'World-Class Piano Tuner Training' Samsung Culture Foundation, Business Support Agreement Ceremony

On the 9th, Korea Piano Tuners Association and Support Agreement Ceremony

Samsung Cultural Foundation (Chairman Kim Hwang-sik) announced on the 9th that it has signed a support agreement for the ‘2024 Domestic Piano Technician Training Project’ with the Korea Piano Technicians Association (President Kim Hyun-yong).

The Samsung Foundation of Culture held a support agreement ceremony for the '2024 Piano Tuner Training Project' on January 8 at the auditorium of the Leeum Museum of Art in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. (Left) Kim Hyun-yong, President of the Korea Piano Tuners Association, (Right) Ryu Moon-hyung, CEO of the Samsung Foundation of Culture.
[Photo by Samsung Foundation of Culture]

Since 2017, the Samsung Cultural Foundation has collaborated with the Korea Piano Technicians Association to nurture world-class piano technicians by providing opportunities for skilled domestic piano technicians to receive advanced tuning technology training abroad.

According to the agreement, this year, a domestic technical seminar will be held simultaneously with the 5th Asia Piano Technicians Association General Assembly. In addition, overseas technical training and advanced education courses will also be conducted.

The domestic technical seminar aims to cultivate competitive piano technicians by inviting renowned foreign masters to systematically transfer tuning theory and skills to domestic technicians. The seminar will be held from August 26 to 29 this year at the Sono Belle Resort in Cheonan, Chungnam, over 3 nights and 4 days, targeting about 350 piano technicians from Korea and Asia. The 5th Asia Piano Technicians Association General Assembly will also be held simultaneously. Notably, this general assembly will be held in Korea for the first time in 12 years since the inaugural meeting in Gyeongju in 2012, providing an opportunity to promote exchange of tuning technology among Asian countries and enhance the status of Korean piano technicians.

For overseas instructors, Ulrich Gerhartz, the head of Steinway & Sons UK branch, an expert on the production, history, and structure of Steinway concert pianos and the exclusive tuner of pianist Alfred Brendel, will be invited to give a 7-hour special lecture on concert piano tuning. Alongside this, piano technicians from Asia including China, Taiwan, and Japan will share the current status and tuning know-how of Asian piano tuning.

The overseas technical training program is designed to provide a stepping stone for becoming world-class piano technicians by allowing participants to directly observe and learn piano manufacturing and management systems in countries such as Germany and Japan through training programs offered by advanced overseas piano manufacturers like Steinway and Yamaha.

This year’s training will dispatch two technicians to Yamaha in Shizuoka, Japan, for four weeks starting from the 10th, and a total of ten technicians to B?sendorfer in Vienna, Austria, among others.

The advanced education course, established in 2022, aims to cultivate capable technicians who can properly manage concert pianos in performance halls and meet performers’ demands by intensively transferring the know-how of world-class foreign technicians and domestic tuning masters to domestic technicians.

In June, 20 outstanding domestic technicians will be selected to receive a 10-day course from July 8 to 13, where tuners Park Sung-hwan, Seo In-su, and Lim Jong-gu will provide high-level education tailored to the Korean context at the Korea Piano Technicians Association lecture room in Gasan-dong, Geumcheon-gu, Seoul. Following this, from September 9 to 12, Ulrich Gerhartz will conduct tuning demonstrations and practical training on concert grand pianos at Yonsei University Chamber Hall.

Ryu Moon-hyung, CEO of Samsung Cultural Foundation, said, “We hope that the domestic piano technician training project will create the optimal performance environment and contribute to the development of K-Classic. Furthermore, we hope this will serve as an opportunity for more people to recognize and support the importance of cultural infrastructure such as piano tuning.”