It could be argued that the most underrecognized person in jazz recording and performance is not the producer, the live sound engineer, or the recording engineer, but the piano tuner. There are no Grammys for tuners, but if the piano’s out of tune, we’re all going to notice.
One of the most surprising things we learned in talking with three different pianists who work as piano tuners or technicians is that there are really only two schools that offer training in the field: the North Bennet Street School in Boston, which has two different nine-month programs, and Florida State University in Tallahassee, which offers a Master of Arts degree. “Yes, there aren’t many,” says Jim Alfredson, a noted jazz pianist and organist
