There’s a piano sitting behind the Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough just waiting for somebody to come by and tickle the ivories.
More specifically, it’s a Blake upright piano, circa 1905, and the idea for the community piano came up not too far away during a lunch between Marybeth Hallinan and Zoë Wroten-Heinzmann at Aesop’s Tables. The two have been meeting for lunch on the weeks when there isn’t a staff meeting for the Unitarian Church, where the two both work.
During that lunch, Hallinan happened to see her piano student Noel White for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic forced her to shift her lessons to virtual. And it was a quick exchange that set the wheels in motion for the new downtown attraction.
“I said all we need is a piano outside and we can see each other again,” Hallinan remembered of the July 1 encounter. And almost immediately Hallinan got what she called “a crazy idea.”
“It was one of those COVID manic inspirations. Sometimes you don’t feel like getting out of bed, sometimes you have all these amazing ideas that bubble up,” Hallinan said. “And when I get a crazy idea I play with it to see if it gets any traction.”
Having a community piano available for people to play isn’t a new idea, but it is for Peterborough. As someone whose been teaching piano for 30 years, people are always contacting Hallinan with pianos they want to get rid of. And she remembered that Ivy Vann had been looking to move on from hers for quite a while. So she texted Vann to see if the piano was still around and available.
“It’s the perfect outside piano because it can take a beating,” Hallinan said.
Next thing she knew, she was asking Willard Williams, owner of the Toadstool, if the piano could live behind the store and underneath the second floor deck/staircase up against the painted mural of a pelican and wild flowers.
By the time she left Aesop’s, Hallinan had the plan in place. All that needed to be done was to get the piano from Vann’s house to its new downtown location. Anyone who has ever had to move a piano knows its not easy, but thanks to Kurt Heinzmann, Zoë’s husband, and Doug Farrell, a musician who is working on a renovation project at Vann’s house, the piano was delivered on the final day of July.
“It really was a community effort,” Hallinan said.
On that Friday afternoon, Hallinan met her former student Madeline Ciocci at Aesop’s for lunch and brought her iPad along for a little jam session of “Yesterday” and “Imagine” by the Beatles, and “Rise Up” by Andra Day.
“Everyone just misses being together and making music,” Hallinan said. “Personally, I was moved to tears because I really missed singing with people. It was the best I had felt in all these months.”
Ciocci had seen Hallinan’s post on the Peterborough Facebook page about the piano moving to downtown and then an hour before the lunch date saw that it had been installed.
“We were halfway through the meal and she said surprise, we’re going to sing,” Ciocci said.
Ciocci sang, while Hallinan played and sang, both wearing masks, and the former student said it was a bit of a surreal moment.
“Halfway through I realized I have never sang in that public of a sphere before,” Ciocci said. “It was definitely a new experience for me, but I didn’t realize how public my voice was going to be. And singing with a mask is something I’ve never done before.”
Hallinan has since been back a few times since the piano was delivered and always makes it a point to check it out when she’s downtown. But she’s not the only one who stops to play, as Vann has revisited her old instrument a few times as well.
“Every time I go by down there I stop and play for a minute,” Vann said.
In a funny twist, one day after she talked to Hallinan, Vann was having a conversation with her daughter Frankie Beyer and before she could tell her where the piano she played growing up would be, she offered up a suggestion.
“She said you should move it downtown and have it be a community piano,” Vann said. Little did she know the wheels were already in motion for that very same idea.
Hallinan said she’d like to create a community piano fund to pay for upkeep. She’d love to see a local artist use their talents to give it a fresh and creative look and anyone who has one of those old metal milk delivery boxes with a cover and would like to donate it would allow for the storage of music to share.
While Ciocci is back in the area now, she will be leaving soon to head back to Vermont where she just graduated from college. But she has high hopes for the new downtown attraction.
“I’m hoping it will be able to stay around because it’s a really wonderful idea,” she said.
Vann bought the piano is 1985 from Bill Faller of Temple, a longtime piano man in the area. At the time, Vann was working as a newspaper reporter for the Milford Cabinet and doesn’t exactly remember how much she paid for it “maybe $1,200, not more than $1,500,” she said.
She had played the piano all her life and was training with a teacher in Amherst and wanted one of her own. For more than 30 years, Vann owned the piano, moving it from Milford to Temple and two houses in Peterborough. Then four years ago, she decided it was time to find it a new home. She put it on Craigslist for $250 with no takers. Vann reposted it a few more times with no luck.
“I didn’t work very hard to get rid of it,” she said.
Then she tried to give it away, and not even that was enticing enough for anyone to give it a new home. “No one wanted it,” Vann said.
She was still using it, but with an ongoing renovation project at her house, there wasn’t going to be a good place for it once it’s all done.
“It’s a decent piano. It gave me 35 years. That piano didn’t owe me anything,” Vann said.
Vann wasn’t sure where the piano originated or who owned it before Faller. It was 80 years old, so there’s no way of knowing how many times it changed hands or the number of tunes that were played on it.
Now it finally has a new home and the stories and memories it will create will soon become part of the fabric of the community.