By DAN MORAN dmoran@scn1.com
 
Looking like he was sliding a giant rack of ribs into an oven, Mark MacLeod eased the keys and levers — known as the "action" — into the 9-plus-foot frame of a Steinertone concert grand piano.

Within seconds, the restored century-old piano was ready for MacLeod to take it for a test drive. Trained at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, he breezed through Clementi's "Sonatina in D Major," followed by Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag."

Family Piano is a dream-come-true for two piano technicians that got fed up with the sterile environ-ments that surround typical piano stores. Meet Alice Alviani and Mark MacLeod, two people who made their dream a reality and are now helping people, not just in Waukegan but throughout the Chicagoland area, learn to play music and own quality instruments.

What was once fit for the woodpile was now fit for a concert. The Steinertone, which spent a good part of the 20th century buried deep inside a storage unit, will be used for its intended purpose tonight (April 24th, 2009) by Chicago pianist Erwin Helfer at Joplin’s Java & Ragtime Cafe on South Genesee Street.

MacLeod and Joplin's co-owner, Alice Alviani, cleared space for the immense instrument along a set of windows overlooking the Waukegan ravine, putting it in place Thursday afternoon. The moment was a culmination of some 15 years of restoration.

"It was horrible — it was Dumpster condition," MacLeod said of the disassembled piano when he first came upon it in a Chicago warehouse. "But it’s going to come back to life (Friday) night."

Alviani described the Mason and Hamlin model CC/Steinertone as "the one with its own ZIP code," pointing out how it dwarfs even a nearby grand piano in the cafe.

"It’s just an incredible instrument. The tone is just amazing," she said. "When it was built in 1904, it was the largest piano in the world."

Steinertones were designed by Morris Steinert, a Massachusetts piano manufacturer who produced concert grands in the early 1900s. MacLeod said he's unsure of who exactly owned the one now on display at Joplin's, but he does know that it had been in storage for about 25 years when he came upon it.

"I remember I was taking out the recycling one night, and my wife showed me (a) classified ad that said '9-foot concert grand for free,'" MacLeod said, recalling that the owner told him "you can have it, but you’ve got to know how to put it together again."

"It had just been completely taken apart," MacLeod added, "with no roadmap to put it back together."

Fortunately, MacLeod was also trained as a piano technician, and he hooked up with a craftsman in Chicago to restore the ebony finish. Following Friday's concert, the finished product will be displayed along with the dozens of other models in Alviani and MacLeod's adjoining Family Piano Co. showroom.

"Eventually, we’d like to sell it to a venue," Alviani said. "Somewhere big, like the Genesee Theatre — someplace where a historical instrument like this would fit in."

Concert announcement
Jazz pianist Erwin Helfer is slated to appear in concert at Joplin's Java & Ragtime Cafe at 7 p.m. April 24, 2009. Tickets are $10. Joplin's owner Alice Alviani described Helfer as "the king of the boogie-woogie, barrelhouse piano ... He’s an absolutely adorable man, and an absolutely phenomenal player when he gets behind a piano." The cafe is at 114 S. Genesee St., suite 402. For more information, call (847) 775-1988.