Some pianos spend their lives in living rooms. Others work for a whole community: Sunday mornings, weddings, memorials, rehearsals, and now and then a concert night when the room fills and the music has to be right. The Baldwin SF grand at Pine Street Church in Boulder is that second kind of piano.
By the time the church asked us to take it on, the instrument had fallen into disuse. Nobody liked playing it anymore. The tone had grown harsh, and the touch was uneven and less sensitive than it had been when the piano was new. For some years it had even been taken off the stage — a quiet loss for a room that hosts Sunday music and chamber concerts alike.
The goal was simple to say and demanding to do: bring the Baldwin back to concert condition, and back onto the stage.
With a major Cultural Caravan concert on the calendar, we did all of the work on site under a tight deadline, so the piano would be ready when the house filled. There was a lovely symmetry to the timing: the Baldwin was being restored in its fiftieth year — built in 1975 — while the Cultural Caravan was celebrating its fifth anniversary. Fifty years of one instrument’s life in Boulder; five years of a young arts organization making the room sing again.
A Church at 13th and Pine
Pine Street Church sits at 1237 Pine Street, at the northwest corner of 13th and Pine in the heart of Boulder, a block north of the Hotel Boulderado. Music is part of its weekly life. The Pine Street Band plays on Sunday mornings, and the church hosts concerts, including the Cultural Caravan, a Boulder arts organization that regularly brings chamber music to its stage.
In the mid-2010s the Baldwin was moved off the chancel to the sanctuary floor to free up the stage. As David L’Hommedieu, the church’s Director of Worship and Arts, puts it, “the piano itself was both symbolically and physically set to the side and its use, maintenance, and beauty largely forgotten.” When the Cultural Caravan asked about a mainstage concert featuring the Baldwin, the church knew it was time to act. “It was time to get her back to her former and deserved glory!”
The Piano
The instrument is a Baldwin SF grand — a seven-foot semi-concert grand — serial number 209651, finished in ebony and manufactured in 1975. It has been at Pine Street Church since it was new: half a century in the same sanctuary. Baldwin built the SF as a serious performance piano for churches, studios, and smaller halls — American scale design, the power of a large grand without the footprint of a full concert instrument. In its day, Baldwin’s Artist Series grands were among the most respected American concert pianos, and the SF sat near the top of that line.
What We Found
The piano was not broken in a dramatic way. It was tired in the ways a hardworking church grand gets tired. The tone had hardened into something harsh. The touch had lost the evenness and sensitivity it had when new. Musicians stopped choosing it, and for some years it was removed from the stage altogether — once a piano falls out of favor, the silence compounds.
The Restoration
We began at the heart of the tone: brand-new Renner Premium Blue Point hammers, followed by a full concert regulation and voicing. We removed fifty years of oxidation from the Baldwin’s strings and polished them, then leveled all 230 strings and fitted the hammers carefully and precisely for maximum clarity, purity of tone, and singing power. We also restored the bridges and the bridge-pin / string interface — the contact points that carry vibration into the soundboard — for the same clarity and power. Alongside that, we gave the instrument a thorough cleaning and polishing of the soundboard and harp, a technical cleaning of the action, and polishing and lubrication of the capstans, keypins, and other friction points — the small, often-overlooked places where uneven touch and sluggish response hide.
Renner Premium Blue Point hammers
The hammers we chose are Renner’s Premium Blue Points, made exclusively for Renner USA. They use Weickert Special felt — a historic German felt recipe that Würzen Felt and Louis Renner revived with top piano makers after it had been unavailable for decades after World War II. The felt is pressed into a more pointed shape than a traditional hammer, so the string contact is precise and the tone can open cleanly.
What that means at the keyboard is a warm, clear sound with a wide dynamic range and generous sustain. The hammers are stable and durable, and they do not need lacquer or chemical hardeners to produce tone. They also typically need less needling than Renner’s Premium Blue line, so they can be voiced carefully for the room — here, a downtown Boulder sanctuary that has to serve both Sunday mornings and a full chamber-music house. Renner USA has more on the Premium Blue Point hammerheads for readers who want the technical background.
Every step of that work was done on site at the church. The Cultural Caravan’s fifth-anniversary concert was approaching, and the Baldwin needed to be ready for a full house. We worked under a tight deadline in the sanctuary itself — hammers, regulation, voicing, and cleaning — so the instrument could return to the stage in time for that night.
A church piano works harder than most. It is played by many hands, in a room that changes with the seasons, and it is expected to be ready at any time. Here on the Front Range, our dry air is part of that story too. See our notes on piano humidity in Colorado.
Before and After
With new hammers, concert regulation, and careful voicing, the Baldwin regained the even, sensitive touch and the clear, warm tone a seven-foot church and concert grand should have. The response after the work was so positive that the piano has been returned to the stage and is in regular use again for concerts — including recent and upcoming Cultural Caravan performances, for which we continue to provide the concert preparation and tuning.
“Working under a tight concert deadline, Concert Piano Technician Trevor Nelson of Renaissance Piano Service brought the piano back to life with new Renner hammers and many hours of meticulous adjustments to the piano’s strings, keys, dampers, bridges and hammers to restore the piano’s touch and tone to its former glory.”
David L’Hommedieu, Director of Worship and Arts, Pine Street Church
The Concert
The restoration was capped by a full house. On December 4, 2025, the Cultural Caravan celebrated its fifth anniversary at Pine Street Church — the same season the Baldwin marked fifty years — with a program of two chamber-music giants: Beethoven’s “Archduke” Trio, Op. 97, and Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25. Both are works in which the piano is a full partner, not an accompanist, and both ask a great deal of an instrument: Beethoven’s broad, singing lines and Brahms’s thunder, including the fiery “Rondo alla Zingarese” that closes the quartet.
The players were artists the Baldwin could be proud to serve. Violinist Stefan Jackiw, whom the Boston Globe has called “one of the most insightful violinists of his generation,” played a violin made in Venice around 1730 by Domenico Montagnana, the “ex-Rossi.” Violist Richard O’Neill, a GRAMMY winner and a member of the Boulder-based Takács Quartet and CU Boulder faculty, is known for playing rare old Italian violas. Cultural Caravan founder and artistic director Josh Halpern played his cello by Domenico Busan, made in Venice around 1750 and once the main instrument of his teacher, Desmond Hoebig. At the Baldwin was Canadian pianist Kevin Ahfat, a Juilliard-trained chamber musician and core member of Toronto’s ARC Ensemble, who had played a Denver recital with Jackiw the night before. So the 1975 Baldwin shared the stage with Italian string instruments made centuries ago, older than the music on the stands. More than 300 people filled the room.
For the church, the night was the proof. “The room heard the instrument as it had never been heard before,” David L’Hommedieu writes, “singing its sounds and filling the room with perfect timbre, sonority, and volume. The musicians loved it, the audience loved it, and Pine Street Church most of all loved it!”
For Josh Halpern, the Cultural Caravan’s founder and artistic director, the night carried a different kind of relief. He first grasped how dire the Baldwin’s condition was on a video call several weeks before the concert, and he did not hear the instrument again until after the restoration was finished.
“By the time I learned how dire the piano’s state was—on a video call several weeks before, when Colin, my employee, played a few very tinny notes—I knew you were already planning to work on it. That was a huge relief, because it was in no state for anything like Beethoven or Brahms, especially played at that level by Kevin. I didn’t hear it again until after you were done with the restoration. I truly felt like you had saved the concert!”
Josh Halpern, founder and artistic director, the Cultural Caravan (lightly edited for clarity)
“I’d spent long days on that action under a hard deadline. Hearing it sing in rehearsal was the payoff — clear, warm, and present, the way a concert grand should be.”
“After new hammers, regulation, and voicing, the Baldwin SF finally had its singing tone and silky touch back. It was rich, silvery, pure and clear, and sang so powerfully with the other stringed instruments.”
Trevor Nelson, Registered Piano Technician, Renaissance Piano Service
A Piano for the Whole Community
A piano that had spent years offstage is back where it belongs: under the lights for Sunday music and for the Cultural Caravan’s chamber series. In fact, the Caravan was so taken with the Baldwin that it has partnered with Pine Street Church to make the church and its piano its full-time mainstage concert venue for the 2026/27 season and beyond. We stay with it — concert prep and tuning for those nights — so the instrument that served Pine Street since 1975 can keep serving Boulder audiences for years to come.
“A beautiful church like Pine Street, in such a perfect location near Pearl, needs a respectable piano. There’s no two ways about it. For us it’s a huge pleasure to play concerts in that room, but it would be a total dealbreaker without a good piano. Your restoration is the difference between us playing there and not. It’s as simple as that. We’re so lucky that David called on you to do this work—the church is wonderful and their staff is absolutely terrific. We love being there!”
Josh Halpern, founder and artistic director, the Cultural Caravan (lightly edited for clarity)
You can hear the Baldwin for yourself this season. On Saturday, November 21, at 7:00 PM, violinist Njioma Grevious brings “Can’t Take My Soul: Njioma Grevious & Friends” to the Pine Street MainStage, with pianist Elliot Wuu at the Baldwin alongside Josh Halpern, Alex Gonzalez, and Jordan Bak. Then on Friday, December 4, at 7:00 PM, the Caravan marks its sixth anniversary at Pine Street with its December Celebration Concert, featuring an all-star octet — one year to the day after the concert that brought this piano back. And looking farther ahead, Kevin Ahfat returns to Pine Street for “Between Two Worlds” on April 17, 2027. See the full season at culturalcaravan.org.
It is a privilege to work on an instrument that belongs, in a real sense, to a whole community. We are grateful to Pine Street Church for trusting us with their Baldwin, and to the Cultural Caravan for giving it such a night — and for keeping it busy.
Or, in David L’Hommedieu’s words: “Here’s to 50 more years of amazing music to fill the air!”
Learn More
- Pine Street Church: pinestreetchurch.net
- The Cultural Caravan: culturalcaravan.org
- Stefan Jackiw (violin): stefanjackiw.com
- Richard O’Neill (viola): richardyongjaeoneill.com
- Josh Halpern (cello): joshuahalperncello.com
- Kevin Ahfat (piano): kevinahfat.com
- Cultural Caravan event page for that concert
Restoration and Concert Work, by Appointment
We restore grands and uprights of every make in our Boulder-area shop in Lafayette and on site at churches, halls, and studios across the Front Range, and we prepare pianos for concerts and recording sessions. Read more about piano restoration and our piano services.
Our shop is open by appointment only. Call (303) 521-3722 or contact us to talk about your church’s or school’s piano, or to make an appointment.
— Trevor Nelson, Registered Piano Technician, Renaissance Piano Service
