Pianos
Mario Ortigara joined his brother’s music store just two years after it opened. Since 1949, Mario worked alongside his brother Ben who started the store to teach and sell accordions. By 1959, their sister, Mary, joined the team and years later both of Ben’s sons, Mike and Dan, came on board. The...
Mary Ortigara has always had a deep passion for education and was even an English major at Xavier College. After graduation in the late 1950s, she began working in her brother’s music store providing accordion lessons. She soon expanded the lesson program within the store to include other...
Ray Stacy began working for the O.S. Kelly Company in 1978 and has a true sense of pride in the work they do in creating piano plates. Located in Springfield, Ohio, the foundry was established by Oliver Kelly in 1852 to make steam traction engines and farm equipment. They soon began making the sand...
Rita Goldman sat right next to her future husband in high school and recalls with a smile how their friendship turned to a long and loving marriage. She also warmly recalls his passion for the piano business. Harry Goldman was the founder of Fields Piano in southern California, a store that...
Claudio Capponi is a musical instrument technician with a passion for the Farfisa Organ, after all he worked for the company for many years. His interest and dedication to the instrument and its history led him on a fascinating journey to create the Farfisa Museum in Camerano, Italy. Along the way...
Kathy Ford grew up singing in school plays and special programs. Her love of music was furthered years later when she teamed up with longtime piano technician Frank Baxter. Kathy helped Frank on the business side of his Piano World online store and services as well as their piano supplies website....
Frank Baxter is the proud founder of Piano World (PianoWorld.com). Having programed webpages in the early 1990s, Frank used his skill and his insight that the web would soon be growing, to create a platform for his business. As a piano technician, Frank found his online marketing very successful as...
Steve Held was involved in music retail beginning when he was a teenager working at the Music Corner in Waterloo, Iowa. He later worked for West Music in Iowa City for well over a decade and then had his own piano store with his business partner Jim Hall. In the early days, Steve was trained in the...
Gordon McNelly is the Manager for Fields Piano in Santa Ana, California. Fields Piano is the local authorized Steinway dealer, which is a perfect home for Gordon who has been involved with Steinway for most of his professional career. After operating his own piano service/sales business in New...
Jerry Goldman's father, Harry, opened a wholesale piano business inside Marshall Field's Department store in Chicago with his brother back in 1947. Just over a decade later, Harry and his wife, Rita, moved out to California to open their own piano store while kept his roots from the department...