IC News

Keeping the school’s piano population in good playing condition requires regular tuning, timely adjustments and repairs, and the occasional complete overhaul.

Both Ostrander and Sayers have many years of experience doing just that. Before joining IC in 2016, Ostrander ran the Ostrander Piano Service near Cleveland for more than 30 years, offering piano repairs and reconstruction as well as lessons. He has a bachelor’s in piano performance from the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and did graduate work in choral conducting at the University of Miami and in piano performance at the Cleveland Institute of Music. A tinkerer, he also invented and markets an automated hydraulic grand piano mover.

Sayers joined IC in 2015 after working for 10 years restoring vintage pianos at The Country Piano Shop in Burdett, New York. Before that he was a full-time technician at Boston’s only authorized Steinway dealership, and received training in piano technology from Steinway and at the New England Conservatory for Piano Technology.

The two share a repair philosophy of restoring pianos to the original manufacturer’s specifications where possible, particularly for the 75 Steinway-made pianos. “Who am I to say to a company with 150 years of well-regarded piano building experience that I have a better idea?” Ostrander asks rhetorically. Well-maintained, quality pianos can be perfectly functional for a century or more, he noted, adding that 17 of the school’s pianos have reached that milestone. 

Tuning accounts for 60 to 70 percent of the team’s work, performed using traditional piano hammers to match pitch to targets sounded with apps on smart phones and iPads.

Next door to the piano shop, Adams is responsible for 1,300 band and orchestral instruments, evenly split among woodwinds (clarinets, flutes, saxophones, oboes and bassoons), brass (trumpets, trombones and tubas) and stringed instruments (violins, violas, cellos and basses). Most are secondary instruments, but IC also has some top-rated instruments for concert performance and some exotic instruments like the oud, a Baroque stringed instrument, for specialty performances.

Adams, now beginning his second year at IC, spent most of his adult life honing his skills in music repair shops in Webster, New York; Dallas; San Jose; Los Angeles and Ithaca. On the West Coast he maintained high-end woodwind instruments for professional players, including smooth jazz star Dave Koz, as well as ’60s hit-maker Herb Alpert. He’s even done a repair for jazz icon Branford Marsalis.

Adams is skilled at making all types of repairs on woodwind and brass instruments, and he is especially adept at making professional-level adjustments to woodwinds, he said. He has less experience with stringed instruments, but can do basic maintenance, farming out larger repairs, usually to IC faculty member Dylan Race.

He spends much of his time maintaining the secondary instruments, with expectations that he’ll touch every instrument at least once a year. Part of his inspection process is to play the instruments — he is sufficiently skilled to sound at least two octaves on every brass and woodwind instrument.

Life expectancies vary by instrument. “Violins can function well with little work for 30 years, but a clarinet will have pad wear that will need attention in the first year or two,” Adams said, adding that when its physical parts can no longer be repaired, the instrument is replaced.

Some days can be hectic. Adams usually gets a handful of students and faculty each day asking for a quick adjustment to their instruments, which he usually does on the spot. Emergencies are not unusual. A clarinet pad might fall out 10 minutes before a performance and replacement also means regulating the sound, a time-consuming process, meaning things can get tense. Whatever the need, he tries to help, once even hot-gluing a musician’ broken sandal strap.

“I love the energy and sense of community on campus,” Adams said, a sentiment he shares with the piano techs. “It’s a youthful, creative environment, and I really feel good about contributing to these students and to what they are doing.”