PIANO LOAN AGREEMENT BENEFITS UNIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY

(KINGSVILLE, September 26, 1996) - Piano students at Texas A&M University-Kingsville have good reason this fall to be enthusiastic about practicing intricate works of Mozart or Chopin. Sixteen new pianos, valued at nearly $140,000, have been loaned to the Music Department inventory through an ongoing college program with Kawai America Corporation and their dealer, The Music Stop and Wolfgang Pianos of Corpus Christi.

The pianos, including 12 vertical and four grand pianos, were delivered to the university at the beginning of August.

"This has been a tremendous help to our music department and the university," said Music Department Chair Paul Hageman. "It is a great opportunity for our students to use top quality, new pianos and is extremely cost-effective for the university."

The piano loan agreement between A&M-Kingsville, Kawai Corporation and The Music Stop & Wolfgang Pianos, enables the Music Department to receive new pianos at the beginning of each academic year. Music students practice and perform on the instruments until the end of the academic year when the pianos will be available for purchase by the public. The sale date will be announced.

The agreement, explained Hageman, is evaluated annually, and is both beneficial to students and economical for A&M-Kingsville. The university owns 25 to 30 pianos, some of which are more than 40 years old, according to Hageman. The pianos get a significant amount of departmental use and require regular maintenance to keep them in peak condition.

All undergraduate music students are required to pass a piano proficiency exam in order to meet degree requirements, Hageman said. Approximately 170 undergraduate students are currently enrolled in the A&M-Kingsville music program, a figure that includes up to four declared piano majors.

Since practice is critical to the study of piano, non-piano majors are asked to practice at least 30 minutes a day, six days a week, Hageman said. "For majors, it can be anywhere from two to four hours a day, seven days a week."

With such regular use of the instruments, maintenance can get costly. "The mechanisms on the piano have to be oiled and adjusted as on any machine," Hageman said. "Any corrective-type maintenance, however, should not happen within the first four or five years."

The piano loan program will help save dollars in costly maintenance on older pianos, by continually providing new instruments for university use.

Delores Leija, owner of The Music Stop & Wolfgang Pianos, is enthusiastic about the program.

"I feel delighted, first of all, as a music lover and as a music teacher," Leija said. "To me it (the agreement) provides new pianos to the university. And to benefit the community is a double joy. It's not just for business, it's also a personal satisfaction."

-TAMUK-
-Mary McAdam