Avoiding the ‘piano graveyard’

‘Piano Patrons’ wanted

If you’re interested in donating dollars to help gently used pianos get evaluated, placed in an appropriate new homes, and tuned — or, if you’ve got such a piano — contact Cheri Martin at the Emil Fries School for Piano Technology.

Phone: 360-693-1511.

Email: Cherim@pianotuningschool.org

Web: pianotuningschool.org

Pianos by the numbers

10 million: pianos now in American homes, institutions and businesses.

7,500: music-making parts in an acoustic piano.

Circa 1700: year the first modern piano was built by Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy.

Sources: National Piano Foundation and “Piano World,” an online forum.

When she was a girl, Cheri Martin grew passionate about pianos. But her family couldn’t afford one, she said, so she was always scoping out which friends and neighbors had instruments she could get her eager little hands on. Eventually she did have a piano to call her own: a water-damaged remainder that cost all of $100. Martin, who taught herself to play, said she loved it endlessly.

Fast forward a few decades and Martin, who started working earlier this year as executive director of the School of Piano Technology for the Blind, fields as many as 15 or even 20 phone calls a week from people who hate the idea of throwing away their old pianos. Martin hates that idea too. Whenever the so-called Piano Hospital, which trains sight-impaired people to maintain and tune pianos, has to trash an instrument that can’t be saved, she said, “it just about kills me.”

Those callers are looking to donate, Martin said, but the Piano Hospital — a small nonprofit with modest real estate on Evergreen Boulevard — would need an aircraft hangar to house all the perfectly playable instruments it’s offered. Instead, the agency is looking to connect donors with worthy institutions and private parties — churches, schools, low-income families — who’d gladly put a piano to good use.

“I’m sure there’s another little girl out there who would love to start playing the piano, if she just had a piano to play,” Martin said.

As of the upcoming school year, a whole bunch of little girls — and boys — will be able to get their hands on a beautiful instrument that was donated to the new Hough Early Learning Center celebrating its grand opening on Aug. 28. The Early Learning Center, a preschool for low-income children operated by Educational Service District 112, is situated in what used to be the Hough Pool building alongside Hough Elementary School. The building, once a gift to the city from local businessman and philanthropist (and Hough neighborhood kid) Paul Christensen, has been completely renovated, and the pool removed.

Christensen remains involved in the transition from pool to piano. He paid the moving expenses for not just this first piano placement, but for the next three as well. “I am thrilled to support this program,” he said.

The program is called “Piano Patrons,” and Martin is hoping it’ll save countless quality instruments from landing in the “piano graveyard.”

Sound and feel

Even a donated piano comes with costs, she pointed out: the cost of an evaluation by a Piano Hospital-trained technician to make sure the piano is a gift worth accepting; the cost of moving and delivering a mass of wood and metal that weighs at least several hundred pounds, if not a thousand or more; and the cost of an end-point tuning — also performed by a Piano Hospital-trained technician, of course. All this can drive the typical cost of a “free” piano to around $500, Martin said.

The piano that’s now awaiting little fingers at the Hough Early Learning Center was donated by David and Jean Akers. It’s a spiffy Kawai UST 7, and Sam Stahl is the guy who got it ready for action on a recent morning.

“It’s pretty much like new,” Stahl said after going through the guts of the instrument and then sitting down to bang out a lively, jazzy tune. “They got a really good piano with a long life left in it. I didn’t see many issues with it.” (You’ll be able to hear the piano get a workout during the Early Learning Center’s grand opening, set for 10 to 11:30 a.m. Aug. 28 at 1801 Esther St.)

Stahl, who graduated from Piano Hospital decades ago and then went to work for himself and for piano dealers in the Midwest and South, eventually accepted an invitation to come back to Vancouver and work as a traveling piano tech for his alma mater. On Wednesday, he was driven to the Hough site by volunteer John Bannan; it was their first of three or four piano-tuning stops they’d make that day, Stahl said.

But why is a big, bulky acoustic piano better for kids — or anyone — than a convenient, portable, electronic keyboard? Two big reasons, Stahl said: sound and feel.

“There are good digital pianos out there, but none of them sound like this,” he said, working through some colorful chords. “I ought to know, I used to work in retail.” Digital instruments also strive to mimic the touch sensitivity of acoustic ones, he added, but the result is similar: Nice try, but not real.

“It’s good for kids to learn on the real thing,” Stahl said. “That’s appropriate.”

Patrons wanted

Martin said her passion for “Piano Patrons” has caused some raised eyebrows back at the Piano Hospital — because facilitating used-piano donations between other parties may mean not selling the used and refurbished pianos in the agency’s own showroom. Is the Piano Hospital about to start undercutting itself?

Martin thinks not. Evaluating, moving and maintaining used pianos still should mean cash flow for her agency and employment for its technicians, she said. All the Piano Hospital needs to make its Piano Patrons program work, she said, is money.

If you’re interested in getting involved — as a piano donor or as a patron, providing some charity to help used pianos find new homes — call Martin at 360-693-1511 or write cherim@pianotuningschool.org. Meanwhile, she’s also trying to firm up some criteria and standards for deciding who gets a donated piano. Perhaps there’ll be an essay contest, she said.

“This is a brand new thing,” she said. “We’re still figuring out how it’s going to work. But Hough is the perfect launching pad.”

“I think it’s great,” said Miriam Kirby, program coordinator for the Hough Early Learning Center. “We’re going to be able to provide music classes for kids who just don’t exposed otherwise.”