Pianists at Peabody have something new to celebrate: Over the next year, the Institute will begin the process of acquiring more than 30 new Steinway and Yamaha grand pianos for use in practice rooms.
That’s thanks to a $2 million Piano Excellence Fund, half of which comes from an investment of institutional funds from the JHU Office of the President. The other half is a matching gift from Nancy Grasmick, immediate past chair and current member of the Peabody Institute Advisory Board.
The replacements are part of an ongoing effort to upgrade pianos at Peabody. Five years ago, pianos used in faculty teaching studios were replaced, and several new instruments were purchased for performance spaces. Piano majors’ practice rooms, however, still offered instruments in need of upgrading.
Practice room pianos take a beating. Renee Kelsey, one of Peabody’s three piano technicians, estimates they’re “capable of getting played 20 hours a day.” And that’s over many decades: According to the instruments’ serial numbers, many of them date back to the 1970s.
They are religiously maintained but, just like cars, “there comes a point in time where the amount to maintain the piano will be in excess of its actual value,” Kelsey says. “If we have restrung the piano three or four times, then the tuning pins are getting too large for . . . the pin block holes. So we need a new pin block.” To get to it, “you have to take out the dampers, cut away all the strings, get rid of all the stuff on the cast iron plate.” If the sound board is failing, “that’s something we don’t do in-house, which means we’re now sending the piano away.”
All those moving—and non-moving—parts might explain why there aren’t “legacy” instruments like there are in the violin world. “There isn’t a Stradivarius of pianos,” Kelsey says. “There are definitely some cool historic instruments, but there are over 15,000 parts in a piano. Even if it’s the best brand in the world, it will still need some kind of restoration at some point in its life.”
The retired pianos will stay in Peabody’s inventory: Roughly 200 pianos can be found on campus and a few dozen are at off-campus locations for the Preparatory; around 80 pianos are loaned to current students. As Peabody’s enrollment has grown over the last several years, the school won’t be seeing a decreased need for pianos any time soon.
Students majoring in piano performance will have priority on the new instruments—but they may need to wait a while until they’ve arrived. Shopping for the new pianos will be a months-long process. A few selections are scheduled to arrive this spring, but Kelsey notes that Peabody is purchasing so many that Yamaha needed to increase production to fulfill the order. And it can take a long time to build a piano—sometimes years.
“The acquisition of 16 SX Yamaha pianos is history-making and represents the most significant purchase ever made by an institution,” says Amy Sorter, director, Yamaha Corporation of America, Higher Education Solutions. “We are thrilled that the Peabody Conservatory will enjoy these pianos for years to come and are honored to support their mission of excellence in music education.”
For Grasmick, who has ties to Peabody dating back to her childhood, when she was enrolled in the Preparatory, it’s all about long-term support. The students at Peabody “are serious,” she says. “They have huge talent and we, as a society, should value that so much.”