[This is one section of the article, "Behind the Scenes in Arts and Sciences."]

Steve Brady maintains a UW collection of a different sort. As head piano technician for the School of Music, he keeps the school’s 130 keyboard instruments—pianos, harpsichords, and fortepianos—in working order.

Brady shares the job with Susan Cady, each working half time. They are constantly kept busy with everything from simple piano tunings to rebuilding pianos that have deteriorated through heavy use. His office has the appearance of a piano operating room, with a half-assembled keyboard on a table, strings on the counter, and a gutted piano frame hovering nearby.

	Using traditional methods and materials, Steve Brady bolsters a wippen heel cushion—part of a worn pad on a School of Music piano. Photo by Mary Levin.

“Pianos are extremely complex instruments,” says Brady. “They have about 12,000 parts. A BMW, in comparison, has about 4,000 parts. To complicate things, pianos are made of materials—wood, felt, leather—that react to humidity, so they are always in a state of flux. People think of them as inanimate objects, like rocks or tables, but they do wear out.”

Especially in the School of Music. The school’s classroom and studio pianos are frequently in use, and the practice room pianos are played up to 12 hours a day. That’s a punishing schedule for such a delicate instrument.

“With that kind of use, the pianos should be serviced at least once a month,” says Brady, “but given all the other demands on our time, it’s more like twice a year.”

The classroom and studio pianos fare a bit better, with quarterly tunings and maintenance of broken strings, sticky keys, and other minor problems as time permits. “It’s pretty much a squeaky wheel operation,” sighs Brady. “We’re really understaffed.”

Although Brady does tune pianos, that’s just one part of his job. He also makes adjustments to regulate each piano’s touch and tone quality. “On each key, there are a dozen or so adjustments to regulate the touch, including height of the key and the distance of the hammer to the strings,” says Brady. “Then there’s voicing, which alters the loudness and brightness or mellowness of the sound.”

Voicing is particularly important for the School’s concert pianos in Brechemin Auditorium and Meany Hall, used by faculty and visiting artists. “Pianists definitely have different tastes,” says Brady, who has prepared the Meany concert grands for many of the world’s top pianists, from Peter Serkin to Murray Perahia to Andras Schiff, adjusting the tone and touch as needed.

Often Brady is able to determine a pianist’s personal taste before he or she arrives. “If it’s an artist I haven’t worked with, I’ll listen to a recording to get an idea of their sound,” he says. “And I’ll look at their repertoire and see what they are playing to get an idea if there’s anything I can do to help with the program.”

It helps that Brady is an “avid amateur” pianist himself—married to a professional pianist—and served as editor of the national publication in his field, Piano Technician’s Journal, for six years. “I absorbed a lot of technical knowledge from reading and rereading articles as editor of that journal,” says Brady. “It’s made me a better piano technician.”

That confidence comes in handy when dealing with big-name performers. Even so, Brady admits to nervousness when a major artist comes to campus—even after nearly 24 years on the job. He recalls one occasion when pianist Peter Serkin checked the tuning and regulation of the piano before a performance, testing each key with painstaking care as Brady and Matt Krashan, director of Meany’s UW World Series, looked on. “Matt turned to me and said ‘I wouldn’t have your job for anything,’” recalls Brady with a laugh. “It can be stressful,” he admits, “but it’s worth it.”

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[Summer 2002 - Table of Contents]