Chris' Piano Tech Fund

Hi, I'm Chris and I'm a piano player (among many other musical things). I'm fortunate to own two really nice acoustic pianos: A Baldwin model F (seven foot grand in the standard black case) in my living room and a Steinway P45 (a 45 inch upright in an art deco case) in office/work room. Both are lovely pianos but because of a whole lot of life lately they're both way overdue for tuning and maintenance. The Baldwin grand needs a couple of good tunings (to stabilize it) and some action work to bring it back to concert ready status so I can record on it. In the almost 30 years I've owned it, I've never had the action regulated or adjusted and it's gotten a little uneven. The Steinway upright is a newer resident in my house, coming in last summer. It's been remarkably stable but I haven't had the money to get it properly serviced (or even tuned) since I moved it in by myself with a couple of friends and a UHaul truck.

The Baldwin in the living room is main piano I work on pianistic things on, and it's the one I use for recording work. It's a real workhorse of a piano from about 1962 and the same model that is (used to be?) on the stage at the Temple of Music and Art here in downtown Tucson. I'm hoping to do another holiday EP this year, but right now it sounds pretty bad. It's the piano in the video I've attached here.

The Steinway upright in the work room is the piano I use for light technique things and composition and arranging work. It's an early 1950s model and (I believe) it has the same guts (action, strings, pinblock, etc) as the famous Steinway Victory Verticals that they made for the war effort in WWII. These pianos were known for their stability and reliability. This particular one desperately needs a couple of tunings over the next few months and some simple tech work on the action to bring it back to reliable and sweet sounding shape.

Money raised in this effort will be used to hire techs and to have a humidifying system installed in the Baldwin (a real essential here in the desert of Southern Arizona). It's been one of those years, though, as every time I've attempted to save enough money to take care of my instruments the AC in my house breaks, or the car needs new tires, or the AC in my car breaks, or there's a bank error that causes a month of bill payments to bounce before I can correct it, and so forth. It's been quite the year here.