Amazing coincidence!

Here's Andy, the brilliant young woman who spent 3 hours tuning my piano. She looked up the serial number and found it was built in 1956, the very year when I was studying piano with Mrs. Urdang in New York. Who would have believed that? Sixty-seven years since I had a piano lesson. Sixty-seven years this piano has been sitting around--I bet it could tell some stories.

For a vintage piano, it's in good shape. No rust or corrosion. Less dust than you might have expected. The A below middle C can't hold tension and will slip out of tune, but everything else works. "Pianos don't last forever," she explained a little sadly. "Parts of them suffer from aging." Like all of us, I thought but didn't say aloud. It will last as long as I need it to last.

She'd like to come back in three or four months and tune it again, to see how it's doing. After that, once a year should be fine.

I asked her how she learned to be a piano tuner and she told me about the marvelous school she attended in Boston. It's a school for people who want to work with their hands and do artisan's jobs. I didn't even know there were such schools. You can study locksmithing, violin making, cabinetry, jewelry making.... She's happy working on pianos, says it suits her personality. Her mother is a pianist and piano teacher, but she didn't want to do what her mom does. I was fascinated by all her equipment and by her patient, painstaking work.