What is the Piano Works?
The Piano Works provides complete piano services for the East Metro area of the Twin Cities offering tuning, regulation, repair, voicing, appraisals, and climate control for pianos in the home, stage, and studio. The Piano Works is owned and operated by married couple Mary Kiel, RPT and Mitch Kiel, RPT. We have over 60 years combined experience as full time professional piano technicians.
Our customers include concert and recording artists, performing professionals, teachers, students, and amateur players. We take care of pianos at concert halls, schools and colleges, churches, music festivals, recording studios, music stores, and lots of private homes.
It’s all about you!
Our first priority is you and your piano:
- We promise to always put your needs first.
- We’ll never try to sell you services or stuff you don’t need or want. Not ever.
- We believe an educated customer is a happy customer. We are happy to take time to show you how your piano works, what it needs, and why.
- We’ll work with you to create a customized service plan that fits your individual needs and budget.
- We work weekends and evenings and don’t charge extra when we do.
- Because there’s two of us, one of us is almost always available for last minute scheduling requests.
- We can send you a tuning reminder email or postcard at any interval you choose. You can also request an appointment at any time by phone, email or here at our web site.
- We maintain detailed records of every appointment and every customer on our phones which means we can look up your piano’s entire service history when we’re at your home.
- We can be reached virtually any time via phone, email, or text.
Who are Mitch and Mary?
We love pianos, making musicians happy, and fixing things. But when we’re not working, we’re computer geeks, gardeners, gourmet cooks, and grandparents to the cutest little girl in the world, and more recently, the most adorable little boy!
We’re lifelong musicians. We each started piano lessons at age 9 and have played music ever since. Mary served as a church organist in her teens, but as an adult realized her real love was piano. In Mitch’s younger days, he played guitar, bass, and drums in rock, country swing, and jazz bands.
We met in mid-life at a piano tuner convention. Mary was living and working in the Twin Cities and Mitch in the Seattle area. After dating long distance for a while, we decided to get married and live in Mahtomedi, so Mitch left the rainy Pacific Northwest where pianos stay in tune seemingly forever and moved to the Upper Midwest with weather so extreme that pianos go out of tune more than anywhere in the US (and maybe the world!), and where piano tuners have to work harder than anywhere else. Ah, the price of love…
Today we have a grand piano in our living room on which Mary practices Gershwin and Mitch noodles at jazz standards, and take turns playing silly dance-along duets with our granddaughter.
And then there’s the professional stuff…
We support the local arts community. Mary has served on the boards of the Wildwood Artist Series, Comprehensive Arts Planning Program, and Mahtomedi Area Education Foundation. Before moving to Minnesota, Mitch lived in Olympia, Washington where he was active in The Procession of the Species, Samba OlyWa, and South Sound Kids Drum and Dance. Since moving to Mahtomedi, Mitch also served on the board of the Wildwood Artist Series.
Throughout our careers, we have been active in the Piano Technicians Guild, the foremost organization of piano technicians in the US. PTG’s mission is to provide education and support for professional piano technicians. We are both Registered Piano Technicians (RPTs), having passing PTG’s rigorous three-part exam in tuning, regulation, and repair, and together we team teach tuning classes at PTG conventions and seminars. Mitch has written articles for The Piano Technicians Journal, including a year-long series on how to pass PTG’s Tuning Exam, and helped develop Reyburn CyberTuner, the industry’s foremost piano tuning software.