For four decades, Chuck Cohen has been tuning pianos and helping people tickle the ivories.
Just about every other week, Owings Mills resident Chuck Cohen drives down to the Port of Baltimore and steps aboard the Grandeur of the Seas. He strides confidently into the central atrium of the cruise ship at about 8:30 or 9 a.m. as passengers are just taking their leave. Most times, he’s off the ship about 90 minutes later.
Cohen is not embarking upon a cruise or making plans to become a stowaway and visit an exotic land. He’s simply tuning pianos.
Grandeur has five pianos, and he tunes three of them during every visit — in the Centrum, the Schooner Bar and the theater — while the pianos in the dining room and royal suite are tuned every three months.
Generally speaking, Cohen is off the ship well before the noon buffet has started. “It’s the humidity and how much use they’ve received that usually determines how much work they need,” Cohen says.
A Philadelphia native, Cohen was born into his family’s retail piano business. His father, Irv, brought the business to Baltimore in 1960, and the family moved here shortly after Cohen completed high school.
Today, Cohen’s brother, Steve, runs the family stores, Jason’s Music Center of Baltimore, which are located in Pasadena and near Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport
A U.S. Navy veteran who served during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Chuck Cohen attended the University of Baltimore, where he earned a degree in industrial management. For a while, he worked for General Electric, earning a good living and supervising a few dozen employees.
But his father suggested that he learn the family trade — tuning pianos. Cohen, who says he’s not musically inclined, decided to try it.
“I fell in love with it,” he says. Cohen studied with a concert-level tuner for two years before he took the Piano Technicians Guild exams and passed.
“I’m 75 this year and I love going to work every day,” says Cohen, a grandfather whose wife, Ann Amernick, is an acclaimed chef and cookbook writer. “I like the people, I like the mechanics of it and I like working with my hands.”
A registered piano technician, Cohen uses a sophisticated Electronic Tuning Device in his work. On almost all occasions, the pianos are tuned from one note, a 440 tuning fork, so that they all sound the same.
“The ETD doesn’t change in cold or warm weather, and unlike a tuning fork, it doesn’t nick or dent if you drop it,” Cohen says.
Cohen has now been tuning pianos for four decades, and some of his clients he has been servicing every six months since 1979.
About 15 years ago, a representative from Royal Caribbean Cruises called to ask him to tune Grandeur’s pianos.
“I’ve seen at least seven musical directors come and go,” says Cohen. “Dave McCleod is just the most recent. He’s been the musical director for maybe the last three or four years. They just get transferred from ship to ship. I seem to be the only constant.”
Some of Cohen’s other clients include the Belvedere Hotel, the Four Seasons Hotel Baltimore, the Charles Towers and many local churches.
Sondra Goad, who runs the Belvedere’s catering and restaurant operations, says she will only “trust my grand [piano] to Chuck. He’s honest, reliable and a true artisan. Our wedding guests expect nothing but the best when they are at the Belvedere, and Chuck ensures the piano is perfectly tuned every time.”
Cohen also tunes the more than 25 pianos at Oak Crest senior living community in Parkville, from uprights to a baby grand. Nadine Wellington, manager of community resources and volunteer programs at Oak Crest, calls Cohen “amazing. He’s here four times a year and we have concerts every weekend, so people depend on him. He knows the pianos’ personalities.”
Top photo: Owings Mills resident Chuck Cohen has been tuning pianos on the cruise ship Grandeur of the Seas for the past 15 years. (Photo courtesy of Royal Caribbean Cruises)
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