THE PERIOD PIANO CENTER

A California Non-Profit Corporation

Period Piano Center   email contact

Bill Shull, RPT, M.Mus.  Founder and Director

25041 Redlands Blvd, Loma Linda, CA  92354

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Piano Database   .Conservation of 19th Century Pianos   The Period Piano Center Collection

The Early Steinway Grand Research Project   The Early Steinway Grand Classes Donations

Making a Contribution to the Period Piano Center

To date most costs for documentation, including flight travel and hotel have been on incurred personally by the researchers, Bill Shull and Larry Buck. Period Piano Center is now a California Non-Profit Corporation, and is obtaining status with the IRS in 2009.

There is a great need for contributions to help continue this research work, to support the museum collection, and to begin the online digital archive.  Site visits are expensive, and currently our researchers are paying out-of-pocket and usually losing normal income for the time spent, as well. Period Piano Center contributions will cover these expenses.  While contributions cannot be credited immediately as tax-deductible non-profit contributions, they will be credited if non-profit status is attained in 2009. 

All contributions are welcome. Our bookkeeper is maintaining our records, and all small and large gifts are welcome. Please make checks payable to “Period Piano Center,” in care of Don Crawford, Period Piano Center, 25041 Redlands Blvd, Loma Linda, CA  92354

You may also contact us about making a donation to be charged on your credit card. Until we have a secure online server please send the credit card information on at least two different emails.  We will need your name as on the card, type of card, card number, date of expiration, security code, and the amount you wish to contribute/charge.

Current and Immediate Expenses:

1. Legal and filing costs for Period Piano Center to attain non-profit corporation status.  With the assistance we’ve obtained, we expect these costs to run between $1,600 and $2,000.

2. Cartage of donated Erard 1870s concert grand from donor near Philadelphia PA to warehouse in Warrington, PA - outstanding cartage of $432.11.  Piano technician Ruth Phillips is storing without charge. Cartage to southern California approximately $1000. This exquisitely carved instrument will be restored for performance use by Period Piano Center.

3. Exhibit costs. Education is critical to the mission of the Period Piano Center, and conference exhibits are one of the best places to fulfill this mission.  In our last exhibit we were joined by Laurence Libin, curator emeritus, Metropolitan Museum of Art and honorary curator, Steinway and Sons.

3. Cartage for artifacts. Pianos are shipped from distant locations, and the cartage cost is often nearly $1,000.

4. Conference Attendance:  Each year important conferences take place which Period Piano Center researchers should attend, and occasionally exhibit and present at. These include the AMIS Conference May 20-23 in Ann Arbor, MI, the AIC Conference May 19-22, Los Angeles, CA

3. Documentation Site Visits:

A. Earliest existing modern Steinway Concert Grand: The 1875 Steinway Centennial Concert Grand #33610 has been shipped to the Steinway Restoration Center in New York for remanufacturing.  No earlier modern Steinway is known to exist, and this is only the second Centennial built. Prior to rebuilding much of the original piano was still intact, and soundboard and other important artifacts will be soon discarded, along with the information contained.  A great loss to history is impending, unless Period Piano Center researchers can quickly travel to New York and carefully measure and photo-document this instrument.  Steinway and Sons will permit this and we are awaiting permission from the owner, Fresno State University.  Travel and hotel for two researchers for this visit is approximately $900.

B. 1854 Bluthner 7’ grand, the earliest known Bluthner grand in America, Orinda, CA.  This extraordinary early Bluthner (Bluthner and Steinway were both founded in 1853) are in the home of an elderly couple who recognize its significance and will open their home for this quite invasive and lengthy documentation session.  The earliest Steinway grands look very much like this 1854 Bluthner, and the comparisons are valuable.

C. Other pending visits:  **Mission Inn Centennial Grand, Riverside, CA.  This 1876 early Steinway Concert Grand is the only Steinway we’ve found with an iron pulsator bar.  We hope to have permission to document this piano on February 20, 2009.  **The Cadillac Hotel Steinway “D” in San Francisco - one of the first generation of Steinway D’s, this piano was restored without replacement of existing belly components, making it a useful window into the innovations of Theodore Steinway.  Some unique features of Theodore’s “D” were discarded later, so this most unusual piano is an important artifact of history.

Many other pianos are waiting for visits, and others are yet to be discovered.   The above list is our most current agenda, which supports the writing deadlines required for a series of articles to be soon published on the early Steinway grand.

Future Expenses

1. Museum Acquisitions: 1. Steinway Monitor Iron Grand #19434.  Discovered and documented in 2007 by Period Piano Center, this is the first Steinway in history to have most modern Steinway features, and the first of only seven prototype Iron grands, none others are known to exist.  Owner in Belgium will release this piano to us with payment of 2/3 asking price of $30,000, or approximately $20,000, plus about $4000 cartage and fees.

Initial Fundraising Event: A dinner, concert and presentation to potential donors in order to provide the necessary capital infusion to begin the ongoing work, in order to meet museum rent, payroll, documentation site visit, exhibit, grant-writing and acquisition costs. Conservators, technicians, restoration specialists are needed - the work is to large for one person.

Why is this work important?  For many reasons, but the first is to re-discover the music. We recommend obtaining the DVD “Knowing the Score,” an extraordinary presentation on the importance of the period piano by renowned fortepianist and educator Malcolm Bilson. The Period Piano Center is working to make possible the redisovery of music on pianos built in the 19th Century.   Documentation, restoration, conservation, performance, teaching - this will make possible for current and future generations of pianists the rediscovery of the music of Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Brahms...even Ravel and Debussy....on the pianos which they, themselves, heard their music on.  Piano students, majors, and others will soon have opportunity to hear and play the music of Chopin, Mendelssohn and Liszt - as well as Debussy and Ravel - on the Erard these composers most often heard their music on, and composed for.  And the early Steinways?  The pianos that catupulted Steinway to world-class concert status were not the ones we know today, but entirely different instruments, with more ancient construction and materials quickly being lost to the rebuilder’s trash heap.  Due to the resale value of used Steinways, and the complete refusal of the company to encourage or practice conservation of its early pianos, rebuilding and manufacturing of these early Steinways is ruining all early Steinways as good documents of history - essential for knowing how these pianos were built and how they really sounded and played.  Rather than turning these instruments into versions of modern Steinways, which is what the factory and most rebuilders are doing through commercial soundboard and action replacement, we seek to study and preserve the unique, vintage elements of these pianos so that the world might have an idea of what kind of musical instruments Steinway actually built from 1856 to 1886 - and we believe the music world will be delighted and grateful for what we conserve and carefully restore!

Your contribution, large or small, will aid in this noble project.

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