“I prefer my piano to people. It’s totally reliable and it’s alive. I can hear what it’s saying.” ~ Tori Amos

Is there a piece of furniture that is more alive or elicits more memories than the family piano? This week we had the piano tuned. It was in surprisingly good tune in spite of 14 years since the last tuning and its home under a large, single-paned window. (Not good, I learned.) But it did suffer from “lost motion” and a few stuck keys.

Les Fitzpatrick gives our piano a tune-up

Listening to your piano being tuned can bring back all kinds of memories. This is the piano that joined the family in 1950 and helped me learn how to play music. This is the piano that attracted the neighborhood kids as my mother patiently played the Davy Crockett theme song over and over and over again while we all sang “Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier” at the top of our adolescent lungs. It has survived moves from house to house, state (Iowa) to state (Washington). It can go years without being played and not complain when its function has been reduced to holding houseplants.

Maintaining your piano in our community is more than just having the piano tuned. We are fortunate to have the only program of its kind in the world – the School of Piano Technology for the Blind. Founded by Emil Fries in 1949, the school attracts students from around the globe. All are blind or visually impaired.

Emil Fries was also blind. He studied at the Washington State School for the Blind in Vancouver, worked his way through the University of Washington by tuning pianos ($4 per piano) and returned to Vancouver to teach at the state school for 18 years before founding the independent piano technician program. Since 1949, the school has graduated more than 200 students.

For two years, the students (8 at a time) learn the intricacies of working with thousands of moving piano parts. They develop an “ear” for the pianos, learning how to tune and repair them. They also learn customer service skills and create business plans for their future careers. While the national unemployment rate is 60-70% in the blind community, they are bucking that horribly high rate by making plans for financial independence.

About half of the school’s budget comes from tuning, repairing and selling pianos. (Click here to see available pianos.) Staff members like Les Fitzpatrick, who tuned our piano, make about 1,000 service calls per year.

So you can make a difference while getting your piano tuned! Or you can donate your piano. Whether you own a piano or not, you can sit back, enjoy some wine and listen to a great pianist at the school’s fundraiser “Jazz, Pizazz and Vino” at Bethany Vineyards on Sunday, June 27 with Tom Grant on piano and Nancy Curtin on vocals.

Jazz, Tom Grant, Bethany’s gorgeous setting and a great cause — what more could you want on a summer Sunday in Southwest Washington?

And, by the way, get that piano tuned!

With performance skills way beyond their years, nine talented musicians filled the hall with stunning music yesterday at the 16th Annual Young Artists Competition of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Anyone who doesn’t believe in music education should attend a competition for young musicians.

Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body.” The performances immersed the audience in a rich “music bath” for two hours. Three of the musicians were selected by long deliberating judges to perform with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra on April 17th and 18th at the Skyview High School concert hall. Each also won $1000 scholarships.

There is something very humbling about hearing a 14-year-old, who debuted with a chamber orchestra three years ago, move so gracefully through a Chopin concerto or a confident 16-year-old violist play Bartok. Like Yo Yo Ma and Joshua Bell, who first picked up their instruments at age four, most of the Vancouver competitors started playing music at very young age.

In the end, 16-year-old Fred Lu won the piano competition for his performance of Rachmaninoff’s Concerto for Piano no 1, op 1 in F-sharp minor.

Gold Medalist Fred Lu Playing Rachmaninoff

Daniel Vasey, a 15-year-old alto saxophonist won with John Williams’ Escapades, movement 3.

Gold Medalist Daniel Vasey Plays John Williams

Natally Okhovat, 17, won the strings competition, impressing the audience with Saint-Saens popular and moving Introduction and Rondo capriccioso, op 28.

Gold Medalist Natally Okhovat Plays Saint-Saens

Stunning, inspirational performances—it was enough to send one home to practice for a long, long time.