After losing a job in 1975, Paul Monroe asked his wife, Christine, to support him for five years so he could fulfill his dream of starting a piano tuning business.
“She said ‘If that’s what you want to do let’s do it,'” Monroe said.
Monroe, 84, of Irvine, Calif., went on to run his business for more than 30 years. That kind of passion was evident among the hundreds attending this weekend’s Piano Technicians Guild convention at the Hyatt Regency in Rosemont.
Piano technicians said their craft has stayed true to tradition.
“Like the engine of the car has changed, but in terms of the thought that’s behind it, that hasn’t changed,” said Helen Weston, 49, a Vermont -based tuner.
For a basic tuning, technicians use a special wrench to adjust about 220 strings inside a piano so that each one offers the right pitch. Machines can tell them when they have made the adjustments, but the human touch still counts.
“You have to have a good ear beyond the pitch of a note,” Weston said.
Technicians learn the craft at special schools and in apprentice programs, and many continue to hone their skills, through classes and seminars sponsored by local associations.
Wesley Owen, 36, said he “caught the bug” for piano tuning in 1995 when he met a technician at an art academy. He went on to study at a program in Boston and then returned to Chicago.
Here he tuned pianos as a student worker under Nobumasa Fujiwara, 78, who learned the craft in a Japanese piano factory more than five decades ago.
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“I love the work. There is always more to learn, more to refine,” Owen said. “It’s a really complicated machine, or, excuse me, musical instrument.”
Fujiwara retired and two years ago Owen took over the job as chief piano technician at Roosevelt University. Technicians say that tradition of passing knowledge from one generation to the next is common in their field.
Three years ago, Monroe had to curtail his business to take care of his wife, who had fallen ill.
Three weeks before she died, he vowed that when she was gone he would stay strong and remain active, keeping in touch with friends and going back to tuning pianos. This year’s conference was his first since losing his wife.
“I was only doing what I promised to do,” Monroe said.
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