NY Transfer Welcomes Send a Piana to Havana

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NY Transfer welcomes Send a Piana to Havana website

Ben Treuhaft's "Send a Piana to Havana" website has just moved
to NY Transfer. Send a Piana to Havana has sent more than 160
pianos to Cuba, as well as replacement parts, and helps to repair
and tune pianos for the island.

Come take a look at this great project, at:
http://www.sendapiana.com 


Send a Piana to Havana's Mission

In 1995, Benjamin Treuhaft, a piano tuner, began Send a Piana To
Havana.  He wanted to bring attention to an aspect of the embargo
that we don't consider: the countless young pianists, many of them
incredibly well-trained, often by Russian masters, playing on
pathetic antique American pianos with strings long since rusted
through, or bad Russian pianos half-eaten by termites. As few new
pianos are imported to Cuba, and replacement parts are unavailable,
Cuba's musical community suffers.  In the States, good used pianos
are plentiful and cheap. Treuhaft developed the plan to round up some
of these and send them over.

To 2001, Send A Piana To Havana has sent 160 used upright and grand
pianos and tons of related parts and supplies. The instruments are
distributed to the wonderful broken-down music schools that dot the
island. Occasionally they're awarded to outstanding individual
students.  The project has a workshop in a room at the Escuela
Nacional de Arte in the beautiful ex-country club arts and music
complex in the western outskirts of Havana. Each year, our
International Tuners' Brigade descends upon this site for about 10
days. The Brigade consists primarily of technicians trained in piano
tuning, repair, and rebuilding, but also includes volunteers of all
kinds. We help fix up the donated pianos and prepare them for
distribution.

Send A Piana To Havana wants to establish a permanent presence on the
island: a year-round workshop/school where experts train Cubans in
modern rebuilding techniques. While the focus of the project is to
send badly needed pianos to Cuba, a workshop and school will ensure
that the instruments will, last, that existing salvageable pianos
will be saved, and that young Cubans will become tuners. In the fall
of 2001 our workshop school was inaugurated when twelve students from
cities around Cuba began to learn piano and woodwind repair there.

 
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nytrad-07.03.02-08:03:52-10548