What’s living in your piano? Does it smell?
Monday, September 4, 2006
Here’s a slightly off-putting story if you’ve not been taking care of your acoustic piano.
Have you allowed rodents or birds to make their final home in your cosy felt-lined instrument?
Even after about 60 years of piano tuning, Richard C. Kreitz, 82, of Shillington still dreads the phone calls with a voice on the other end of the line that says: “My piano smells terrible. It’s making me sick to my stomach.”
Not being a music critic, Kreitz declines to blame the pianist for the odor.
So he usually inspects stinky pianos to find a dead mouse or bird or some other tiny creature that, before death, discovered cozy piano innards make the nicest of homes because they are finely furnished with felt, hammers, strings and shiny brass or metal pieces.
It’d be unusual to find such things with electronic keyboards, unless someone has been particularly messy with food and it’s become infested with very tiny insects. Euch.
Quite apart from reading about the interesting things he finds inside pianos, it’s an interesting look at the life of a highly experienced piano tuner.
Australian government funds piano massacre
Monday, September 4, 2006
A piano cut up in the name of art was funded by “Arts Queensland” to the tune of AUS$3000.
Rebecca Cunningham gave her talented performance - ripping through it with a chainsaw. But hey, it’s art - well she and some government officials that have probably never heard Rachmaninov (or even Chopsticks played by a fervent 4-year-old) thought so anyway.
“It seems a bit silly and very sad,” said piano teacher Deanne Scott. “I teach plenty of children whose parents can’t afford a piano and they would have loved the chance to have this one.”
Well, it makes these chisel antics seem positively pedestrian. At least the piano stays intact.
What do you reckon? With pianos being so expensive (mind you for AU$3000 it can’t have been a top-of-the-line one, thank goodness) is this a fair use of resources? Or should pianos be fair game for ‘art’ as everything else is?
(Via Courier Mail)
Joy of piano moving
Monday, September 4, 2006
Brian Matthews provides some light entertainment (or not) by describing an impending piano move.
A real piano.
From what I can tell, it’s a piano made entirely out of lead and alien particles never before found on Earth that actually weigh more than any other known substance.
No-one said moving was easy.
(From Red Sneaker)
