“Monster Piano Concerts”

I recently had the opportunity to go back to my alma mater and perform again! Dr. Kenn Willson, the piano professor at George Fox University coordinated a massive 6 piano, 18 pianist concert. I participated in a 4 piano concert while I was a student there several years ago and I was pleased to be invited back for a bigger and better “Monster Piano Concert“!

We had three 9′ Bosendorfers, two 9′ Yamahas and one 7′ Yamaha on the stage at once. I was happy to just play the pianos instead of tuning all 6 of these beasts in one day! Classic Pianos provided 5 wonderful pianos for us and Clark Forster (no relation to myself) prepared and tuned the instruments.

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Different combinations of the 18 college students, high school students and alumni performed ensemble pieces by Bach Schubert, Beethoven, Brahms, Vandall, Poulenc and Mozart.

I’ve been tuning pianos a lot more than I’ve been practicing or performing in the last 6 years. It felt good to actually play the piano seriously again. I got to play this Mozart two piano sonata with a fellow GFU alumni and we had a great time with this great piece (the video here is a little weird, but a great performance of the piece).

This Schubert military march was huge with 6 massive pianos and 12 pianists playing! It was the loudest “piano experience” I’ve had.

Participating in this concert has renewed my interest in the annual “10 Grands” concert in Portland. I know people who perform in the concert, I know piano technicians who tune for it, and I tune for some of the performers, but I’ve never actually gone to one of the concerts. Preparing this concert gave me an appreciation of the work and coordination that goes into this kind of event.

I encourage you to attend a big piano concert like this sometime if you have the chance.

The “10 Grands” concert will be on March 26th at the Arlene Schnitzer concert hall this year. Tickets can be found here.

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