baby_grand raze for decades this hundred-year-old heintzman has been sitting in the library's basement, unplayed, uncared for, out of sight and sound and mind. someone got the idea to bring it upstairs, to see if it had any life left in it. most of the time a piano that's been left to rot this long is a lost cause. best case scenario, it needs a lot of work, and many months of gradual tuning to get it back in-tune with the rest of the world one small step at a time. not this one. a single tuning and it was up and running again. even the person who tuned it was stunned. someone showed up on monday, the day the piano made its debut on the main floor of the library. they sat down, played beethoven's ninth all the way through, and then left without a word. i want to show up one day and be another wraith who plays this thing and then leaves without any fanfare. you don't soak up that amount of life and keep yourself together without your hammers, dampers, and strings developing some serious character along the way. 170625 ... unhinged beethoven cut the legs off his piano after he lost his hearing so he could feel the music instead that piano wanted to be played. maybe so many loving fingers passed over it's keys, it was just crying out at the memory. that when it was brought back into the light, it cooperated with tuning, so that it could feel some beethoven again 170625 ... raze my favourite thing about it is that they've opened it up to the public, instead of just treating it as a nice piece of furniture. anyone is welcome to come in and play, regardless of their skill level. maybe some people who are trying to read won't be so happy about it when a little kid sits down and plays "chopsticks" for twenty minutes straight, but still ... pianos don't discriminate. 170625 ... unhinged (the vibrations of sound turn wood into a living changing thing. scientific analysis of violins has discovered that the wood becomes molecularly realigned when violins are played, hence what luthiers and violinists call the sound 'opening up' over time. the huge sound plate in a baby grand piano has to magnify that realignment. that piano was itching for some molecular realignment) 170625 ... unhinged me and my parents when to the musical instrument museum in arizona and there was a public piano there. i vaguely recall an art museum here having a public piano too, the seattle art museum maybe. i am always too shy to play on public pianos. 170625 what's it to you? who go blather from