The Baby Grand Piano

The church we belong to has been raising money to replace the piano that is used during worship services. After several fund raisers and private donations we finally had enough to purchase a baby grand piano. Several of the church members were selected to pick out the baby grand piano. Because I am on the finance committee, I was one of the people that were to be involved in the shopping trip.

I had very limited knowledge of the baby grand piano. All I really knew was that the baby grand piano is smaller than a grand piano. I also knew that we did not have the money or space for the larger model. I made arrangements to meet my fellow parishioners to go on our shopping trip. The others involved included the choir director, the full time pianist and the minister’s wife. We have all known each other for many years so I thought the outing to purchase the baby grand piano would be a good time. Little did I know that we were in for an afternoon of disagreements and hard feelings.

I felt that the full time pianist should make the overall decision on which baby grand piano that we would purchase being she would be the one playing the instrument the majority of the time. However I also did not know that there would be so many models to choose from. When prices were looked into to begin the fund raising a mid range price was chosen. When we arrived at the piano showroom I was surprised to see that there was a baby grand piano that was half the price of the amount we had raised. We were told that this piano was used, but it had been completely reconditioned. It was actually a better brand and of higher quality than the newer model in our price range. I thought it made sense to purchase the used baby grand piano and use the remaining money to buy other things for our church. The minister’s wife agreed with me; however the pianist felt that people had donated towards a new piano and we should not buy a used one. I did not see why this would make a difference; the money that was raised was going towards the stated use. The choir director tried to remain neutral on the topic, which upset the pianist even more because the two of them are close friends.

The sales person that was trying to help us with our selection sat down to play the pianos so that we could hear the quality of tones. I do not have a background in music, but the quality of the used piano did sound better to me than the new model. The music director agreed and so did the minister’s wife so we purchased the used piano and made arrangements to have it delivered. The other members of the finance committee were very pleased that we had the additional money that we could use for the church. The only person not happy was the pianist. She refused to play the baby grand piano the first Sunday that it was used for our worship service. The minister is trying to help her deal with her feelings, but at this time she is still not talking to the music director.