Piano Doctor Restores Harmony

Brian P. Alexander has not performed for an audience since he played guitar as a child. But Thursday night he took the stage with world-renowned musicians Jeffrey Kahane and Yo-Yo Ma.

His instrument?

A screwdriver.

At a sold-out performance at UCLA’s Royce Hall, in the midst of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, the 9-foot ebony Hamburg Steinway concert grand piano had a breakdown.

Kahane, music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the evening’s pianist, calmly stopped playing, announced that even the most expensive cars break down, and summoned Alexander, 45, from the wings.

While the musicians--including cellist Ma--entertained the giggling audience, Alexander went to work. He slid the keyboard from its wooden frame as the hall’s 1,800 onlookers oohed and aahed.

The whippen, a tiny platform that holds the key-striking levers, was broken--specifically the repetition jack, which allows notes to repeat, he said.

In less than 10 minutes, Alexander fixed the instrument and the show went on.

“It was a very unusual thing to happen. In fact I’ve never seen [a jack] break” onstage, he said.

A partner in Pro Piano, an international firm that rents high-end pianos for performance, Alexander said Kahane handled the situation well, engaging the audience while the piano was repaired.

“In a pressure situation like that, it is very professional not to make a big deal out of it,” Alexander said of Kahane’s reaction.

But for Alexander, whose family has been in the business for three generations, not every situation is quite so tame.

Touring the world with top concert musicians, he has seen pianos topple over, lose legs or have their innards flooded with a spilled glass of water.

In some situations there is nothing to do but replace the entire instrument. Most concert halls have many pianos available, Alexander said, and although the replacement may not be the artist’s instrument of choice, such as the Steinway the company flew in from New York for Kahane, at least it will be functional.

The main thing is for the show to continue, particularly for audience members who may have paid hundreds of dollars to attend benefits like Thursday’s concert. Alexander has used phone books and chairs to prop up pianos, and once he tipped a piano over to dislodge a broken strand of pearls.

But in Alexander’s experience it has sometimes been the musicians who were in need of repair. Once a pianist was so agitated with the position of the instrument that she jumped up in the middle of the concert and tried to move it herself. It had been locked down. “Three stout men couldn’t have moved it,” Alexander said.

“When something like that happens, it can be really rattling [to performers], and some people handle it better than others,” he said.

“The pressure, honestly, is not on someone like me. The pressure is on the musicians.”

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