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The pianos are tuned three times a day—for rehearsals and prior to each of two performances—so we get started about 4:30 a.m. We do it for the love of the festival," LaRoy chuckles, adding their job is made a little easier "because Yamaha uses the highest quality materials, the best workmanship, and the best engineering. Yamaha is definitely leading the world in this area."

Jane Edwards

Judi, who also operates Edwards String Covers in Oceanside, CA, asserts, "I don't think you could do the Monterey Jazz Festival without Yamaha pianos. Their stability makes it possible to meet the artists' high expectations.

It's a very challenging venue, and I like that." Describing herself as the family adventurer, Judi spent two years tuning Yamaha pianos in Alaska, flying into bush villages during Alaskan Pipeline construction. "I didn't set out to be a piano technician, but it was hard not to be around it when I was growing up."

Judi Edwards

When he's not working at the MJF, LaRoy provides seminars for Yamaha piano service technicians, dealer technicians and salespeople, and for the Piano Technicians' Guild. He holds the distinction of being among a select few technicians who have earned all three major awards bestowed by the international PTG membership: Member of Note, Hall of Fame, and the most prestigious, the Golden Hammer.

n 1997, Hatch Bailey, president of Wilkirson-Hatch-Bailey Funeral Homes, fulfilled a lifelong dream when he purchased a Yamaha C2 conservatory grand piano for his Waco, TX funeral home chapel. Then, last Christmas, he bought a Yamaha Disklavier® DGH1BA for his 1890 historic home, Cottonland Castle, a replica of Castle-on-the-Rhine in Germany. Both pianos were purchased from Carl Shamburger, keyboard manager at Holze Music Company in Waco.

From Chapel
To Castle

"Music is very important to me," says Bailey, "and, in my opinion, it's the most important part of a funeral service because it helps express emotions. It's a common language, and the grand piano has been very well received," he notes.

Marian McElroy plays the C2, as families' desire, for many services at Wilkirson-Hatch-Bailey, but will never forget the day she first played it. "The beauty of the sound was incredible and overwhelming," she wrote in a letter to Shamburger. "I wouldn't change one thing about it - the tone, the quality, the action, the color, the size, anything. It is just perfect."

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