Corea Concert in Bergen

[ETomlinCF3@AOL.COM]

Richard,

If I may say so... You take a piano pounder like Corea and add a brand new, 
strings not settled and stretched Yamaha CFIIIS and an outdoor concert and 
you wind up with problems.  No piano can take all the variables until the 
strings settle and one tuner tunes the piano over a period of time.  I could 
have had a better experience with Chick if I would have had more than just a 
couple of twenty minute sessions to tune it outdoors in the wind and noise.  
Yamaha in America has Concert grand's for their Concert artist stationed in 
most major cities, as do other major piano companies.  So they don't need to 
send the piano for specific concerts.  They also have tuners that they are 
comfortable with all over as well.  When Yamaha's C n A department opened 
many years ago they would send a Japanese tuner with Andre Watts to court him 
and make sure everything was fine.  I don't believe they do this any more.  I 
got some great advice from LeRoy Edwards a week ago.  He said he wants the 
piano to be at concert temp for a day and at least two hours of silence.  If 
for any reason (sound and lighting people) the place is not quiet he politely 
gets up and leaves.  He lets the promoter know this ahead of time.  That way 
his reputation is in tact and he does not worry about the piano being stable. 
 I have adopted his policy after long conversations with him about this at 
dinner.  Does any one else have special rules you live by in these situations?

Ed Tomlinson
Vancouver, WA
<< Grin... This is some kind of a promotion tour in Europe Ed. The Yamaha
 CFIII follows him around wherever he goes and Yamaha is paying for it.
 They insure that the nearest Yamaha certified tech is on the job. That's
 the word from Gothenburg anyway.
 
 The concert was grand, but the piano unfortunately didn't 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. Corea's contract specifies a tech on
 hand during each concert. The local Yamaha dealer is also a tech and
 decided to take the actual tuning
 job, I wasn't informed and the jazz club was quick to apologize last
 night. This fellow was a bit over 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.
 
 Anyway 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
 guarantee good results. He insisted anyway 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
 shouldn't really have been a problem. Seeing how the octaves were as
 close as they were and just unisons banged out, I'd have to conclude the
 tuner just didn't 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.
 
 Anyway ... this dealer tech is a pretty good friend of mine, though 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 night to let him know what was going
 on.
 
 Richard Brekne
 I.C.P.T.G.  N.P.T.F.
 Bergen, Norway >>