88 keys: longtime piano tuner helps people make music

Tyrrell Pearson rarely meets a piano he can't fix.

"They are built to withstand about 18 tonnes of tension and so they are probably far more rugged than most people would realize," he says.

Pearson tuned a piano for his first paying customer 52 years ago and has been in the business ever since.

His piano-tuning and reconditioning business has taken him around the world. He has toured factories in Belarus and Russia, travelled across Canada and into the United States and has customers in the Bahamas and Cuba.

Tyrrell and his wife, Sandra, make house calls around the Maritimes, and Janet Clarke is one of their regulars.

Tuner's world like a family

As soon as the Sussex couple arrive at Clarke's home in Fredericton, Tyrrell pulls out his tuning fork and gets to work.

Sandra, a former nurse, watches and waits, ready to help out when needed.

Clarke has known Tyrrell for 25 years, and she and Tyrrell's other regular customers are like family.

Clarke remembers when she first watched him tune one of her grand pianos. The instrument rebuilt by someone else had never sounded right.

"So he came in and he tunes by ear, so it's a true tuning. He started tuning and I just stood there and Tyrrell says, 'What are you doing?' And I said, 'I'm listening to my piano' and when he'd finished ... it was the most beautiful sound. But that was because he tunes from the A with a tuning fork and everything else is done by ear."

Emotional finish

When a piano is finally fixed or tuned, there can be a lot of emotion in the room and Sandra compares it to her former profession.

"I would have to say it's not unlike nursing to tell you the truth," she says. " I still take the orders. I still pass the instruments and, I don't know, I guess at the end of the day when you leave ... uh, it's like leaving a patient, they're feeling a lot better and that's the way we feel about the piano."

Tyrrell Pearson's forte is reconditioning older pianos, even those deemed unfixable. He once worked on a piano from a home swamped during a Perth-Andover flood. The water had come right up over the keyboard.

Better than new

"It was full of river silt," Pearson says. "It was a big job but we really didn't have to replace any parts. We had to do a lot of gluing and a lot of cleaning and regulating.

"And actually the end result was that I'm quite sure the piano sounded and played better than it did when it was new."

It's no accident Pearson ended up in the piano business. His mother was a piano teacher and his father was a technician. The family also built pianos at a factory in Sussex.

He has seen the industry change dramatically, especially in the last 10 to 12 years.

Shrinking market

More pianos are being thrown away or given away.

"Sometimes it's because they have no room and nobody in the family to take them over," Pearson says. "Other times, unfortunately, it's because somebody has told them that it can't or wasn't worth fixing up and so they throw it away."

Piano manufacturing has also changed, and most major piano brands are being made in Asia.

"Physically, the production of pianos over 150 years has moved from Europe to North America to Japan, Korea and the rest of Asia," he says.

Prefers the house-call business

Even Pearson is withdrawing from the retail side.

 "I do sell pianos but we are getting out of the retail because the volume doesn't justify the effort and, secondly, it's my goal to fix up pianos for people in their homes rather than sell the new ones."

On this visit, Sandra Pearson starts handing him tools as he finishes the tuning.

When Clarke's grand piano is finally in tune, he gives it the ultimate test: he sits down to play Moon River. His wife Sandra stands by his side.

"Many years ago, there was an episode of M*A*S*H and there was a person that was injured," Pearson recalled.  "And he'd lost the use of his right hand and he was very despondent because he was a pianist and, anyway, they had gotten some music written for the left hand and Col. Winchester said, I can play the piano, but you can make music.

"And when I heard that I thought, that's what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to give people a piano that they can make music on."

Music for town square

Pearson said it's moments like this that keep him going.

One of his recent successes was the piano he got ready for the main square in Sussex. An artist painted the piano and Pearson prepared it to withstand the elements, The piano was available to the public, both to play and to listen to, for the summer and into the fall.

Pearson has seen demand for his services decline, but he knows many old pianos remain in circulation and there are enough people who treasure their sound to keep him busy.

"There will always be a market for pianos," he says. "It's getting smaller but there's always going to be a market.… There's no substitute for sitting down and playing an instrument that's made of leather and steel and wood and felt and a personality of its own."