covered stage. I half expect! ed those around the stage to applaud my efforts,but no one seemed to pay attention,I guess they were wondering why this lunacy was happening. Well the concert went on with an hour late start at 5:00 pm with several acts cancelling,one of which was Van Cliburn . So I almost got to tune a piano for the great Van Cliburn. Next week I will be back to my shop and will check how our best 9 ft grand survived the ordeal. It was picked up wednesday eve. I expect I will have to do a pitch raise after what I did to it when it was cold.
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