piano tuners in Iceland, was Re: Bad days (a bit long and very cold)

[Kristinn Leifsson]

>
>
>My Apologies, kind sir.
>
>BTW. A question I have been meaning to ask. It appears Iceland seems to have 
>a good reputation for sponsoring and promoting the arts. Some years back I 
>got the itinerary for opera sing Grace Bumbry, and one of her stops was in 
>Iceland. With that in mind, can you give us a general idea of how many
pianos 
>there are in Iceland, and approximately how many piano tuners taking care of 
>them?
>
>Willem Blees
>


Dear List,

I´ll start with the general numbers.

Iceland is 103.000 square kilometres, I believe that´s approximately the
size of Kentucky.

There are 270.000 people living here, of which approximately 140.000 live
in or in vicinity of the capital Reykjavík.

There are 74 music shools around the country and 12-13000 people studying
in them, there are also 2000 people on waiting lists.  A very large chunk
of these people are playing the piano.  

In Reykjavík there are about 20 concert grands, most of which are Steinway,
but also Bösendorfer and Fazioli.  There are more also out in the country.
Every town should have one, and many of them do.

It´s hard to say about the number of pianos in the country but probably
over 10.000 which keeps the 5 or so piano tuners here fairly busy.  A lot
of Asian pianos, some pianos made in the United States but also Dutch,
German, Czech, Danish, and some Russian ones for example. 


Kristinn Leifsson
Reykjavík, Iceland