My nephew has an upright piano in his home. The piano has a beautiful oak cabinet. It has a soundboard that has very narrow and very straight grain in the wood. It could use a bit of work. Some of the pins are not quite tight enough to hold the strings in tune for long periods of time. Some of the felt on the hammers is old and a bit hard. But if you sit at the piano and play it, you can tell that it is a lovely instrument and with the right care it might continue to make music for another century.

Upright pianos don’t have much monetary value these days. They are very heavy and hard to move. They require a lot of maintenance. There was a time when there were a lot of pianos in private homes, spinets, parlors, uprights and even a few smaller grand pianos. There was a time when most elementary, middle, and high schools had multiple pianos. Piano technicians could earn their living by going from home to home and school to school to tune the instruments. Children took lessons and learned to play them. I know because that piano in my nephew’s home is the piano on which I practiced when I took piano lessons more than six decades ago. The piano was in our home for all of my grown up years. These days, many homes and schools have replaced pianos with digital instruments that are easier to maintain, lighter to move, and offer a different feel in the keys. It is a bit like the difference between typing on a computer keyboard and typing on a manual typewriter.

The piano that now lives in my nephew’s home came to my growing up home before I was born. My mother played that piano nearly every day. My sisters also practiced their lessons on that piano. Our family gathered around that piano to sing Christmas carols. It made sense, when our mother moved from our home to a new place in Portland, Oregon to be closer to my sister’s home for the piano to be moved as well. It moved around in several homes after our mother gave up her first place in Portland. Eventually it ended up in my nephew’s home.

But those moves weren’t the beginning of that piano’s story. Before I was born it had already traveled a lot of miles and collected a lot of stories. In fact, the 800 mile trip from our Montana home to Portland Oregon wasn’t the piano’s longest single journey. After it was built, it was shipped to St. Louis, Missouri to a piano dealer. Meanwhile, in Fort Benton, Montana, my great, great grandmother was trying to settle into life on the frontier. Her husband was a court reporter who had been enticed to move his family to the end of the steamship line in Montand Territory so that official records of the courts could be established. His wife, Hattie, loved to play the piano and for a while the only piano in town was in the saloon. The saloon keeper allowed her to play her “church music” on the piano in the early mornings before customers arrived at the saloon. However, family lore reports that she was banned from the saloon by its owner when he found out she was a member of the WCTU and engaged in actively campaigning against alcohol consumption.

Part of the court reporter’s salary had to go to the extravagance of purchasing a piano in St. Louis, Missouri, and having it shipped on the steamship up the river to Fort Benton where it became the first piano in a private home in that town. Hattie played that piano and she gave lessons on that piano. Among her students were her five granddaughters of whom my mother was one.

My nephew’s piano is not the only piano with a rich story. I know well and have played at the keyboard of a Steinway grand piano that was purchased by a young doctor early in his career. That piano was once moved out of his living room by removing the front window so that the piano could be taken to a school auditorium for a concert by George Winston. He was so impressed with the story that he dedicated one of his albums “to friends in Miles City, Montana.” When the doctor retired the piano was moved to Billings where it was lifted by a crane to the deck of a top story apartment and moved in though the sliding doors to the living room. When the doctor was no longer able to live in the apartment, the piano was moved across the state to Missoula where it now is in the home of his son who is a piano technician and who knows how to care for it.

There are other pianos with stories. In the church we served in Rapid City is a piano that was once the instrument of the Rapid City Concert Association and later donated to the church. It underwent a complete restoration and refinishing while I served that church. Another piano in the church was purchased by a musician and a flaw in the soundboard was discovered. It went back to the manufacturer for a complete rebuild and had a new sound board installed. The work took more than a year. In the meantime, the owner fell in love with another concert grand piano and ended up temporarily owning two amazing instruments before we wee able to purchase the piano for the church through a long process of “horse trading.”

A piano that I have never seen, heard or touched that has an amazing story is a Yamaha concert grand piano. The beautiful 8’ instrument was purchased after a lot of fund-raising and careful planning and delivered to the Gaza branch of the Palestinian music school, the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music. It was the only concert grand piano in all of Gaza. When the troops of the IDF entered Gaza in response to the Hamas led terror attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023. Virtually all of the school’s musical instruments were destroyed including over 50 violins and scores and scores of other instruments. The destruction of the piano was begun, including cutting some of the strings and breaking some of the hammers, but somehow that destruction was interrupted and the piano has survived so far. It is still too dangerous for music teachers to return to the partially destroyed school, but pictures have emerged of the piano that show it is currently in a condition where it could be restored. I’m campaigning for that piano. It still is capable of teaching a new generation of students with the proper care. And with enough support form people around the world. There is another century of stories for that piano to collect.