A new friend arrived at Music In Your Heart yesterday, and I want to kind of make introductions before students arrive for lessons today. First, I would like to tell a little story about pianos.
The piano I've had in my home for the last 21 years, an upright Kimball, was a graduation gift from my parents when I received my music degree. It had been their friends' and hadn't had much playing since it was bought new in the '90's. It lived in my apartment in Columbus, Ohio for a short time, our first house in Columbus for an even shorter time, and came with us when we moved here to Arrowsmith in 2001.
Pianos require a consistent temperature and humidity level to be maintained. Our old (125+ years) house has not had central air conditioning for the 19 years we've lived here--until last month! (I could talk about how how life-changing central air is, but that's another story!) My point is, Kimball has been through some life over the past 19 years because we couldn't regulate the humidity level and temperature in the house consistently. I stopped having it maintained and tuned several years ago because my piano tuner became so frustrated that his work would be undone so quickly. My students can probably tell about sticky keys in the summer (That low B that won't even play!) and clicky keys in the winter (We just call it "extra percussion!"). When I had toddlers, one of them left a sippy cup of water on the keys for who-knows-how-long before I found it, and my piano tuner had to heat up the wood of the key over my stove and sand it down with sandpaper to get it to work right again. Yes, Kimball has been used and "loved" a lot over the years.
My kids have grown up playing it...
My students have spent a lot of time playing it...
And, I'm so, so, so happy that 5 students returned to lessons in the last couple weeks to play it!
Now, as much as I've loved Kimball and have been SO thankful for all the music made on it, I have always wanted to have a baby grand in my home. I grew up playing on a baby grand in my parents home from the time I started piano lessons at age 5, and there's just something special about it.
But, because we didn't have central air, we didn't want to put the money into buying a baby grand we couldn't maintain. So it has just been a dream...until yesterday!
A little over a week ago, my friend Tracie texted me pictures of a little baby grand piano and asked if I might be interested in having it for free!?!
Now, I am always hesitant to consider taking a piano that someone wants to give me for free. They are such sensitive instruments, and you always need to know as much as possible about a piano's history and condition before agreeing to take it and assume care of it.
Upon asking some questions, I learned that this piano was been in a beautiful old mansion that is about to be demolished after sitting empty for at least a year or two. I watched many videos and read up on
how to inspect a used piano. And two of my kids and I went to inspect the piano ourselves.
We were amazed at the condition the piano was in,
and felt confident we needed to rescue it to come live at our house!
So just yesterday, the moving company we hired met us at the house in Decatur and carefully packed up and transported our new friend Fischer!
I followed them and watched them bring it into our house!
And now it is at home at our house!
Fischer will need to rest for a few weeks before I will have it tuned and regulated, so it is a bit quirky right now with some keys having a little more ring...but actually less so than my Kimball, really!
My daughter Annah and I have already spent hours carefully cleaning the keys and wiping down the surfaces on Fischer. And for now students may choose if they want to play on Fischer or Kimball. I will disinfect both between lessons so that students have a choice which they sit at, and I will stay at whichever one they don't choose and we will still have social distancing.
I'm happy that my students and I will get to enjoy this new-to-me piano together!
