New Year's rant; my 2 cents

[Susan Kline]

At 10:43 PM 1/1/2006 -0800, David wrote:
>It may be that you have no competition...no one else qualified to do the 
>work...in which case, as I said before, the concert hall is getting a hell 
>of deal...

I am their best bet. I often fit other tunings and/or service calls in 
while I'm over at the coast. What you don't understand is that while they 
are getting a hell of a deal, they also gave me a hell of a deal when I 
first arrived, with no concert experience. They gave me a completely free 
hand with their Baldwin SD-10, and over a few years I turned it, as one 
visiting artist told a pre-concert audience, "from a bucking bronco into 
something beautiful." That piano and I taught each other concert work. And 
of course I got a lot of other work on the coast through my connections 
with the Newport Arts Center. They now have a brand new Steinway D. How 
many chances do you think I have to watch one come to life, and to look 
after it during the process? Are you so overwhelmed with good new concert 
instruments that you can be coy about such chances?

You have to understand Newport. It's a town of 8700 people. The town built 
the Arts Center a year or two before I moved to Oregon. It's busy ALL the 
time! Often three or four things are going on there at once. Newport is 
more than just a gig and a few bucks for me. One part of being in a 
smaller, less hectic, lower cost, and more remote area is that one helps 
places like this keep going. We thrive together.

Let's just say -- it works for me.

Geoff is right -- chill, chill

Sssssssssssssnnnn (hissing lightly ...)