Brasted

Brasted piano awaiting install.

Here is the story of one piano which has recently dropped into the flow here, tumbled over some rocks, floated under a bridge or two and now circles gracefully in an eddy; the Brasted. 

Once a month since January we have been driving to Leeds in a van with a crew of Pianodromedrons to make preparations for the coming Piano Festival in September. Melvin Besbrode of Besbrode Pianos has been a great help to us, hosting us on the sixth and top floor of the historic brick and cast iron mill which houses his piano ‘emporium’ - there is no other word for it, his collection of painted, sculpted, see-through, dropped-from-a-plane-into-the-trenches-in-world-war-two pianos must surely be unique in the world. 

Here, assisted by volunteers from various local planting societies, we have been pulling apart defunct pianos to make planter boxes for the Piano Trail this autumn. Melvin is a congenial host and he has more than enough pianos to spare. He calls me in advance and asks how many uprights and grands we want his movers to bring up from the vaults for us this time? Between pulling pins and bashing boards we all have lunch on the roof with panoramic views of the city and surrounding national railway viaducts. 

When the time comes to return to Edinburgh Melvin opens his container of ‘maybe playable pianos’ and we are allowed to try them all and select a couple to bring back home for adoption. This is how we came across the Brasted. A gift. A lovely old upright - not good enough for Melvin to sell but a great potential fixer upper for us. 

Joey Sanderson A.K.A ‘The Piano Doctor’.

As word of our project spreads further afield one of the most interesting and exciting enquiries we have had is from a wonderful pair of ladies, Rhonda and Gladys in Australia and Hong Kong respectively. Rhonda is an advocate for different gauges of piano keyboard - more specifically for narrower gauges than the, since 100 years or so, ‘standard’ gauge, which may be more suited to smaller hands - women in particular, who are currently underrepresented in relation to men at international soloist level by a ratio of 4 to 1. Rhonda, a director at the DS standard foundation, believes that narrower keyboards on pianos may remove one important structural barrier to aspiring players with smaller hands. Gladys is a philanthropist and together they contacted Pianodrome out of the blue from the other side of the world to ask if there might be a possibility to collaborate. 

To cut a long story - involving various wrangles with FedEx, customs, transnational piano construction protocols and Brexit - short, Rhonda and Gladys commissioned a maker in the USA to fabricate and ship a narrow keyboard to our workshop in Granton where over the last couple of weeks our top technicians Tom and Joey have inserted it into Melvin’s Brasted from Leeds. It has been regulated and tuned and now awaits installation as one of the three embedded playable pianos in the Old Royal Pianodrome. 

With its makeover complete, in a funny circular fashion, Brasted is set to return with us to Leeds as part of the Pianodrome in a few months time where hopefully lots of people will get to enjoy its even touch, full and characteristic tone and easy-to-reach keys. 

Thanks to Melvin for the piano and thanks to Rhonda and Gladys for the keys.