piano repair workshop in Nablus

From 16th until 26th July we are back in the Middle East for a project of Music Fund.  This time I am in Nablus and Ramallah, together with Olivier Marie, a piano expert working for the Lille based company Nord Piano.

On Monday 16th, we first went to stay with our friends in Nazareth, Maha and Duaibis Abboud Ashkar. It was good to be with them before starting the workshops in Nablus and Ramallah. They have become very dear friends to me over the last five years.

© Olivier Marie and Maha Abboud Ashkar (Nazareth)
© Duaibis Abboud Ashkar (Nazareth)

Olivier has started a first workshop at the music school of Nablus the Culture proposing an introduction to the profession of piano technician, showing techniques to repair certain parts of a piano, as well as regulating and tuning techniques. 

This profession is a very specialised one and can surely not be taught in a few days, not even in a few months or one year.  Our workshop can give an idea of what this profession is all about.  For Olivier Marie the workshop is an opportunity to revise certain pianos, but especially to select one person amongst the participants of Nablus and Ramallah, who would have the talent and motivation to come to the piano workshop of Nord Piano in Lille for a further training session of 3 full months from April to June 2008. 

We are happy with the participants to the workshop in Nablus.  In Ramallah, several persons have enrolled in the workshop.  One of them has already travelled to Nablus to join the workshop there.  It is our friend Iyad Jarradat, well known to Music Fund, since he already followed a introductory course given by Aurèle Hardy in May 2006 in Ramallah, and then a 3 month training session in piano repair and tuning at Pol De Winter's Pianomobil in Antwerp, Belgium, from September to December 2006.

We are both staying at the house of Sami Hammad, the founder and coordinator of Nablus the Culture, our partner in Nablus.  He is spoiling us with good food and his very interesting company.

© Olivier Marie and Sami Hammad (Nablus) inspecting old pianos in the city

I feel Nablus is much less depressed than when I came here for the first time 2 years ago.  People are still living in very complicated conditions, due to the occupation and the almost daily incursions of the Israeli army.  We also continuously hear shootings, especially during the night.  But something has changed.  A feeling of relative well-being.  I imagine that if this large city could profit from a period of peace, it would rapidly develop again into the very lively centre it has been before.