‘In Australia we are buying about 5,000 new pianos a year, and nobody throws them away at the other end,’ says technician Brent Ottley. “When I first started, there were about 500 piano tuners Australia-wide and we had a lot of really good factory-trained technicians out there, but everybody was still making money,” he says. He estimates there are just 250 left in the country and just 20 or so high-level technicians, with most of them close to retiring age. Ottley has been working in the industry for 35 years and says it became obvious two decades ago that Australia had begun “running out” of piano tuners. “But it was a house of cards, and we didn’t have the pull power that something like a Tafe college has … Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks to themselves, ‘Gee, I’d like to be a piano tuner.’” “We had about 35 graduates go through the place I think about 50% of them, maybe more, are still in the industry,” Ottley says. Sign up for our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning The school was set up by Yamaha, one of Australia’s major piano importers, who approached Ottley to work there. It was the last school of its kind in Australia until it closed several years ago. ![]() The last batch of tuners to rise through the industry went through the Australasian School of Piano Technology in east Melbourne, which was run by the technician Brent Ottley. While most pianos in homes can be given a basic service by tuners, it is technicians who can maintain and rebuild pianos, especially concert instruments, to the highest standard. ![]() “You can always tell the piano is not being serviced or there’s an unhealthy instrument in desperate need of care.
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