Towards the end of 2014, a Steinway Grand piano (model L) that had originally belonged to my grandmother (and which I later played as a child at my parents’ home) was sent to Lindeblad Piano Restoration in Pine Brook, New Jersey to receive new strings and action parts. My grandmother, Marguerite Jones, was a master piano teacher who taught for over 7 decades of her life, and she bought this 1925 Steinway when it was new. Now after all these years, it has been beautifully upgraded and is the centerpiece of my teaching studio.

Paul Lindeblad and his colleagues put on brand new action assemblies (wippens, repetition mechanisms, jacks & let-offs, and hammers), strings, pins, damper felts, and agraffes. The cabinet was then refreshed with a new ebony French polish.

After the piano was shipped back and moved into my home studio, I called upon a master piano technician by the name of Michael Jackson to do further work on the piano, including regulation, voicing and tuning. Michael spent five days meticulously shaping the hammers for ideal tone, adjusting their striking point to the “sweet spots” on the strings, leveling the strings, adjusting the damper release timing and the key drop, voicing the hammers to balance with the room acoustics, and making a number of other adjustments to optimize both sound and playability. Michael is a rare technician whose knowledge and commitment to perfection truly set him apart from others.