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<div id=AOLMsgPart_0_73be4f62-fd59-481d-a066-0c15fd87c49f style="FONT-SIZE: 12px; MARGIN: 0px; COLOR: #000; FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, Sans-Serif; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #fff">Rick Florence wrote: <br>
"Evan, I can sum up institutional politics in one sentence. Keep the faculty happy, especially the keyboard folks. If they are not happy, you're life will be miserable, if they appreciate you, they will be strong advocates for everything from budgets to travel for continued education." <br>
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While this is true when you've got a faculty that knows and understands the demands of the piano, when the piano faculty does not understand those needs, there is nothing you can do. The head of the piano area at UA, who has been teaching for over 50 years, didn't even know what a wippen was. She also thought that I should know what was wrong with her piano without her telling me. She could not understand why I couldn't detect every little problem with her piano just by tuning it. When I first got to the school, one of the two B's in her studio was dead sounding. I voiced up the hammers, but she never said anything to me bout it. One of the other professors was getting physical therapy for sore forearms when i first got there. His B played like a Mack truck and had absolutely no after touch. I regulated and voiced the piano, but the first thing he complained about was the uneven voicing. When asked him how the action felts, he said, "It's OK." Four weeks later he announced that miraculously his arms had gotten better, and credited the physical therapist. <br>
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When you've got faculty members like that, you'll never satisfy them, and as a result, my funding was cut off, and I was eventually let go. <br>
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Wim <br>
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