Our church has been given a magnificent Steinway Grand Piano style piano, built in 1883 resides in the sanctuary and is used by Charles Stannard during most Sunday worship services. Pianos such as this are extremely hard to come by and this is truly an instrument of great value. When properly repaired, maintained and tuned it provides the majestic tones and sounds of the classic piano that it is. We indeed have a wonderful treasure.
As you can imagine, use through the years has worn some parts and breakdowns have occurred during the most inopportune times. In order to realize the full benefit of both the quality of sound and maintain its wonderful antique status it needs 22 specific repairs and upgrades to headquarters in New York, and met with their representatives, as well as a firm which will perform the restoration. This work will restore the picked specialty woods, materials and adhesives. While we could go into infinite details as to the planned changes, several are listed below:
- Three (3) Steinway tubular action rails
- All new keyboard felts
- Refit the key frame to the key-bed
- New hammers, shanks and flanges New whippens
- A complete tuning to A-440
The full list of all repairs and actions is available for review.
The cost of these changes and renovations is $16,900. This includes cartage to the repair site, all the required actions, tuning and delivery back to the sanctuary. We plan to do this over the summer and have the instrument fully renovated and ready for the beginning of the new church year in September.
We have received an anonymous gift of $10,000 toward this project, leaving us $6,900 to complete the effort. Given the beauty of the instrument, the magnificent tones and enhancement to our worship service, we are asking those who are able and can see the vision to support this effort. As Trustees of our church and having oversight responsibilities of our assets, we believe that this expenditure is a wonderful use of our funds.
David Stoner, Chair The Board of Trustees