Piano Stories – Episode One: The 1917 Aeolian There’s an interesting trait that all piano technicians who rebuild pianos share. For reasons no one has ever been able to quite explain we all tend to accumulate pianos. It’s almost like they were dust bunnies in the way they somehow manage to pile up. Most of these pianos are well past any form of the word functional. In other words, most of them are junk. A piano rebuilding technician always knows when one of his rebuilding colleagues is in the process of moving their shop, because sooner or later a phone call is made asking if you would like a free piano or two. About four years ago, I received one of those phone calls from a friend and fellow rebuilder by the name of Roy. He asked me if I would like the “Aeolian”. I was familiar with the Aeolian he spoke of; it was a 1917 Baby Grand that was in horrible condition. The piano started life as a player piano, but over the decades since it was built it had long since lost its player unit, along with all of its finish ( and much of the wood beneath it ). Its strings were rusty, its hammers were shot; in fact, every moving part on it was shot. The keytops ,on the other hand, were in perfect conditon; I’ll never figure out how they survived. ” Why would you want this train wreck of a piano ?” you might ask. Well, the story of the Aeolian Piano Company is one of the great rags-to-riches-to-rags stories in American piano lore. In 1913, the Aeolian Company introduced its Duo-Art …

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