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Parker: Lipnicki Pianos fine tunes family tradition

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For more than 30 years, Irene Besse was a leader and innovator in the music industry. When she chose to retire and close her Irene Bessie Keyboards business in 2012 it created a huge void in this city.

Fortunately her daughter, Nicole Lipnicki, and her husband Michael came to the rescue and together have provided music lovers with a facility at 6033 Centre Street S.W. where Calgarians can purchase the finest handmade European pianos and also have them serviced and tuned.

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They began as a piano tuning business but customer interest took them into representing the top manufacturers. Michael is recognized as one of the world’s best piano tuners.

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His father and three uncles were in the piano business in Ontario. As a young man he regularly drove two of them with vision problems to tune pianos and helped the other in his used piano and repair store. Michael said he devoured every book he could find on the instrument and learned the basics of tuning.

His first paid piano job was the rebuilding of a small grand for the Waterloo Concert Hall that meant redesigning the piano and modernizing it with more dampers. The client put his name in the program and he has been full-time tuning ever since.

Some of his wonderful experiences are due to his association with jazz festivals in the Caribbean. He has worked as tuner for the St. Lucia Jazz & Arts Festival every year since it was launched in 1992 and is on call by Vladimir Ashkenazy to tune his four grand pianos on the island.

In 1994, Michael applied to work with Besse as a Steinway technician. She already had a file on him, including his work in tuning Anton Kuerti’s piano for his recordings of Schubert Sonatos. After a course at Steinway’s factory in New York, Lipnicki was hired by the company to tune for the Honens competition.

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The 2015 Honens laureate, Luc Buratto, chose to play a Fazioli from Michael Lipnicki Fine Pianos, a beautiful model now back at the store where it has pride of place.

Tuning is still a huge part of the company business and its contracts include Arts Commons, the University of Calgary and Mount Royal University locally, as well as other international clients like the St. Lucia School of Music and the 750-seat Queen’s Hall in Trinidad designed by the same company as the Jack Singer Concert Hall.

Service is also an important offering, conducting regular maintenance like tunings, voicing and regulating and from restoration to complete rebuilding.

The store’s collection of models show off beautiful pianos by Fazioli, Grotrain, Bechstein and Hoffman. A recent arrival from Poland brought to Calgary by a local woman whose relative had taught there on the Theodor Steinweg made in the late 1800s.

All of the models are hand-crafted uprights and grands — you will not find a digital in the store.

On Sunday, Sept. 27, Michael and Nicole are celebrating the 180th anniversary of the exquisite German Grotrian pianos. Highlights are musical performances by celebrities like Coleen Athparia, Ralph Bertsh and Derek Chiu and Brian Buchanan and the chance to learn about Grotrian’s rich history and take a virtual factory tour.

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News and notes

  • After a rigorous international search, St. Mary’s University has appointed Tara Hyland-Russell as vice-president academic and dean for a five-year term. Hyland-Russell has been a member of the faculty at St. Mary’s University since 1999, most recently holding the position of interim dean, Arts and Sciences. As director of humanities 101 — St. Mary’s program for marginalized learners — she is a leader in the exploration of how the lives of non-traditional adult learners can be transformed by studying the humanities at the university level. St. Mary’s is a Catholic post-secondary, student-focused liberal arts and sciences teaching and research institution with its campus on Bannister Road S.E.
  • Reena and Amit Vada, who opened the welcoming Mercatino in Bow tower at the end of 2013, are opening a second location the week of Sept. 28. Mercatino in Fifth Avenue Place will on the Plus-15 level of the tower at 420 2 St. S.W.

David Parker appears Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Read his columns online at calgaryherald.com/business. He can be reached at 403-830-4622 or by e-mail at info@davidparker.ca

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