The Piano Tuner

Founder of the famous piano company, Steinway & Sons, Henry E. Steinway (1797-1871) began his career in the kitchen of his house in the town of Seeson in Germany. In 1836 he built a grand piano that became known as the “kitchen piano”. Today it is on display in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.

If it’s good enough for Steinway, it’s good enough for Brian Lawson, whose kitchen has been given over to the reconstruction, restoration, and repair of pianos. In fact virtually the entire 7th Avenue house has been devoted to pianos since Brian moved in, in 1999. 

He built a second story to make room for life without pianos but even then, there is only one chair in front of his computer. This is not a house for socialising or relaxing. It is a workshop.
 
After he finished school in Essex in the UK in the 1970s Brian, who says he grew up on the Beatles and prefers rock to classical music, went on the dole. His father was a trained classical pianist who eventually became a piano teacher in the local area. He persuaded Brian to register for a three year course in Piano Tuning, Repairs, Construction and Design at the London College of Furniture.

After working in the UK for a few years, Brian emigrated to South Africa in 1983 on contract with Kahn's Pianos. He went on to work for local piano retailer and then for 'The Music Shop' before setting up on his own in the Bez Valley house, which was previously owned by a fridge mechanic who used the front room - now crammed with pianos - as a night school for fridge mechanics.

“It is a question of adeptness and patience as well as excitement and passion,” Brian says, demonstrating the intricate process of cutting and sticking identical strips of leather eighty-eight times for the eighty-eight keys of an average piano.

Mice cause the most damage so five well-fed cats play an integral role in the life of the workshop.

Piano design has been dictated by fashion over the years, Brian says, pointing to an art deco piano.  “A modern family in the 1930s and 1940s needed a small piano”.

Pianos today are even more streamlined and mostly imported from 12 or more Chinese manufacturers.

A piano's value hinges on the quality of the sound it makes rather than its antiquity, Brian stresses, comparing a piano made in the 1890’s to a more recent Broadwood.

Generally pianos are tuned once a year but pianos in recording studios are tuned every day and concert pianos after rehearsals and again an hour or so before  a performance.

One of about 15 piano tuners in Gauteng, Brian leaves the more stressful work to others unless called upon to fill in when they are away, and avoids pressurised work if he can. "Why should I make somebody else's bad planning my emergency?" he says.

 www.lawsonic.co.za

More about dogs

Speaking on a panel with other poets and short story writers at an event to celebrate the shortest day of the year, Chris van Wyk, who grew up in the historically very poor area of Riverlea, said if people in his community wanted a dog, they went out into the streets and got one. There are many streetwise dogs, or 'brakke' as they are known, in Bez Valley and surrounding suburbs. There are also more and more feral dogs moving around in packs, scavenging for scraps in piles of waste on street corners or outside local shops. 

Occasionally more refined dogs can be seen roaming the streets, such as the emaciated giant black poodle that wanders up and down Stewart Drive. 

My dogs are too insignificant in stature to be valued in my neighbourhood; an elderly Maltese, known as Miss Daisy or Fluffy, and a bad- tempered, overweight Dachshund, Ansel, who is only loved by his mother (me).

Bucks is my next door neighbour's dog.  There is no garden next door (it was covered over with concrete, the favoured option in many Bez Valley properties) so he gets his exercise by hurling himself down the concrete corridor alongside the house. Occasionally he is let out onto the pavement when my neighbour comes home from work.  My neighbour says he doesn’t have the time to take Bucks for a walk in the park and anyway, being constrained makes Bucks vicious, which is useful. But he loves Bucks in his own way. When he calls out: “Bucksie boy!” there is affection and admiration in his voice.  “His father is a bulldog,” he says with pride. I am different from my neighbour. We don't really share the same understanding of what is most important in life, but we are concerned for one another's welfare. There is compassion and respect between us.
 
Two fox terriers, Ninja and Cheeky are greeted with territorial aggression from Bucks, Ansel and Miss Daisy when they take a daily walk past the gate at dusk.

There is a growing trend of young men with well developed biceps and tattoos, swaggering with ostentatious bravado down the streets of the 'hood' holding leads (or tenuous looking rope) attached to straining, salivating, pit-bull terriers with names like Zeus.  Their impact is significant; shrieking men, women and children disappear in seconds.

The SPCA gets 15-20 reports of cruelty to animals every day. The worst cases are from Chinatown.  "Animals are not treated in a decent way by Chinese people,” the woman from the SPCA told me. “We try and educate them before removing the dogs but mostly they pretend not to understand what you are telling them.  They pretend not to understand English.  We use sign language to show dogs must have a bigger space, a kennel, showing them what to do…but they don’t understand.”

A dog called Police

The family that bought the house from Mr. and Mrs. Jeenah moved in almost secretly. There was no furniture delivery truck, no van loaded with household goods. The first signs that the house was occupied by my new neighbours were curtains drawn closed at the windows and a howling, mangy dog running up and down the concrete yard from early morning until nightfall.  I tried ringing the bell at the gate and calling out from the pavement but nobody ever responded, though once or twice I would see the curtain pulled slightly to one side by a woman wearing the brightly coloured patterned fabric that West African women wear.

At night men would arrive in three shiny, new cars and two or three women, one carrying a child on her hip, would appear briefly from inside the house to welcome them. Their heads were covered and their bodies shrouded in the ankle length garments that Muslim women wear.

The metal, roll up gate on the side of the house would be lifted, the cars would drive in, and the gate would close behind them. 

Within weeks of moving in, truckloads of building supplies were delivered and construction work began in the back yard of the house. Then a huge satellite dish was installed on the roof. From my glimpses into life beyond the metal gate, I surmised that quite a number of people were living on the property, but the house was always cloaked in silence, like a ghost town.

At night when the men returned, the dog was locked out to roam the streets. At sunrise he would wait loyally at the gate to begin another miserable day of running up and down on the other side of the fence.  

I noticed the dog had an infection around his eyes, which were inflamed and bleeding. Increasingly distressed, I finally confronted one of the men. His name was Moosa.  He agreed to take the dog to the vet. When there was no sign of this, I reported my neighbours to the SPCA.

These days the SPCA’s strategy is to rehabilitate the owners of pets rather than remove the animals. In this case, my neighbours were instructed to take the animal to the vet for inoculation and treatment. When I complained that the dog was still running up and down a small stretch of concrete, still howling, and still being locked out at night, the man I spoke to from the SPCA said he could not intervene because the owner of the dog had complied.

Again I confronted my neighbour. I asked him if he would like to find another home for the dog, whose name, I established, was ‘Police’.  He said, “You can take the dog but first you must give me another dog. And I want a big dog, not small dogs like yours…”

I befriended the dog. I bought a box of biscuits for large dogs and fed him through the fence. After a while, he allowed me to stroke his mangy head, then he began to wag his tail when I came out my front door, and to lick my hand when I approached him.  A couple of times in the days and weeks of my relationship with Police, I saw the curtain stir at the window and realised I was being watched. Once, one of the men came out of the metal gate when I was feeding the dog, and demanded to know what I was doing.

I spoke to the local vet about the situation. “It’s tricky”, he said. 

Early one morning, I saw Police waiting outside the gate on the pavement as usual, then I heard the men drive off.

Later in the day I noticed that the dog was not there.  He was not there the next day either.  Finally on the third day, I confronted Moosa.  “Where’s Police?” I asked.  “He ran away,” he responded with a  sullen expression, turning away. We have not spoken since.

There is a new dog, also an alsation, a puppy, kept behind the metal gate. I catch a glimpse when the men leave or arrive.