A"Grand" Piano

A six-foot eleven-inched, Model B ‘Music Room Grand’ Steinway piano has found a new home in the Academy’s Forrestal-Bowld Music Center. Made entirely of hard rock maple, the ebony work of art was a generous donation from the Sophonpanich family and was showcased at the piano recital on September 24.The new piano is the first brand new, concert quality instrument to arrive at the music center since when interim Head of Music Department Peter Schultz started teaching at the Academy in 1989.Schultz praised not only the generosity of the Sophonpanich family to give this grand piano, but also its usefulness for the music program. “It’s a wonderfully useful thing for us. There is something really special about us getting a new concert quality instrument; not only is the piano a quality instrument, but it’s also a beautiful work of art,” he said.The piano, which can weigh more than a thousand pounds, is an anomaly in the music world, where most instruments are relatively compact and transportable from location to location. Thus, the piano player must rely on whatever instrument a location has.“Pianists are really at the mercy of whatever instrument they have available to them at a given time during a concert,” Schultz said. “So the better instrument that one plays on, the better the music is going to sound, no matter who is playing. Having a beautiful, absolutely top-of-the-line piano to play on is going to be huge for all the pianists on campus.”Sophonpanich believes that the generous environment of Exeter sparked his family to donate the piano. "The generosity of the school prompted us to give back. My parents believe that music can enrich life,” he said.Ho Joon Kim, a prep who plays the piano, believes that the luxurious caliber of the new piano will be of great benefit to the Academy’s many student pianists. “For concerts, people will have more opportunities to use the piano, which is a much better instrument than the old one. Overall, this will be an advantage to Exeter’s pianists.”Due to the high quality of the new grand piano, however, the instrument is locked under normal circumstances. According to Schultz, the decision to keep it locked was a result of the hard ware that pianos at schools receive due to the volume of students playing them.“As a way to preserve this instrument’s quality as a concert piano, we’re not allowing it to be used for just general practicing,” Schultz said. “This is the only piano of such quality that we have here. It is actually very common for music schools to reserve a piano as a concert instrument and that is what the new piano is going to be used for at Exeter: a concert instrument.”Kim, however, feels that the piano’s full potential cannot be realized until the piano has been played more. “It sounds a little bit muffled right now because it’s locked most of the time and not much available for use. The piano should be unlocked as soon as possible, because if people don’t play on it, it wil never be broken in to produce the sounds it’s capable of.”