Chapter 31 was about meeting a musician with knowledge of a beautiful area of the coast of Maine. I sang for him the chorus of one of my favorite songs about Maine coastal life. Here is a link to Gordon Bock singing “Old Fat Boat:”     Here is a link to wooden boat builders […]

Chapter 32 told of a retired gentleman who pursued a life-long dream of learning to play the piano, and of his experience playing in a student recital where he was the only adult.   I included this story in Piano Dance, because I have met numerous adults who wished to learn to play the piano. […]

Chapter 33 told of the turns of fortune that led me to study singing and to take up piano tuning for a trade. In previous chapters, I told of experiences that led to my interest in performing, such as seeing my mother perform frequently. Another influence that I recently remembered, were 78 rpm records that […]

Chapter 34 was largely based on oral histories that I had heard from tuners I had known. Not much was told to me about African American tuners, so I looked on the internet recently. African American tuners haven’t had much publicity, as you might imagine. Recently a highly respected blind African American tuner died in […]

Tuning for performances is an interesting endeavor. I frequently get to meet the piano player and hear how their tour has been going. We also discuss any concerns they have about the piano. Usually that amounts to their wishes as to the brightness of the tone of the instrument. Not all of those meetings are […]

Dancing Through Life   This is the final back story for each of the 36 chapters of Piano Dance. After this, there will be stories of interesting people I met after the book was completed. Chapter 36 was an explanation of the origin of the title. It told of Bob, my former brother in law, […]

My piano tuning career continued after the publication of Piano Dance, so I continued to meet interesting and extraordinary people. This story is about a client for whom I had tuned for several  years. He was a genius at playing piano by ear. After I would tune his piano, he would play tunes that I […]

Lou was a light-hearted freelance tenor performing in Boston and New York. He was always a lot of fun to be around. His favorite saying came from Twelfth Night: “If music be the food of love, play on.”   He grew up in Martha’s Vineyard in an extremely wealthy household on West Chop. He said […]