Day 1 – Monday, May 24:

Goal(s): Assess overall condition; note major issues that will need time, money, or tools to repair; do basic cleaning, superficial cleaning.

Music: Horace Silver’s “A Song For My Father”

We picked up the piano today. By the time I arrived at the owner’s house around 5:15, Jason and his assistant already had the pedals removed, the piano wrapped tightly in blankets held with straps, and they were in the process of removing the legs. They positioned the piano so that two legs on the diagonal were up on blankets so they could remove the other two legs after putting the piano on its side on a moving dolly. They had it out the door and ready to go by about 5:30.

We drove to our house and decided the best way to get the piano into the house would be through the garage, since it had the fewest steps (four) and didn’t require driving over any grass. I had put down padding, an old rug, and a large heavy duty tarp in the dining room, and they moved it there in short order, negotiating the stairs with the use of a 7-foot metal reinforced plywood ramp. The legs were marked rather cryptically, making finding the right one to go in each corner a little difficult. One of the legs had a loose dowel and I was completely out of wood glue and regular Elmer’s. In order to get the piano sitting properly, we needed to get that dowel to stay still so it could be screwed in properly. I managed the trick with about three toothpicks acting as shims or bushings. That leg will have to be removed and repaired properly, once I have the piano sitting up on whatever it is I’m going to have it sitting up on while I work on the underside.

When we got the top open and I played a few notes, I was amazed and delighted to find that the piano had “fallen into” tune. It still needs tuning and is quite rough sounding, but all of a sudden, it actually was playable. There is one broken string, one removed and relocated damper arm, one missing damper arm, and at least two dead keys, but other than that, everything is appearing to be pretty sound. I took some brass polish to the sound board and ended up taking some of the surface finish off. (I think. I didn’t look at it real good, so I can’t tell if I’m removing the finishing or getting down to the patina or whatnot. I stopped doing that until I could get an informed opinion.)

I ordered a professional tuning kit, a book on piano tuning and refurbishing, plus I picked up some sticky felt and caster cups on the way home last night prior to going to pick up the piano. Next step is going to be to remove the top and vacuum the whole thing out. Once my tuning wrench arrives, I plan to loosen all the strings and let them sit for a day or two. I want to see if my book addresses the issue of dealing with rusty pins and strings before I attempt to clean them. I have to remove the felt and get some new felt strips. I have to get a Dremel to work on the inlay. I’ll have to order some mother of pearl to finish the inlay. Haven’t decided if I’m going to keep the casters or do away with them. Not sure about replacing the strings either. I think I will take the sound board out to see what the frame looks like underneath, maybe clean and oil that. If I can get the top off without any problem, I’m going to sand that whole thing down and refinish it.

I have lots of ideas, but I really need a plan.

Can't play it, but...

I bought a renovation project instead of a piano. I feel great!

Somebody tell me what I’m doing

On Tuesday, or maybe Wednesday, I discovered a Victorian square piano on Craigslist. Until that very moment, I’d only ever been vaguely aware of square pianos, but somehow, that piano seemed to be calling me. I called the owner to make an appointment to see it, and I was disappointed to learn that I was second in line to a guy who wanted to buy it as a decoration for his house. The owner, however, asked me a little about my intentions for the piano. She asked what I planned to do with it if I fixed it up (it’s in need of some minor repair, from what I gather), and I said quite frankly and truthfully, “I plan to keep it!”

Now, square pianos are quite rare. In many ways, they are like the AMC Gremlins of the auto world: there isn’t anything particularly bad (or good) about them, they were popular enough in their day, and now, they are pretty hard to find. My preliminary attempt to research square pianos on the web revealed that a good one, refurbished and fixed up, can get upwards of $30,000. The one I’m looking to buy costs $1900 and the owner tells me it will cost between $5K and $10K to fix it up. Okay. But if at the end of that, I’ve got a $25K piano (and I might), wouldn’t that be great?

So I did more and more research. Wikipedia has some excellent key action diagrams, and even the Wall Street Journal (no link because it's too old, but easy to find if you Google it) had contributed with a piece late last year about another person’s story with their square piano. (How I missed it the first time around, I’ll never know.) Suddenly, I found myself craving that piano. I mean, I felt like I really, really, really wanted to buy it.

I placed a couple phone calls and sent a few emails to people who I thought might be able to tell me something about square pianos. I gleaned some useful information, but in general, nobody is really familiar with these things. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Last night, we got tied up at work and at 5:30 or so, the owner of the piano calls to ask if I can come earlier to look at the piano. She says she can’t get a hold of the guy who called about the piano before I did, and that she will sell it to me if I want it.

I have an appointment in less than five hours with a piano and its owner. I’ve basically already decided I’m going to buy the sucker. So does somebody want to tell me: what the hell am I doing?

Another night with my wife’s boyfriend

Some people would no doubt think one crazy to drive almost four hours both ways to hear a classical music concert. I hope some Alabamians are on board with me here in that, big stars don’t really come here, so we have to go to them. That’s why, when Mrs. S’s boyfriend, the virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell, scheduled a visit to play with the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, she bought the best tickets available, and that’s why, yesterday, I drove four hours to listen to classical music.

And amazingly, I think it was worth it, and then some. Joshua Bell is simply amazing. He does things with a violin you wouldn’t think possible, and his sound and stamina are just amazing. (I’ve said so before.)

Mrs. S has thirty five of his who knows how many recordings, and now, a fifth of them are signed. It turns out, Mr. Bell will be back in our extended neighborhood next January, and Mrs. S is already planning to get tickets. To fill out enough concerts for a subscriber’s season, we will probably go see Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell, and Poncho Sanchez. (We were both bitter to learn McCoy Tyner had been here earlier this year and we missed him.)

Anyway, here’s some of Mrs. S’s comments and recommendations if you are into jazz but want to explore some of Joshua Bell’s music:

"Joshua Bell’s repertoire is very wide-ranging. He’s recorded traditional classical musical pieces (Vivaldi, Beethoven, Sibelius, Shumann, Brahms, Bernstein, Gershwin), contemporary pieces (Maw, Corigliano), short violin pieces, film sound tracks (Red Violin, Defiance, Angels and Demons) and collaborated with Jazz musicians (Dave Grusin, Wynton Marsalis, Chris Botti) and bluegrass musicians (Edgar Myer, Bela Fleck) and each recording is powerful and unique in its own way. So, it’s hard to choose just a couple, but for the people who are more interested in jazz music, my recommendations are:

1. At Home with Friends
2. Gershwin Fantasy
3. Short Trip Home "


Here are my (Eric's) recommendations if you want to hear some great jazz guitar:
Have a Little Faith by Bill Frisell
Bright Size Life by Pat Metheny

A new approach

Since my jazz arranging kept me away from the piano for so long, I’ve found myself curiously unmotivated to sit down and play. Oh, I have sat down and played some, for sure, even making a fair go at a few tunes I remain familiar with and just enjoy hearing on occasion. But I have not done anything constructive to improve my playing in probably the last six months.

On a whim, and because it was cheap, I picked up Oscar Peterson Plays the Duke Ellington Songbook CD. And while I thought this was him soloing, it turns out to be two of Oscar’s trios playing twelve songs each. And it is simply wonderful. Now, I’ve had the Oscar Peterson Plays Duke Ellington transcriptions forever, and long since relegated it to the “when I’m concert pianist level, maybe I’ll pull this out” section of my music book library. But taking a look at it again while listening to my new CD yesterday, it didn’t look nearly as foreboding as I remember it. And while it does not appear that the transcriptions in the above-mentioned book are from any of the recordings in the above-mentioned CD, it looks like they might be similar enough that I’ll be able to get something put together by listening to the CD and then sitting at the piano.

At any rate, I’ve decided to take a new approach to learning piano over the summer, namely, I’m going to learn to play a few Ellington tunes in the style of OP. Wish me luck.

Shot by The Innkeeper’s Gun

Not too long ago, I mentioned my infatuation with Bombella, the latest work by Abdullah Ibrahim which also features the incredibly awesome WDR Big Band Cologne. As it happened, the bass player of the WDR, John Goldsby, read my review and emailed me a few nice comments. He said that if I would be interested in reviewing his trio album which was due out soon, that he would be glad to send me a gratis advanced copy. Of course, I told him I would be happy to oblige by listening to his music and writing a review.

Now, let me say (as a sort of disclaimer), when I accept stuff for free, like I do with the Amazon Vine Club, I am careful not to let the fact that I have no skin in the game affect my opinion of whatever it is I’m reviewing. If I don’t like it, I say so. If I like it, I say so. If I couldn’t care one way or the other, I say so. That is to say, I’m an honest reviewer and if anything, I tend towards being overly critical. So, I was a little nervous accepting Mr. Goldsby’s offer, because if I didn’t like his work, I was faced with the unenviable task of having to tell him that.

Surprisingly, and happily, even though Goldsby’s trio is a piano-less, sax-bass-drums band, I really liked his work. It’s called The Innkeeper’s Gun, and it is a sparse-sounding, but richly detailed work that swings. I won’t bother reprinting my whole five-star review here, so feel free to click on the link and read the review I posted to Amazon. You might even want to pick up or download your own copy of TIG while you’re there.

I’m glad I blog. Making friends and hearing new jazz is what it’s all about.

Core collection update

Long-time readers of this blog will know that I have been actively pursuing jazz music for just about three years now, using the eighth edition of the Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings’ core collection as my guide for purchasing music. There are 187 recordings listed in the core collection, and I recently acquired my 110th. Since for the purposes of the core collection, I don’t really try to discern beforehand if the recording is something that I’m going to like, I’ve ended up with a lot of recordings that, after I listen to once, I can almost never bring myself to listen to again. The most recent of these is Peter Brotzman’s Machine Gun. Christ on crutches, what a bunch of crap. I will contend to my dying day, that if you listen to a “song” and you can’t hum it afterward, it cannot even be considered music. This heretical opinion has gotten me into a lot of trouble with various jazz enthusiasts whose tastes run to the esoteric and avant-garde. I’m not going to belabor the argument here. Let me just say, I picked up Bix and Tram and Maxine Sullivan and Dick Hyman as well, and as dated as they sound, and as poor the recording technology and what have you, those are, to me, far more valuable and meaningful pieces of jazz than any well-regarded somebody blowing pointlessly into an instrument of any type, meant for blowing or not. Cast me out of the jazz world if you must, but you might want to at least listen to some of these recordings and see if you don’t agree with me.

Or, just read about them on my blog. Lots of reviews will be forthcoming as I get farther and farther into my recent purchases.