Oh, the pianos I’ve known…

I’ve been really fortunate to have 4 pianos to call my own. The last three, I’ve even called by name.

Growing up, I played a Canada-built Heintzman upright, of course. A strong, sturdy piano was the only choice for a family who was raising pianists instead of cattle in the middle of the prairies.

Once every last key had been played in every possible way and combination, we to sent it out to pasture and got ourselves a brand new Samick: a concert upright.

I have to confess: I never really liked that piano. I never got used to it. The bench was too low, the sound was too bright. And the worst part was I couldn’t see the TV from the piano bench while I was practicing.

When I went off to university, Sammy stayed put for our term-break practicing needs and I discovered a whole new world of paltry pianos.

The basements of most universities have been equipped with very special places to test your grit and determination: the “fridges”. These were where music went to die…if you didn’t die first in these stinky little, oxygen-poor cubicles with the worst uprights you could imagine. Urban legend had it that the smell came from the carcasses of former music students who were so consumed by the quest for perfection that they’d lost track of how long they’d been practicing and suffocated from lack of fresh air in plain sight in their fish-bowl of a practice room.

If you were still standing by the time you got into the performance stream, you were allowed to move to the big practice rooms upstairs.

There was a clever solution to using a fridge piano that I picked up at Wilfrid Laurier, which was to nap from 6-9pm after your courses were done, then to head back to school and practice until 3 in the morning. The school was always humming at that time of night, but I could still get a pretty good grand piano. When I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, I’d call school service’s “Foot Patrol” to walk me home at the end of my practice session. Safety first…

When I transferred to Brandon, the practice culture reflected more of an agricultural mindset: get up at 5am, and on your walk to school, run into your piano professor on her way home for 2 minutes of shut-eye, arrive at 6am ready to work, like a good little farmer after doing her chores.

uOttawa could be hit and miss with a few glorious grand-piano-ed huge-windowed rooms on the 4th floor, and the fridges in the basement which smelled like rotten baloney sandwiches and your counterpoint professor’s dead hopes and dreams. It didn’t take long for me to make it a priority to show up bright and early Monday morning to book my deluxe practice room for the week.

Eventually, the need for practice pianos came to an end. With university education finally aside, it was time to invest in a piano of my very own. Off I went to Ottawa Pianos to buy me a Bernadette - a 6 foot Young Chang grand piano. She was plain, but hardworking, just like me, and so it was a perfect match! Bernadette was meant to be with me just for 5 years. In fact, the store had the paperwork drawn up when I bought her, offering to buy her back when I was ready to trade her in for something better.

Soon, we were off to Vienna where Bernadette was elevated to a whole new level: she was beautifully cleaned and treated to all new hammers; she sounded better than ever! She also had a bit of an Austrian accent – instead of being tuned to A440, they tuned her up to 442 Hertz. She was at her peak.

And year after year, I kept on keeping Bernadette. But,secretly (I didn’t want to hurt Bernadette’s feelings - I mean, she was well-tempered, but I didn’t want to push my luck) I was dreaming and plotting and investing and saving to buy a new grand.

Finally, one spring pandemic day in 2022, I finally made my way to Steinway Pianos. I tried out a few, and they were all wonderful. As I wandered through the lowland of pianos that were there, I discovered a traded-in Yamaha tucked away in the back corner.

After playing it for no more than 5 seconds, I was shouting through the store – “This piano is mine!” Yes, ladies and gentleman, I have no poker face.

She’s a gorgeous beauty – she can play quieter than quiet. She’s long, elegant and sleek, with gorgeous tone, and powerful when needed. She is a concert grand 7-foot Yamaha C6.

I was so excited to share the great news with my kids. Their first question?

What are we going to name her?

I wanted to give her time to reveal her name to us. After all, Bernadette started out as Bernardine, but she kept whispering to me that, as she was a brunette, Bernadette suited her better.

I knew I needed a strong name. I knew her soul was feminine. So, I knew I wanted to name her after a goddess. Thanks to Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, my kids know a lot about goddesses, and so the names started to flow. One day, my daughter suggested “Athena”: the Greek goddess of war, handicraft and practical reason. This name was a front runner for a long time.

As winter settled in, I still hadn’t settled on a name. You may well know that I’m not at all a fan of winter, likely due to too many years of living in Manitoba (and that stint in Siberia…). I found myself turning to tea and soup to conjure up warmth, comfort and good fortune. I started to think of myself as a bit of a witch with the various concoctions I was making in my kitchen to ward off the winter chilblains.

One bleak, blustery day, my son asked, “Mom, what about the name Minerva?” I instantly liked it, because, as any Harry Potter fan will know, it conjured up images of flying broomsticks, and cackling, and transfiguration.

He continued, “…because Minerva is the Roman equivalent of Athena!”

I googled. And there it was, all the evidence I needed to christen her, right there in paragraph 2 of Wikipedia:

She was the virgin goddess music, poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving and the crafts. She is often depicted with her sacred creature, an owl, usually name the “owl of Minerva”.

That was it, it had to be Minerva. And the owl thing sealed the deal.

So there you have it, me and my Minerva. My Minerva and me. We’ll no doubt have many amazing adventures together. Is she my forever piano? I could only be so lucky. (Besides, my Minerva says, it would be the wise choice.)

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