The San Fernando Valley has another Steinway school, thanks to a partnership between Pierce College and the musical instrument company.
By becoming a Steinway school, the Pierce music department was able to get new pianos at a discounted price. The process of replacing the pianos has been three years in the making, according to Music Department Chair Wendy Mazon.
Garineh Avakian, who is a professor of voice and choir, came up with the idea of bringing Steinway representatives to do an assessment of the Pierce pianos.
“I actually called the Steinway pre-pandemic,” Avakian said. “So this was pre-2019 or early 2019 and I called them out so they could come and do a free consultation and assessment of all of our pianos.”
The music department’s previous pianos were more than 70 years old, Avakian said. The department was spending substantial funds tuning them up.
“So in the long run, we’re actually saving money by getting newer equipment and newer instruments,” she said.
Pierce President Ara Aguiar and the administration were able to help obtain funding for the music department to acquire new pianos from Steinway.
“We were able to obtain sufficient funding for the pianos, and then they gave a school discount,” Aguiar said. “I’m thrilled that we were able to make this transition. We’re looking forward to it,” Aguiar said.
Mazon said the quality of the instruments are going to be significant to the students as they learn to be musicians.
“An instrumental class, choir, band, to our theory musicianship courses, all of those are AMP programs, so instrumental because students are going to be able to play on these quality instruments,” Mazon said. “The instruments are going to stay in tune. It is amazing and that’s very important for people’s ears when they’re learning to become musicians.”
Avakian is hoping with all the new equipment from Steinway that this will attract more students and increase enrollment.
“We’re hoping to up our enrollment with attracting quality students that are interested to continue in music and in the arts,” Avakian said. “We’re hoping to have quality performances be done and maybe even have more revenue for the college.”
Mazon is thankful to the administration’s support by helping the music department receive new pianos.
“I’m glad that we have such a supportive senior administration,” Mazon said. “With their help we were able to get these pianos, and I’m so happy that they support the arts and really saw the need and helped us to get those.”
