<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2600.0" name=GENERATOR></HEAD> <BODY bottomMargin=0 leftMargin=3 topMargin=0 rightMargin=3> <DIV>Hi, Everyone,</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I was cleaning out some files when I found this artical from the N.Y.= Times back in May.   Maybe many of you have seen it.   = For those who haven't,  I thought it was good reading, and you might = learn something you didn't know before. ..............  Enjoy !!</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Danny Tassin, RPT</DIV> <DIV><A href="mailto:DLTassinpiano@Juno.com'">DLTassinpiano@Juno.com'</A>= </DIV> <DIV>School Tech at</DIV> <DIV>Jackson State Comm. College</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>======================== ========================== ======</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>This article from NYTimes.com <BR>-------------------- </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0000>                        <EM><U>How Does a Piano Get to Carnegie Hall</U></EM>?</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#008040>May 11, 2003<BR>By JAMES BARRON </FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>The contest was between a giant sandwich of wood= - 18 strips of maple, each about half as long as a city bus - and half a dozen workers with muscles, a pneumatic wrench and a time-conscious foreman. The= workers were supposed to bend and shove those 18 strips into a familiar-= looking shape, and beat the clock. "We're allotted 20 minutes," the foreman, Joseph= Gurrado, muttered. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>After 14 minutes of pushing and pulling and = flexing and grunting that another boss standing nearby called "the Fred Flintstone part= of the operation," the wood was forced into a curve. And, in the too-warm = basement of a gritty factory that opened when Ulysses S. Grant was president, piano= No.<BR>K0862 was born. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Like other newborns, it came with hopes for = greatness and fears that it might not measure up despite a distinguished family name,= Steinway. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Or that it would be grumbled about by Steinway's= customers - temperamental, obsessive, finicky pianists whose love-hate relationship with the company and its products is as complicated and = emotional as anything in Chekhov. Yes,<BR>pianists grouse that Steinways are not what= they used to be. Yes, pianists ascribe whatever faults they found in whatever Steinway they just played to every Steinway. And no, the majority would = never play anything but. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Steinway knows all this. Like No. K0862, every = new piano that rolls out of the Steinway & Sons factory - in Astoria, = Queens, next to oil tanks that block the view of the Rikers Island jails - is an = attempt to refute the notion that the<BR>only good Steinway is an old Steinway. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>So how good will No. K0862 be? Will it sound = like "a squadron of dive bombers," as the pianist Gary Graffman said of a Steinway = he hated on first hearing but came to love? Or will it begin life with the = enormous bass and<BR>sweet-singing treble that pianists prize the way wine lovers = prize a 1989 Romanée-Conti? Will it be good enough for Steinway's concert = division, which supplies pianos to big-name artists? </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>No one can say.     Not yet.= </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>It will take about eight months to finish No. = K0862, an 8-foot 11 3/8-inch concert grand. Along the way, the rim will be aged = in a room as dim as a wine cellar. It will be sprayed with lacquer, rubbed and sprayed again. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Its 340-pound iron plate will be lowered in and = lifted out 10 or 12 times. It will spend time in rooms where workers wear oxygen = masks to avoid getting headaches (or getting high) from smelly glues. It will be= broken in by a machine that plays scales without complaint, unlike a = student. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Someone walking through the factory, following = the progress of No. K0862, could forget a basic fact about what goes on there: = Every Steinway is made the same way from the same materials by the same workers. = Yet every Steinway ends up being different from every other - not in appearance= , perhaps, but in ways that are not easily put into words: colorations of = sound, nuances of strength or delicacy, what some pianists call personality. Some= Steinways end up sounding small or mellow, fine for chamber music. Some are= so percussive a full-strength orchestra cannot drown them out. On some, the = keys move with little effort. On others, the pianist's hands and arms get a = workout. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Why?    No one at Steinway can = really say. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Perhaps it is the wood. No matter how carefully= Steinway selects or prepares<BR>each batch, some trees get more sunlight = than others in the forest, and some get more water. Certain piano technicians = say uncontrollable factors make the difference. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Perhaps, in a plant where everyone is an expert= craftsman, some are great, others merely good. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Someday, if its personality turns out to be = extroverted but not strident, if its key action turns out to be loose but not mushy, No= . K0862 may be pounded or caressed in public by someone like Alfred Brendel = or Maurizio Pollini at<BR>Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center. First, though, No. = K0862 will be pounded and caressed in the factory by woodworkers with tattoos on = their burly arms, by technicians known as bellymen, by tuners confident that they= can improve it, no matter how good it sounds at first. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>There is Anthony Biondi, 31, who was hired nine = years ago as a veneer cutter, someone who selects wood for rims. His tools = include the oldest machine still used in the factory, a 130-year-old cutter, and the = newest, a million-dollar<BR>trimmer that arrived in January. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>There is his boss, Mr. Gurrado, the foreman. In = a company once legendary for its "lifers," he is a new kind of middle manager= . When Steinway hired him in 2000, he had no experience in woodworking but 15= years of manufacturing<BR>everything from leather goods to lemonade. He = replaced a foreman who retired after 41 years of making Steinway rims.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>And there is Andrew Horbachevsky, the 44-year-= old manufacturing director, who has worked for Steinway for 15 years. "This = company kind of sucks you in," he said. "I've had a dream where my wife turned into= a piano." </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>A Holdout in Queens </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Steinway remains one of the last outposts of = hand craftsmanship in a machine-dominated industry in what was once a boomtown = for piano makers.<BR>Steinway is now one of the last large manufacturing = operations in New York City, which the State Labor Department says lost 666,400 = factory jobs between 1962 and the end of last year, when 217,000 remained. </FONT><= /DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Unlike competitors that left for plants in the = Sun Belt, Steinway has stayed put. The factory was originally the centerpiece = of a 400-acre company town where Steinway workers lived in Steinway-built houses= and shopped at<BR>Steinway-owned stores. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>By moving everything but their store and their = offices out of Manhattan, the Steinways hoped to elude 19th-century labor turmoil. = They succeeded, for a while. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Eventually, the Steinways sold all but 11 acres,= and, in 1972 they sold the company itself, which was unionized in the 1930's. = But their name remains on Steinway Street, and company officials say that most = of the 450 workers at the<BR>plant still live in the neighborhood. Mr. Biondi,= the veneer cutter, bicycles to work in warm weather. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Real Ebony?      $50,= 000 </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Now as in the past, the products made in the = Steinway factory are famous, and famously expensive.  No. K0862 will sell for = about the same as one of the most expensive Mercedes-Benz coupes: $92,800. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>No. K0862 will have what Steinway calls an = ebonized finish, meaning it will be painted black. Real ebony is available, for an = extra $50,000: Steinway says it has no effect on the sound. But the guts of every= concert grand - the strings,<BR>the hammers that strike them, the keys to = which the hammers are attached - are identical. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>That raises the question of age. Is a brand-new = piano ready<BR>the moment it leaves the factory? </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Maybe, maybe not. In the 1920's, a golden age = for Steinway, there were probably pianists and tuners who whined that the best= pianos were those made at the end of the 19th century.  There are = certainly pianists today with a fondness if not a reverence for Steinways from the = 1920's and 1930's. "The<BR>majority of instruments from back then, there's a level= of color and personality that is undeniable," said the pianist Stephen Hough.= </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>As for what comes out of the factory these days,= the pianist Erika Nickrenz said: "The brand-new Steinways tend to be a little = blank. They have all the characteristics, but it takes pianists to play them and = really bring out<BR>what's there." But, in a tryout at Steinway's showroom in Manhattan, she preferred a concert grand that left the factory on April 27 = to four others, including one from 1962. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>"Older is not better, and we can prove it," said= Bruce A. Stevens, the company's president. "Where that started was with people = who make their living rebuilding Steinways, and they tell their customers that.= We've just about given up rebutting it." But not completely. A moment later= , he used the word poppycock. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Determining which pianos are great is terribly subjective.  In 1981, The Atlantic Monthly watched Steinway assemble a= concert grand, No. K2571. By the time the magazine published its 18,000-= word article, that piano had been put before André-Michel Schub, who picked a= different instrument for a recital at the factory. But Richard Goode played= No. K2571 at Alice Tully Hall. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>And then, when it was not quite two years old, = Rudolf Serkin adopted it. "He wasn't really happy with the Steinways he had been playing in concert," recalled the manager of Steinway's dealership in = Boston, Paul Murphy. So Steinway lined up half a dozen grands for Serkin to try. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>He chose No. K2571 and had it shipped first to = the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont and later to his studio nearby.  It= stayed there until shortly before his death in 1991, when Mr. Murphy = delivered a new piano, hauled away No.<BR>K2571 and gave it the equivalent of a 100,000= -mile tuneup. Mr. Murphy later sold No. K2571 to a medical student from Japan. = She took it to Kyoto. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Guts of Steel </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>In the two decades since that piano left the = factory, Steinway has done some modernizing. Computer-generated bar codes now track = the parts of a piano in the making. In 1981, one way that was done was on file = cards in the pocket<BR>of a great-grandson of the company's founder. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Machines now cut the wood for the lids and legs = - something done by hand until about 15 years ago. "This is furniture-making,= " Mr. Horbachevsky said. But he added, "There are operations we can't automate = because that would<BR>take the soul out of Steinway." </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>One of those operations is the one Mr. Gurrado inherited last year, rim-bending. It had gone unchanged for so long because= the piano has gone unchanged for so long. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>What Steinway's original square pianos - or its= earliest grands - did not have were rigid rims. The company's second = generation perfected that. One of the Steinways after the ampersand in the company's = name, C.F. Theodore Steinway, held more than 40 patents and collaborated with the= physicist Hermann von Helmholtz to marry the methodology of science to the= making of pianos. They reasoned that longer and stronger strings would = produce a larger and louder sound but would also put extreme pressure on the rim. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>C.F. Theodore Steinway's solution is Mr. Gurrado= 's: rim lamination. C.F. Theodore Steinway figured that gluing thin strips of wood= together would create a rim noticeably stronger and more durable than one crafted from just one or two thick boards. Even the glue would add strength.  Laminating the rim was one of the innovations that made = possible an instrument with a big sound, the grand piano Steinway has manufactured = ever since. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>When a Book Is a Sandwich </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>The eight-month manufacturing schedule for No. = K0862 does not include the morning Mr. Biondi spent slicing the stack of wood for= the rim into pieces 3/16 of an inch thick and roughly eight feet long.  = Nor the time he spent taping those pieces into 22-foot-long strips to form the "= book," as the sandwich of wood that becomes a rim is known at the factory. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Among Steinway's workers, Mr. Horbachevsky says,= rim-bending was once dominated by Italians. No one can say for sure why = they were hired for those jobs more often than for others, but when a job was available, someone at<BR>Steinway would tell a friend, who would apply. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>In the 1980's, Caribbean immigrants began taking= the place of Italians who retired. In the 1990's, the labor pool changed again.= Now the crew includes three Bosnians. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Among them is Nazif Sutrovic, who was a police = official in Sarajevo during the 1984 Winter Olympics and has worked at Steinway = since 1997. Apologizing for his balky English, he says, "I don't have time to go = to school." He has another job, as the superintendent of a Brooklyn apartment<BR>building. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>The Wood Gets Amnesia </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>On the way to what Steinway calls the rim-= bending machine - though it is essentially a piano-shaped vise perfected by C. F. Theodore Steinway, and has no motor - Mr. Gurrado's crew made an important = stop They fed the book, layer by layer, through a glue-spreader that looks = something like a washer with a wringer. At the far end, two workers, Tommy Stavrianos= and Jean Robert Laguerre, dipped brushes in glue pots for touch-ups. </FONT></= DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Mr. Stavrianos - at 28, the youngest man on the = crew - and his colleagues talk proudly of the pianos they make and the company's traditions. But they are not the concert-hall regulars that their pianos = are. The radios around the factory play soft rock and jazz, not stations where Steinway artists are often heard. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>The rim-benders use their physical strength in a= way that is unusual in a modern factory. At 9:54 a.m., the crew leader, Eric = Lall, is busy shoving the book into place along the side of the piano where the = keys for the bass notes will be. He begins tightening spindles on the clamps = while Patrick Acosta, 30, uses a long-handled lever to force the rest of the book= toward the big curve at the end.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>Mr. Acosta says this is all the exercise he = needs, or gets: "I build pianos. That's my workout." The lever in his hands weighs 80= pounds. The clamps - "posts," the crew calls them - are 65 pounds each. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>At 10:10, with a whack from Mr. Acosta, the rim = is done.<BR>"Fourteen minutes," Mr. Gurrado says. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>The time allotted for bending a rim is 20 to 25= minutes. As he explains, "We're working against the glue." It begins to set= that fast. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>The rim spends its first 24 hours clamped in = place. "Wood has a memory," Mr. Gurrado says. The day in the clamps is = deprogramming time, so the wood will forget its past and not pop out of its new shape. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>After three days across the workroom from where = it was bent - Mr. Gurrado does not want to shock it by moving it out of a by-now-familiar environment too quickly - it goes to a room that looks like= a wine cellar but is warm and dry and on an upper floor in the factory. It = will spend about 60 days there, with 500 other rims that are awaiting sounding boards, plates and keys. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#000080>"It's going to be whatever it's going to be, = good or whatever," Mr. Stavrianos says after parking it there. "There's nothing you= can do now but wait. It's out of our hands."</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><A href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/nyregion/11PIAN.html">http://www.= nytimes.com/2003/05/11/nyregion/11PIAN.html</A></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>HOW TO ADVERTISE<BR>---------------------------------<BR>For = information on advertising in e-mail newsletters <BR>or other creative advertising opportunities with The <BR>New York Times on the Web, please contact<BR><A= href="mailto:onlinesales@nytimes.com">onlinesales@nytimes.com</A> or = visit our online media <BR>kit at <A href="http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo">http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo</A></= DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>For general information about NYTimes.com, write to <BR><A href="mailto:help@nytimes.com">help@nytimes.com</A>.  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company</DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>