Isn't she beautiful? How about a little close-up?
This beauty joined the family this week after Dan and I recently started shopping around more seriously for a piano of our very own.
When we moved to Texas almost 3 years ago, we were so thrilled to be able to bring the old family piano with us for a little while as Mom had just purchased a brand new Kawai grand piano that spring. Knowing that the piano would eventually be passed on down to my younger brother, Jon, we got to be the interim home for this much beloved old piano. The last 3 years have been wonderful having a piano in our home after living through college without one, and it's also been fun being able to play so much on the piano that I grew up with and learned to play on.
This piano has a legacy of its own. Every time I've called a piano tuner to come and tune the piano in the last few years, I feel a little sense of pride to hear how impressed they are with the condition of this over-100-year-old piano. It's definitely well-loved and played, and does not play quite as well as it used to, but they can tell it's been loved and well taken care of as it's held up through the years. I'm not sure how many lives it has had, but I do know that it belonged to my great grandfather, spent some time in the basement of a church in Idaho, made a cross-country journey to Kansas City pulled by my grandfather in a trailer out to my family probably before I was born, moved back to Utah when I was 9, and had a nice 3-year stint with us here in Houston. Now it will be on to San Francisco to live with my brother and sister-in-law, Jon and Carrie, and their baby Shayla on it's next life. I'm sure all of my siblings feel a bit nostalgic about this piano, learning to play from Bastien, Music Tree, and Alfred methods, playing duets of "Heart and Soul", hiding and/or finding Easter candy left behind by the Easter bunny 3 months earlier that somehow was missed during the hunt and was well-hidden and forgotten under the music holder. I feel privileged to be a part of some of the many lives that it has seen.
But the time has now come to get ready to pass on the piano now that Jon is finishing up school at BYU and they're moving to California this summer. I didn't want to end up without a piano for a period of time if I could avoid it because I'm attached to piano ownership now, and I'm also teaching lessons, so Dan and I started shopping around in the last month or two. When we found our new Kawai, I fell in love with it. It's a used 30-year-old 52" full upright, but newly factory-refurbished, straight in from the factory in Japan last week, so like new. It plays like a dream! And of course it looks like a dream too, and I love the shiny black finish. Anna and David, of course, like to touch it as much as I do, so I'm learning quickly the tricks to polishing off the fingerprints. But I'm so excited to have our own piano that I will teach them to play on when they're older. I hope that our new piano will be as well-loved through the years and will become a legacy in our family as we grow with it.
And in the meantime until June or July, I am the lucky owner of 2 pianos in my front room! So anyone up for some fun duets or quartets, come on over for some fun jam sessions!
6 comments:
So pretty! That is so exciting!
That is awesome Liz!! Congrats on the new piano! It is beautiful!! I loved reading the history of your old piano...I had no idea it was so old and had such stories. Isn't it amazing how attached we get to our pianos? My first piano was nowhere near as old as yours but when I gave it up to get my Yamaha baby grand I about cried. A big part of that was because I associated it with Grandmom and Papa.
Congratulations! They are both such gorgeous pianos. I'm wish I could come over and listen to you play!
What? My out-of-tune, ancient, neglected piano did not fulfill your needs in college!?! :) You remember, the one that hurt your ears if someone dared to touch the keys. Good thing I am tone deaf- it still sits in my living room as untuned now as it was then.
Oh my gosh that's amazing! Congratulations on your new piano! I have a real soft spot in my heart for music and that story about the life that piano has had really tugged on my heart strings :) It's amazing the stories that family heirlooms like that can have. It's really beautiful. Both pianos are gorgeous! I hope that your newer one brings many years of happiness and that the older one keeps bringing joy to everyone that uses it :)
How fun for you! I love having a piano in my home. I use it everyday teaching piano lessons and every Monday night for FHE. I went for a couple of years without a piano when I first got married and it was hard. Your piano is beautiful!
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