How A Piano Tuner Is A Barometer For Boston's Battered Music Scene - WBUR

Posted: 31 Mar 2021 02:57 AM PDT

From performers to painters, artists of all genres have endured an economic year like no other. This month we've been asking them about their experiences for our series "The Creative Grind."

Today we meet someone who's something of a barometer for the battered live music industry in Boston. His name is Fred Mudge and he's been a piano technician, fulltime, for about three decades.

"Three things throw a piano out of tune," he explained. "Playing it. Temperature. And humidity."

On the day we spoke Mudge was meticulously tweaking strings with his tuning hammer at Wellspring Sound Studio in Acton. A long strip of soft red felt muted the other tightly wound wires inside a black Yamaha grand until it was their turn for Mudge's adjustments.

"As you can see it's a circle of refinement," he explained while slowly moving from the low keys on the board to the high. "You get it close and you can always make it better."

Fred Mudge uses a tuning hammer to tune a Yamaha C7 piano. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

Mudge has prepared instruments for concerts with big name musicians including Paul Simon, Aretha Franklin, Peter Gabriel, James Taylor, Carole King and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Also for piano legends like Billy Joel, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Emanuel Ax and Dave Brubeck.

Over the years Mudge toted his tool kit to venues big, medium and small including TD Garden, Fenway Park, the House of Blues and the Berklee Performance Center. Since the early '90s he tuned for the late Chick Corea who praised Mudge during a show at Scullers Jazz Club.

"I got a real nice piano, and a real good piano tuner, so we're good this week," Corea told the audience. "You know the piano technician is like 80% of the piano. You can have a great piano not prepared well and it's a dog."

Mudge would hang back, at the ready, throughout Corea's performances – just in case.

"The guitarist gets to tune in between songs. So do the violin and the cello. They're tuning in between pieces of music that they play," he said. "They have four strings or six strings – I have 230. And if you get somebody that's really hitting hard it's going to throw the piano considerably out of tune."

But Mudge hasn't set foot inside a music venue in more than a year. His only performance tuning job was outdoors in October for a Wynton Marsalis show at the Yarmouth Drive-In.

Fred Mudge has tuned pianos everywhere from Fenway Park to local jazz clubs. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

At the studio Mudge worked to get the piano ready for Boston jazz pianist Yoko Miwa. She was on her way to record a video performance. Mudge hadn't tuned the gleaming Yamaha since December because there haven't been many sessions on Wellspring's books. Before the pandemic he made the trip from Hyde Park once or twice a week. It would've been one of many stops in a typical work day for Mudge that often began at 6 a.m.

He could start at a high school – maybe in Wellesley or Brookline – then Mudge might head over to a private client, hit a recording studio, a church, maybe a hotel, "and then I'd usually end my day at one of the jazz clubs or both the jazz clubs," he said. "And do anywhere between five and seven pianos a day, six to seven days a week."

Mudge also tuned pianos on cruise ships in Boston and New York. During the busy season he said he could work on about three dozen a month. There were also colleges and assisted living homes. He even went through security to tune at the women's prison in Framingham.

"Anywhere and everywhere they've got a piano with strings that needs to be tuned, I've made it a policy not to say no," Mudge said, "whether it's a junk box or a nine-foot concert grand – it all pays the bills."

Or at least it did before 2020.

A snapshot of Fred Mudge's business. (Arielle Gray/WBUR)

"The first two months of the pandemic, when everything shut down, I had no tuning work – zero, none," Mudge recalled. "I laid everybody off, put my whole staff on unemployment. At the time I was even thinking I'd get a part time job at a supermarket or something just to be able to support my family."

Mudge said his company Fred's Piano Service lost about $40,000 over the past year because of the grounded cruise ships, and at least $23,000 without work from the dormant Jazz clubs. There's no more income from schools and religious institutions along with performance venues. Mudge received PPP loans – a little less than a month's revenue was forgiven, he said – and he was able to bring back four of his eight employees. Now the bulk of their business comes from tuning for private clients – many piano teachers working remotely from home – combined with a new revenue stream: selling pianos Mudge is restoring at his shop in Hyde Park.

Fred Mudge's shared piano workshop in Hyde Park. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

The piano tuner worries about the future of the live music industry with arenas, clubs and restaurants being closed. Many have shut down for good. Last summer he said some hotels with piano bars were getting rid of their instruments. While Mudge has been able to survive, his heart goes out to his colleagues whose careers have been upended.

"The engineers, the back line technicians, the roadies," Mudge said, "the lighting technicians, the the stage managers, the production managers – they're completely out of work."

When pianist Yoko Miwa arrived at Wellspring wearing a sparkling black mask she mourned the loss of her weekly residency at the now permanently closed Les Zygomates in Boston.

Pianist Yoko Miwa warms up before a recording session after Fred Mudge has tuned the piano at the Wellspring Studio. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

"Beautiful French restaurant, we played there for like 15 years," she said. "Financially, we are hurt. Especially (because) we were performing every weekend and we had some big shows."

Miwa is grateful for her teaching job at Berklee College of Music and also for the time she had during the pandemic to compose original songs for her new CD. The pianist hopes her other residency at Monkfish in Cambridge will start up again soon.

The musician was eager to play the recording studio's Yamaha grand prepared by a seasoned expert like Mudge.

"We need him so much," she said, then shared how she attempted to tune her home piano during the pandemic. "Of course, it's not easy," Miwa recalled, then admitted, "It was very bad."

Fred Mudge at his workshop in Hyde Park. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

"We usually laugh when someone says they tried to tune their own piano," Mudge said with a smile. He misses seeing musicians like Miwa on a regular basis.

"The best part of my job is when I finish tuning for a pianist like Yoko, and they sit down and try it out," he said, "and they are inspired."

When Miwa tested the freshly adjusted Yamaha her nimble fingers flew across the shiny keys and she exclaimed, "I love it, I love it! Fred did an amazing job."

Mudge looks forward to the music scene coming back to life now that venues are allowed to reopen at reduced capacity. Things are looking up for summer, but there's still plenty of uncertainty.

"I was driving by the Boston Garden and there was an advertisement for Justin Bieber in July – which definitely gives us hope," he said, "But you can't do a big production of the Rolling Stones with a whole bunch of 18-wheelers and crew to 25 percent of an audience."

One thing Mudge does know for sure is that there are a lot out-of-tune pianos around Boston that will need some serious love.

"There are. And I'm looking forward to the time when we can come back and go full force at this," he said, adding, "I'm a little worried that if everybody calls at once we could be inundated."

But the tuner added that would be the right problem to have.

Classical music: Sunday at Central to present free livestreamed concert, 'An Afternoon of Schubert' - The Columbus Dispatch

Posted: 25 Mar 2021 03:26 AM PDT

Peter Tonguette | Special to The Columbus Dispatch

Violinist David Niwa compares performing chamber music to being part of a team sport: Musicians and athletes are each so focused on executing the game plan that they aren't always conscious of the crowd.

"You're so much in the moment and you're playing your game and you're with your teammates that you're not even aware," said Niwa, the assistant concertmaster of the Columbus Symphony and the artistic director of the Sunday at Central recital series.

In either case, though, the crowd becomes a factor only at big moments — say, when the musicians complete an especially stirring movement or the quarterback throws a game-winning touchdown pass.

"Something great happens and everybody goes bananas," Niwa said.

During the past year, Niwa and other musicians featured in Sunday at Central concerts have had to acclimate themselves to playing without audience feedback after those big moments: In September, the recital series began presenting livestreamed chamber-music concerts at its usual venues, the Ohio History Connection and Columbus Performing Arts Center, but none has allowed in-person audiences because of the pandemic.

The latest such concert — "An Afternoon of Schubert," featuring songs and a piano quintet by Austrian composer Franz Schubert — will be livestreamed from the Ohio History Connection at 3 p.m. Sunday. There is no charge to view the program.

Given the nature of chamber music, though, it hasn't been too big of an adjustment.

"When the actual music is happening, at least I haven't really been aware that there's no audience," said Niwa, who will be featured with his wife, pianist Mariko Kaneda, in performances of five "lieder," or songs, by Schubert.

The concert will also include Schubert's "Trout Quintet," which will be performed by Kaneda along with four musicians with the Columbus Symphony: violinist Alicia Hui, violist Kenichiro Matsuda, cellist Pei-An Chao and bassist Rudy Albach. Like the songs, the quintet promises to get viewers in the mood for the changing season.

But back to the lack of audience feedback.

"The biggest thing is when you've poured your heart out for 55 minutes, and it's over, and it's like there's nothing," Niwa said.

Added Kaneda: "It's a little bit strange once you finish and you have no applause — that's maybe the odd spot."

Not that the musicians are complaining: Sunday at Central is among a handful of central Ohio performing-arts groups to have presented a full season of performances that, except for the absence of in-person attendees, approximates its usual programming.

"It still feels like a performance in a hall," Niwa said of the live-streamed concerts, which were made possible by donations as well as funds from the CARES Act administered by the Ohio Arts Council.

On Sunday, the program will open with Niwa and Kaneda playing violin and piano arrangements of Schubert's songs, which, of course, originally featured text intended to be sung.

"In an obnoxious way, all melodic instruments are trying to imitate the human voice," Niwa said. "I say 'obnoxious' because I usually hate it when any melodic player says, 'Oh, you have to try to imitate the voice.' Well, you can't — but I'm going to do my best."

The instrumentalists won't have to carry the entire load, though: Prior to each song, English translations of the accompanying poem will be read by Sebastian Knowles, an emeritus professor in the Department of English at Ohio State University.

"That's the whole point of lieder," Kaneda said of the poems. "It's not just, 'Oh, what a beautiful melody.' It's the words, the meaning behind the music, that's so much more important."

Knowles will also offer historical commentary about the texts.

"He's a very good speaker," Niwa said. "I won't feel so guilty for stealing the singer's repertoire."

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The Sunday at Central recital series will present the free livestreamed concert "An Afternoon of Schubert" at 3 p.m. Sunday at facebook.com/sundayatcentral.

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