Corea Concert in Bergen

[Richard Brekne]

Grin... This is somekind of a promotion tour in Europe Ed. The Yamaha
CFIII follows him around wherever he goes and Yamamha is paying for it.
They insure that the nearest Yamaha certified tech is on the job. Thats
the word from Gothenburg anyways.

The concert was grand, but the piano unfortunatly didnt hold tuning
through the first set. The story is interesting so I will quickly write
it down. The Yamaha tech was in town from monday to wednesday to prep
and tune the piano and then he left. Coreas contract specifies a tech on
hand during each concert. The local Yamaha deler is also a tech and
decided to take the actual tuning
job, I wasnt informed and the jazz club was quick to apologise last
nite. This fellow was a bitover confident and was not present under the
concert. To bad for him really. He's a nice fellow and a good tech
really, but he is not a popular fellow in certain circles today.

Anyways Corea insisted on the piano being touched up during the break.
700 loud talkers in a small hall. hmmm.. I was called to do the job and
I warned him that with all the noise it was not going to be easy to
garantee good results. He insisted anyways and was really nice about it
all. So I got driven home to get my tools, sat down to tune and was
amazed at how bad the unisons were. Half of the tenor and treble section
was really knocked out badly, some up to a couple beats a second. So it
was easy enough to make a big improvement. Checked the octaves with
double octave thirds, tenths and thirds real quickly after cleaning the
unisons, and they were ok enough. The piano held fine through the second
set.

There was very little lighting on stage, not much warmth so climate
shouldnt really have been a problem. Seeings how the octaves were as
close as they were and just unisons banged out, I'd have to conclude the
tuner just didnt get his unisons set well enough. He had been there for
4 hours earlier in the day. I suppose he got a bit stressed out,
thinking of how big a star Corea is, etc.

Personally, I have tuned for Corea Concerts 5 times through the years
and have never been called on stage. In fact in 18 years at tuning for
Molde Int. Jazz festival and for Bergen Natt Jazz I have not experienced
one single complaint. And we have had folks from Jarrett to Pullan to
Tanja Maria to Tyner banging away.

Anyways.. this dealer tech is a pretty good freind of mine, tho I am not
sure why he horned in on this job. I expect an interesting day today as
the jazz club called him late last nite to let him know what was going
on.

Richard Brekne
I.C.P.T.G.  N.P.T.F.
Bergen, Norway

ETomlinCF3@AOL.COM wrote:

> Richard,
>
> Chick Corea just played the Vancouver Washington wine and jazz >festival.  I tuned for that gig.  He did not have a "Yamaha" tech >follow him here in America so I don't know why they told you that. >He asked me how the piano  was when he arrived.  I told him that I >had 20 minutes to touch it up with monitors a blaring at 1pm and >25 minutes of silence (yeah right... trumpets warming up, drummers >banging and the like)  The temp dropped 20 degrees on
>this outdoor event and I told him it was fine...smirk.
>He has a reputation for calling a tech onstage to touch up the >piano during the concert. I stayed for four hours and luckily I >did not have to go onstage to touch up in front of 7000 people.