It’s the wrath of Aretha Franklin the owner of King’s Keyboard House fears. He sold the Queen of Soul’s favorite piano: a shiny black seven-foot, six-inch Yamaha concert grand.
“She really loved that piano,” explains King, who’d rented it to her since he got it six years ago. “When she sang at the [2013 presidential] inauguration, she cut the [backing] track with that piano. She’s done a big Christmas show every year, and she uses it for that.”
Not any more–not unless the piano’s new owners get something in return.
“The next time she needs it, we can horse trade a little bit,” jokes Curt Gielow, CEO of Concordia University. “She can come to chapel and sing gospel for us.”
Concordia was in the market for a new concert grand because the fifty-two-year-old school recently got an ambitious new owner. “There are ten Concordia Universities in the country, all owned by the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church,” explains Gielow in his office on the campus on Geddes Rd. “This is the second smallest [with 730 students]. The largest is in Wisconsin [with 8,000]. This university has been struggling for a decade, so in July of ’13 Concordia Wisconsin acquired Concordia Ann Arbor, and we became one university with two campuses.
“This is an experiment in higher education that I don’t think exists anyplace in the nonprofit world,” continues Gielow, a former Wisconsin state representative who now runs both schools. “The difficulty is being one [university] and yet keeping some unique characteristics. Michigan has strengths that Wisconsin doesn’t have. One is they don’t have a music department.”
“We have music education K through 12 with music majors and minors, all undergraduate, and a parish music program that we’re trying to get restarted,” explains Brian Altevogt, chair of Concordia Ann Arbor’s music department. “We also have a worship arts program, a minor in more or less contemporary music.
“Worship arts is the band and the guitar and that kind of stuff that’s used in some of today’s worship centers,” explains Gielow. “Some churches don’t accept those, but we have that program.”
Until last fall, they also had a wretched concert grand. “Brian came to me and said, ‘We’ve got a 1925 grand piano, and we can hardly keep it in tune,'” Gielow recalls. “‘We need some new pianos!’
“Brian orchestrated a meeting with Jim King of King’s Keyboards, where we get our pianos,” says Gielow. “Jim King said, ‘I could rent you this one or upgrade that one but, oh, by the way, I’ve got this Yamaha concert grand that you can buy.'”
As King recalls it, once he “told the piano’s story, the president went nuts [and said] ‘This is great! I want this piano!'”
“We gave him $50,000 cash,” adds Gielow. However, Aretha Franklin wasn’t finished with the piano. “Sure enough, she wanted it after we owned it. And you, you sap, you gave it to her!”
“Yeah, I did,” admits Altevogt with a laugh. “When she came out with that recording [Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics] right before Halloween, we’re pretty sure [it was recorded with this piano].”
“No more deals until she talks to me about it,” insists Gielow.
That will no doubt be an interesting conversation, but these days the piano doesn’t have time to spare. “We use it every day,” says Altevogt. “We use it for choir rehearsals or anytime we have student juries or recitals.”
Purchasing the piano is only one of the improvements since the school got new owners.
“The Kreft [Center for the Arts] building where [the piano] sits is going through a big remodel job that will get done this summer,” says Altevogt. “It’ll be a 100-seat recital room with wood interior treatments and flex seating for other performance options and different options for technology and lighting.”
“We did a $3 million science building last summer, and this year it’s the arts building and a football field,” adds Gielow. “Wisconsin is going to put $10 to $15 million into this campus over the next few years. The kids who come here want a faith-based education in a small place, but they expect contemporary facilities–and pianos.”
