Una Corda
C/o Ciaran Ryan
Derryloughaun West
Spiddal
Co. Galway
Ireland
Una Corda is actively working on three strands of a very ambitious programme, and with your support we will continue to improve the quality of Cuba’s pianos, and make a very definite contribution to cultural life on this most musical of islands.
Since before The Revolution, this workshop was at the heart of the piano trade in Cuba. American pianos were assembled here, the Russians trained blind Cubans how to tune pianos here, and for 50 years it has been responsible for maintaining the pianos of the many music schools around Havana City and Province. Sadly, it has fallen into a state of disrepair, so our first job is to make it a suitable premises for high-quality piano work.
To get an idea of its current state there’s a slideshow by Cork photographer David Creedon on YouTube.
A fully functioning piano workshop is a place of mystery and wonder to the uninitiated. Disembowelled instruments stand patiently while their innards are resuscitated, and new strings being teased up to the correct pitch provides a soundtrack for work that requires patience, concentration and an extraordinary mix of skills. Here, instruments will be re-strung, have their soundboards repaired, their bridges repinned, their flanges recentred, have new hammers and dampers fitted to their re-sprung actions, have their keys rebushed and re-covered, and leave with a new lease of life, ready again to serve the needs of the next Ruben Gonzales ,Frank Fernandez or Chucho Valdes.
The cost of these items builds up quickly, but the following short list will provide a sense of what’s involved:
Set of hammers €165
Set of tuning pins €70
Roll of wire (most pianos require at least 12 different gauges) €7.50
Set of damper felt €32
A roll of action leather €9.80
Set of upright tapes €3.50
All of these things are cut, cleaned, sanded, glued or filed to finish the job, so we’re sending out pots of glue, cutting blades, sandpaper, steel wool, and all the other ‘bits and pieces’ that ensure a workshop keeps running smoothly.
The piano trade is full of strange-looking tools and very specific spare parts.
A tuner’s tool case could easily include €700 worth of tools. The absolute essentials are:
Tuning lever,tuning fork and mutes €90
Regulation tools (minimum 5) €120
A few different pairs of pliers for specific tasks €200
Voicing tools €60
and a range of tools for cutting, bending, filing, heating, lubricting and easing the more than 12,000 parts that make up a piano!
‘Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach him how to fish and he’ll eat forever’
Everything we do up to this point will ultimately count for very little if we don’t ensure that a high-quality training programme is delivered. Una Corda has always had at it’s core an ethos of education, and we are working closely with our Cuban colleagues to ensure that we implement a system that will ensure the presence of generations of Cuban piano tuners and technicians well into the future.
Una Corda will bring young Cubans to Ireland for a intensive ‘hands-on’ work experience and training in the leading Irish piano workshops, working alongside the very best of Irish piano tuners and restorers. Such visits will last six months, and will be tailored to the specific needs of individual candidates. Una Corda will pay for all travel and accommodation as well as paying a basic subsistence grant for the time the trainees are in Ireland. Participating Irish workshops and tuners include
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