The artisan skill required to maintain the piano is now regarded as critically endangered due to the growing scarcity of elite tuner/technicians. This research teaching program seeks to find a solution to preserve these endangered technical skills.
James Boyk states in his article, The Endangered Piano Technician (Scientific American, December 1995) “As a pianist, I have a recurring nightmare that the piano will disappear as a concert instrument, not because people won’t want to hear it or play it, nor because fine pianos won’t be built, but because good concert piano technicians are vanishing.”
The Heritage Crafts Association UK states: “Crafts classified as critically endangered are those at serious risk of no longer being practiced in the UK. They may include crafts with a shrinking base of craftspeople, crafts with limited training opportunities, crafts with low financial viability, or crafts where there is no mechanism to pass on the skills and knowledge.”
The elite piano tuner is one such critically endangered craft.
It is clear that within the next decade, there will be a critical loss of skilled, experienced concert tuner/technicians to maintain acoustic keyboard instruments in performance venues throughout Australia. This will have dire consequences for Australia’s music and performing arts industry and music education. Along with the scarcity of elite, experienced concert tuner/technicians in Australia, the number of available experts with the experience, skills and facility to teach the next generation is very small and diminishing with time.
My experience of over 40 years as an internationally renowned piano technician-artisan, as well as my research into the preservation of historical keyboard instruments throughout the UK and Europe in 2018––thanks to a Churchill Fellowship––has provided me with an understanding of the state of this diminishing craft.