Employee Q&A: Piano Technician Cassie Van Gelder

Employee Q&A: Piano Technician Cassie Van Gelder

By Alexis BlueUniversity Communications
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Cassie Van Gelder plays keyboard in a local band when she's not working on pianos in the UA School of Music.
Cassie Van Gelder plays keyboard in a local band when she's not working on pianos in the UA School of Music.

Name
Cassie Van Gelder

Position
Head Piano Technician, School of Music

Number of years at the UA
2

Favorite thing about working at the UA
"The atmosphere here is just so laid back. ... It's like we're all in this together, and people are just real and thankful."


At 7 in the morning, The University of Arizona School of Music's Holsclaw and Crowder performance halls are usually quiet and deserted – that is, until Cassie Van Gelder arrives with tuning hammer and tuning fork in hand.  

As the School of Music's sole piano technician, Van Gelder is charged with tuning and maintaining the school's approximately 100 pianos, from 9-foot concert instruments to the heavily used practice room pianos. She arrives on campus at 7 a.m. each day to begin her work before the musicians get there.

Van Gelder recently met with Lo Que Pasa in her office, in the back corner of the School of Music's opera scene shop, to discuss her work "under the hood" of the University's pianos.

What do you do as a piano technician?
A lot of piano tuning, that's No. 1. But hopefully soon we'll get into more action rebuilding – replacing parts and things.

So you do piano repairs as well?
Yeah, I'm a technician as well. So there's the tuning side, but then the fixing side is sort of a whole other thing. Last summer I started off in the basement with all the practice room pianos because they get just beat up 24 hours a day, and so I did some action work on those. I worked on the action (the piano's internal mechanical system), which pulls out of the grand piano. You can put it on a bench and work on it, so I did a lot of that. ... And then this summer I worked on one of our concert 9-foot instruments and another practice room piano.

How many pianos does the School of Music have?
About 100.

How often do they have to be tuned?
It's kind of a hierarchy. The performance instruments are daily, (or) every other day, but that's a touch-up. And then from there it's classrooms, and I try to hit the main ones weekly, maybe. Then teaching studios – once a semester is doing pretty good. And then practice rooms – about once a semester too. Then I respond to calls for broken strings and stuff like that.

How long does it take to tune a piano?
I try to bust it out in about an hour. You kind of have to be quick, especially in the classrooms because they're used just all day solid. ... I try to do no more than three or four (pianos) a day because by the end of the week, that's some pretty serious strain on your shoulder. There's a common thing with college techs, that they have a lot of shoulder problems, so I'm trying to avoid that.

Piano players can't do the tuning themselves?
Right, nope. I did my undergrad in Iowa (at the University of Northern Iowa) with piano. I was a piano major/vocal major and didn't want to go into education or performance really, and I really kind of liked the technical aspect of it and realized that pianists know nothing about their instruments, typically. It's really weird. ... You know, (the mechanical side of a piano) it's a whole other language, so I thought, "All right, this is cool. I want to go into this, to try and learn both sides of it and sort of bridge the gap." So I went to piano tech school in Canada. I went to UWO, the University of Western Ontario; they have a piano tech program.

What do you like best about your job?
There are a lot of good things. It's funny, one thing that I actually like the best I also dislike the most because it's my piano player side/technician side. There are a lot of prepared piano pieces (in which musicians perform actions inside of the piano, like plucking strings, to alter its sound) that are being done right now by the students. And I really like that music a lot because it's really interesting; you're working inside the piano – you're plucking strings or you're putting paperclips in there that vibrate and make weird noises – so it's really interesting music and I personally love it. But as a technician, it's a huge, huge pain and you can actually really damage the piano.

What's the hardest part of your job?
There are too many pianos for one person. So I don't like feeling like I'm doing piano triage, but a lot of times I am. I don't get to do enough hands-on (work) with one piano at a time. ... So I'm always fighting to try to get a second position here, but obviously now's not exactly the time.

Do you still play piano?
I do. Actually I'm in a band, and that's what occupies a lot of my time. I play the piano and sing in the band and write songs and stuff. I don't get to play the actual piano as much as I'd like. I don't even have a piano at home; I have a keyboard. So I do that, and I sneak in some playing here and there after I tune.

What's the name of your band?
We're called Seashell Radio and we just got back from going on tour, actually. And we play around town a lot. It's kind of indie rock/pop. We have a cello player and an acoustic guitar and keys (keyboard) and drums, so it's really fun. It's kind of the perfect creative outlet, so I'm not always (working) behind the piano; I'm also playing.

Do you know someone who has an interesting job at the UA? Send his or her name and contact information to lqp@email.arizona.edu for consideration for a future Employee Q&A.

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