Piano Technician's Guild of Rhode Island
November 2004
KNOW YOUR MEMBERS: Michael A. Morvan, Associate Member Rhode Island Chapter Piano Technicians Guild
(#25 in a series by Wade Johnson, one of several “emeritus editors” of Good Vibrations)
Chapter members, it appears that we have in our midst someone who aspires to become truly a world-class sub-specialist within the over-all specialty of piano technology. He is not, and says he has decided against becoming, a piano tuner. He has accumulated considerable experience in many aspects of piano rebuilding, but hopes the market will allow him to give even that a low priority and to concentrate on becoming primarily a widely-respected specialist in keyboard restoration and reconstruction of all kinds.PTG President Jim Birch, learning of this interest when Mike exhibited keyboards at a regional convention over a year ago, put Mike in touch with Frank Stopa, the aging dean of keyboard ivory work. Mr. Stopa in effect “passed the mantle” to Mike, giving him hours of instruction and letting him buy all of Frank’s treasured ivory-tooling machines, rescued from Pratt, Read & Co. before it closed in Ivoryton, Ct.
One of many questions now being looked at by the PTG Long-Range Task Force is whether and if so how, in the future, PTG might accredit and recognize sub-specialties such as the one on which Mike has embarked.
But on to a brief bio of Mike: Interviewed recently by phone, he tells me he was born 2/12/1968 in Milford, Massachusetts and grew up in Northbridge, quite close to Uxbridge where he now lives (and has his shop) with his wife Erin and sons aged 1 ½ and 5 ½. In 1986 he graduated from Northbridge High School, where he specialized in Industrial Arts (advanced math., mechanical drawing, machine shop, and woodworking). The he joined the Navy, where he trained as a machinist and spent several years at sea, “fixing everything on shipboard.” After the Navy he took a job installing garage lifts and waste-oil furnaces in automobile stations.
In the fall of 1993 Mike entered Worcester State College, where he spent 6 years earning two Bachelor’s degrees, one in Science and the other in Nursing.
Asked how he got involved with pianos, Mike says that in 1994 while in College, he bought an old upright piano and took it apart, but found he couldn’t tune it. So he called a tuner, Jeff Searles of Apollo Piano in Grafton, Ma, and in due course Jeff took Mike on as a part-time apprentice. After a couple of years, with Jeff’s blessings, Mike moved on to an apprenticeship with Christopher Brown, RPT, of Concord Piano, a respected rebuilder.
After college graduation in fall ’99, Mike began working as an R.N. but also began doing some piano rebuilding part-time on his own. At first he farmed out any key restoration work to various subcontractors, but was dissatisfied with the results, so he began doing his own- initially with very basic equipment, but he has become a stickler for precision and quality in keyboard work.
Mike joined the Guild, through our Chapter, about four years ago. Now he has quit the Nursing profession- and has accumulated much new equipment, supplies (including ivory and new ivory substitutes), and knowledge for all facets of his new chosen specialty.
