My friend Dan took some pictures of me at work on a piano last weekend. Dan is a talented guy and he takes some stunning photographs. He recently moved to the Kootenays from Montreal and came to visit Naramata for the weekend. Check out more of Dan’s work here www.danielseguin.ca.

Here are a few of the action shots and I used one as my new profile picture. Thanks Dan!

Joseph Sokoloff is a master cabinet maker. His craftsmanship is stunning. His designs are straight out of Sunset Magazine from the 70’s (of which I am a collector).

Joseph told me that Communism had destroyed the trades in the Czech Republic so he and his family fled to Canada. Inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, he build his entire house (right down to the wooden doorknobs) and all the Scandinavian style teak furniture inside it.

I tuned his old Mason & Risch, which he had entirely re-veneered flawlessly. His love for true craftsmanship and distain for the modern world inspired me.

I did a couple of tunings in Hedley on Thanksgiving weekend for some really interesting people. I was given gifts of dried tomatoes, grapes and fresh greens. I saw a great junk shop and an art installation comprised of neon painted sculptures made out of cylindrical car parts in a dark room illuminated only with black light. It was very surreal. I was shown a hieroglyph of the “sun god space alien.” I watched parasailers coming in for a landing. Near the end of the day I raised the pitch on Peter’s piano. His place was full of rare motorcycles and homemade coal fired steam engines. He had an amazing shop and built small ridable steam locomotives!

Here is a little article about me in our local digital news paper mynaramata.com.

The astute follower of my blog will remember my post about God’s Mountain Estate one year and one month ago. That was back when living in the Okanagan was only a wild idea. I was so happy to be back in those hills (cliffs, really) and tune up the piano for the summer guests. If you ever see a bottle of God’s Mountain Riesling, drink it!

I recently made a trip to Toronto where I did a week of piano work around town. It was nice to touch base with my clients there and do some work in at the Paul Hahn shop with Nikolai Svinarenko, pictured here.

I have my new business cards and am officially operational out of my new home in Naramata. I am pretty happy with how my wooden cards turned out. The other day I was up in Salmon Arm and had the action of a Kawai pulled out so I could free up some stuck keys. But recently I have been doing more woodworking and organization than piano work in attempts to get functioning in the new space.

If all goes well, in a few weeks I will be in my new home in Naramata, BC (15 KM north of Penticton). I will be mostly working in the sunny Okanagan valley, but will be making regular trips to the west coast and Toronto as well. It has been a good winter in the Kootenays while searching for a new home, but I am looking forward to living in a location where there are more humans, and therefore, more pianos.

I did a pitch raise on this very nice Yamaha for Mrs. Shrimpton when I was in Victoria. Seated at the piano is her son, Paul Shrimpton who was my music partner back in our techno music period in the project called tinkertoy. He is also famed for being the frontman of the ska band Pressure Cooker in the west coast ska revival heyday of the 90’s.

I will be doing a little trip through the Okanagan, Vancouver and Victoria from January 18th – 26th, so if you are in that area and need a tuning let me know: drewwed@gmail.com.