Kathleen Allen Piano Service offers comprehensive piano work in the Steamboat Springs area, including tuning, repair, regulating, voicing and rebuilding of upright and grand pianos. Work is performed in the customer’s home or in Kathleen’s shop in Hayden. Action replacement, pinblock replacement, restringing and soundboard repair are currently available as rebuilding services. In 2011, full replacement of soundboards and bridges will also be offered.

Kathleen’s current piano service customers in Steamboat include the Strings Music Festival, Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts Camp, Steamboat Springs Orchestra, Emerald City Opera, and Rocky Mountain Summer Conservatory. Kathleen is a member of the Better Business Bureau.

Kathleen Allen began working on pianos in 1972 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1975 she joined the Piano Technicians’ Guild and was an active member in the Boston Chapter for six years.

In 1980 she began working for the Music Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 1982 was appointed to the faculty as a Technical Instructor. There she was responsible for all tunings, repairs and re-buildings for one 4-rank pipe organ, three harpsichords, seven upright pianos and twenty grand pianos, which included two 9’ Steinway concert grands and a 9’6” Bösendorfer Imperial.

At MIT Kathleen also taught a popular undergraduate seminar on the physics and mechanics of the piano entitled “The Soul of an Old Machine”. She later expanded this course to include the physics and mechanics of wind and string instruments.

A coloratura soprano, Kathleen  sang the role of the Queen of the Night in Mozart’s “Die Zauberflote” and the Amazon in Schubert’s “Die Teufels Lustschloss” in concert productions of those operas at MIT; she also gave many vocal recitals there.

From 1990 to 1995 Kathleen was the Faculty Advisor for the MIT Solar Electric Vehicle Team, an independent student activity. During her tenure they won many races, including two New England Tour de Sol championships in the two-seater electric category, and the 1995 Sunrayce from Indianapolis IN to Golden CO.

Kathleen moved to the Steamboat area in 1997 and now lives in Hayden, Colorado.

*This decorative embellishment appears on the title page of the manuscript of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier”. Musicologists now speculate that it is a code for Bach’s tuning system. See the Ionarts link for more information.