Alex Moore

I am a Registered Piano Technician in the Piano Technician’s Guild serving the Greater Philadelphia area. I have also earned Certificates in both Basic and Advanced Piano Technology from the North Bennet Street School. NBSS is one of the last places in the country a piano technician can go to receive systematic, hands-on training from some of the leading experts in the field. The program includes two nine-month courses. In the first course we focused on tuning, repair, and regulation. During the second, a classmate and I fully restored a Steinway B from 1886.

Following my graduation from NBSS in 2014, I worked at the Tanglewood Music Festival, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. There I was responsible for maintaining Steinway and Boston grands for the next generation of great classical musicians, as well as for use in master classes and chamber music coachings by some of the world’s top musicians, including Ignat Solzhenitsyn, Peter Serkin, and Yo-Yo Ma.

Shortly after Tanglewood, I moved to Philadelphia to become part of its vibrant music scene. Highlights include working regularly with pianist Marja Kaisla, tuning for Alicia Keys, and preparing a Bosendorfer Imperial for Jan Lisiecki’s performance of Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra. My work can be heard on Marja Kaisla’s “Embracing Beauty,” a recent album featuring some of the best known works for solo piano. Here is a sample:

“Embracing Beauty” is available for purchase on http://marjakaisla.org/recording.html and also on iTunes.

I currently hold a full-time position at Cunningham Piano Company. While I make service calls in homes and venues, the majority of my time is spent in Cunningham’s restoration shop where I focus on action rebuilding, damper installation, regulation, tuning, and voicing on a variety of pianos.

My goal is to listen carefully to the customer and their piano. Knowing what the customer is looking for and properly acquainting myself with their piano provides me with the information I need to best service their instrument and make it a vehicle of their expression.

Please feel free to contact me for service or with any questions you have. You can call or text me at (314) 369-6343 or email me at aemoor05@gmail.com

The Advanced Piano Technology at the North Bennet Street School is a nine-month program devoted to comprehensive piano care. The first part of every week day is a discussion forum where we study a variety of topics including advanced tuning and regulation practices, resolution of service problems that occur in the field, assessments/appraisals, estimates, voicing, and business practice to name a few. The latter half of the day is allocated to piano rebuilding. We work in groups of two. Each group is assigned a grand piano to restore over the course of the program. In my case, Brian Turano, my classmate, and I restored a Steinway B from 1886. We took extensive measurements, studied the design of the instrument, and executed an accurate rebuild. The following is a sample of the process.

Teardown

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