Yesterday on my way home from an accordion lesson in Strafford I detoured through the town of Washington to scout for a piano. I’d had an invitation to play at the Unitarian Church, but unfortunately they had no piano, while the other church in the village had a fairly restrictive statement of beliefs on their website which made me think it might not be the ideal PET venue. So I stopped by the Washington Village Elementary School.
Jessica at the front desk buzzed me in. I explained my project to her and aksed if the school had a real piano. She replied “You just walked past it.”
Yes I had, and there it was, a Samick studio upright in the covered walkway outside (!) just before the main entrance—even as I was looking for a piano, I did not register one right next to me in such an unlikely place. Jessica told me “They were going to get rid of it, but I said no, put it out there, the kids will use it. And they love banging around on it!”
I went back out with appropriately low expectations for an outdoor piano in Vermont’s harsh and variable climate. But the real enemy of pianos is the swing in relative humidity, which can be less extreme outdoors than in a heated environment, and the piano was in surprisingly OK tune. Everything worked except for three keys, but they were pretty important ones, not at the extreme registers as is often the case but in the middle of the keyboard. I tried to open the lid to see what was the matter, but it was screwed shut.
I buzzed back in and said to Jessica I said “I see that the top is screwed shut.” I was waiting to hear something like "Yeah. The kids were messing around on the inside and we didn’t want them to break more stuff.” But Jessica said “Yeah. Someone’s head got stuck inside, so we screwed it shut. Kids!”
I feel like I need to start wearing a body cam, because there's no reenacting these first encounters for video. The photo here will have to do.
I am now working to schedule my Washington concert at the school.
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