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Nearly every week, someone calls the Piano Technology faculty at ³Ô¹ÏÍ·Ìõ offering to donate an old grand piano for the Advanced Piano Technology (PA) students to rebuild. But in an entire year, only a select few make the cut. Usually, they’re Steinways.

A Steinway was the piano, when pianos were a part of every household,” says instructor Louis del Bene PT ’06, PA ’07. The American company earned its reputation for craftsmanship in the pre-radio, prerecord-player days, when a piano in the parlor was a staple of home entertainment.

The Steinway “recipe” for a quality piano remains constant. “The product they made in 1890 is more or less what we’re still trying to produce when the PA students tackle a rebuilding project,” Louis says.

“It starts with a good teardown,” he continues. “An object tells its own story. The piano — if you measure it and examine it and disassemble it carefully — tells you how to put it back together.”

For Louis and his colleagues to wring the most educational value out of the rebuilding experience, a chosen piano must need everything replaced but the case, plate, and (usually) keys. With careful instruction and guidance, using woodworking hand tools, power drills, and machines such as planers — often practicing first on mockups — the students replace all of the piano’s action parts.

“Hammer shanks, hammers, wippens,” says Louis. “We replace the damper action, sound board and bridge caps, and put in a new pinblock — and there are all kinds of smaller tasks that go along with those big items. We’re basically making the instrument like new again, giving it a new life span.”

The School sells the end product (with the funds going to support students’ education) to knowledgeable clients. Example: former ³Ô¹ÏÍ·Ìõ instructor Christine Lovgren PT ’80, PA ’81 recently bought a rebuilt 1926 Model M Steinway from the program, and also donated to the School her circa-1890 Steinway that was in desperate need of rebuilding. It seemed like the right alternative to buying a new piano or waiting for months for the one she already owned to be rebuilt.

“At some point, someone’s going to get a beautiful piano when that one’s done, and I have one now,” Christine shares. “It worked out great — I loved my Model M right away. A few friends have tried it too, and everybody comments on how nice it is to play.”

Most of the students won’t go on to rebuild pianos for a living. “That’s the less common path,” says Louis (though he got hooked on rebuilding when he was a student at ³Ô¹ÏÍ·Ìõ). The point is to gain greater familiarity and comfort with this “big and awkward” instrument, so that they can solve problems as technicians. “If a pinblock is failing, you want to have held a pinblock in your hand,” Louis shares.

As an ³Ô¹ÏÍ·Ìõ graduate and former instructor, Christine understands there are limits to what students can learn. “³Ô¹ÏÍ·Ìõ can’t teach them everything, because that would be impossible. They have to be detail-oriented, creative, and resourceful, but students will graduate with the knowledge and skills to handle whatever path they gravitate towards.”

She shares that there’s another an upside to all their intensive training. “³Ô¹ÏÍ·Ìõ students have chosen a wonderful profession. There’s an endless variety of pianos they will see — and people they will meet. They’ll never have a boring day on the job. “

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This article is from our 2019 Annual Report. See all the stories here, or view more issues.