Piano player spending second act fine-tuning instruments for Cunningham Piano in Germantown

GERMANTOWN (WPVI) -- Paid Sponsor Partnership: Philadelphia Corporation for Aging

Geza Mika can easily play a Bach invention from memory. He says it was his strong ear that led him to lessons at an early age.

"I could hear things and reproduce them on the piano," says Mika, who now works for Cunningham Piano. "I started when I was eight and I actually played through high school."

In college, he studied architecture and got into furniture restoration, while also keeping music in his life. In 2016, he went to trade school in Boston.

"I am a piano technician," he says.

Mika has worked at Cunningham Piano's Restoration Factory in Germantown since 2018.

"It's got all new parts," he says of the piano he's currently working on in his office. "We only rebuild instruments here and we have three other showrooms."

Rich Galassini is co-owner of the company.

"My business partner, Tim Oliver, and I are the fourth set of owners in 135 years," says Galassini. "We've been around since 1891."

They sell new pianos and pre-owned, refurbished trade-ins.

"This is a pretty old-school kind of facility and we take our time," says Mika. "I've worked on instruments where it takes me a month, and with really complicated instruments, it might take me more than that."

He's currently restoring an antique Ludwig upright brought in by its owner.

"There are measurements that you establish in a piano for different parts," he says. "And you're creating horizontal lines."

Mika says an instrument might last "around 80 years," but because of the materials that were available more than a century ago, he sees a lot of "really well-made pianos from the 1920s."

He says hearing a piano come alive again is "exciting" and makes it all worthwhile.

"The goal is to bring that instrument to optimal performance," says Mika. "I enjoy doing that."

For more information:
Cunningham Piano
Professional Piano Restorations