Scholarship created to address piano tuner shortage
All around Australia there's a shortage of piano tuner and as more retire there's no one to replace them. But one symphony orchestra is adopting a novel approach to attract new people to an old vocation.
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00:00 It's practice time in Jodie Hild's Hobart studio.
00:07 But keeping budding concert pianists sounding great requires the right tradesperson.
00:14 It's a little bit comparable with Formula One racing that we need top line mechanics who can work in that specialised area,
00:23 as well as those sort of mechanics who can do everyday cars very well.
00:29 We're at the situation, certainly in southern Tasmania, where there's a lack in both areas.
00:35 There's just one person in southern Tasmania with the specialised skills to maintain concert pianos, and he's planning retirement.
00:44 It would be tragic for some of these instruments not to be maintained, to deteriorate.
00:50 Ms Hild shared her concerns with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, and together they've come up with a solution.
00:56 The TSO is offering a new scholarship to train two piano tuners to work in Tasmania.
01:02 Over the last 30 years, all of the courses where you would go to learn how to tune pianos, voice and regulate pianos, have gradually wound down.
01:11 The scholarship recipients will have to train in Sydney.
01:15 It's estimated southern Tasmania needs at least six piano tuners. It currently has only two or three.
01:22 What we really need is that pipeline of people coming through into the profession that can look after instruments that have often been in families for generations,
01:31 all the instruments of schools, our university, and then of course the great concert instruments of Tasmania like the ones here at the TSO.
01:38 It seemed to attract a lot of very, very interesting artists and actors and people to live here.
01:46 We haven't been able to get a new piano tuner.
01:50 Hoping this pitch resonates with a new generation.
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