prepaired concert piano

J Patrick Draine draine@attbi.com
Tue, 27 Aug 2002 16:31:47 -0400


On Tuesday, August 27, 2002, at 12:51  PM, baoli liu wrote:

> Hi list,
>
> a pianoist is going to play some morden music next
> week on one of our concert pianos,he is going to plug
> the stings by fingers.
>

Dear Baoli,
Is Joel out of town? I would think that he'd already have  a policy 
worked out with the Music Department regarding "prepared piano" usage. 
The possibility of damage to damper heads, wires, and felts, and perhaps 
to a lesser extent, the piano wire, is very real. Especially if it is an 
outside artist or concert promoter there should be a written agreement 
that they are liable for any possible damage. This should be very 
clearly discussed with the hall manager (or appropriate music dept. 
personnel) so that this does not become your headache. At the very least 
you'll need to budget time to check the piano out after this usage 
(nothing like finding shards of George Crumb-dictated glass plates in 
the action *during* the next concert).
Newton (or others) might have have some boilerplate contract text that 
could help you out in this situation?
By the way, moving the concert grands around shouldn't be your 
problem -- it should be at the expense of the concert promoter!
Best of luck and enjoy the music (what's the program?)!
Patrick Draine



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