Bequest from a Quiet Islander Buys Steinway for Arts Center
Backstage at a high school performing arts center in Martha's Vineyard, MA, director and manager Jim Novack, 61, has assembled a
horror show of mangled pianos. A gnarly Hammond, salvaged for $50 from a Vineyard basement some years ago, is crammed into the
darkened corner, next to an upright from the 1950s, with a missing front rudely exposing the instrument’s strings and hammers. To its
right stands an Everett piano, manufactured for institutional use. Its keys stick, sounding flat notes in perpetuity until physically pulled back
in to place. Next to the Everett, under a stark strip light, is a beaten-up photocopier. It’s a macabre scene.
On the other side of the stage, Mr. Novack hopes to conjure up this room’s polar counterpart in time for Christmas. By then a Steinway
Model D concert grand piano should rest, in its tailored wheel truck, under a padded Mackintosh cover and tucked carefully into a specially-
designed, Novack-conceived piano garage.
There are some logistics involved — getting the money transferred in time is one; a municipal organization like the public regional high
school cannot just cut a check for the piano. But Mr. Novack hopes that when the all-Island student chorus performs, they will be
accompanied by the Steinway. He has already ordered the truck.
In his decade-long piano quest, finally at its happy conclusion, Mr. Novack has had an unlikely silent partner. Daniel Alisio, who died in
2001 at the age of 98, left money to several institutions, including close to $100,000 to the performing arts center.
Although immensely grateful for the contribution, Mr. Novack was puzzled by it, having had no previous dealings with Mr. Alisio.
One person to whom the donation was not surprising is oral historian Lindsey Lee, who interviewed Mr. Alisio twice. He was, she
reveals, a serious music enthusiast.
Mr. Novack had been looking for a concert piano with a large enough sound to work in the arts center since he began his tenure in the fall
of 1997. He had all but written off as an impossible dream his search for a concert piano capable of filling the auditorium. Concert-grade
Steinways are hand-manufactured in New York at great expense. Even used, the pianos are extremely valuable.
As an investment, the Steinway must be as close to the intention of Mr. Alisio the music lover as any one single thing could be. Though
they were not friends and never met to devise the plan — if they could have put their heads together surely this piano would have been
their shared brainchild.
Backstage at a high school performing arts center in Martha's Vineyard, MA, director and manager Jim Novack, 61, has assembled a
horror show of mangled pianos. A gnarly Hammond, salvaged for $50 from a Vineyard basement some years ago, is crammed into the
darkened corner, next to an upright from the 1950s, with a missing front rudely exposing the instrument’s strings and hammers. To its
right stands an Everett piano, manufactured for institutional use. Its keys stick, sounding flat notes in perpetuity until physically pulled back
in to place. Next to the Everett, under a stark strip light, is a beaten-up photocopier. It’s a macabre scene.
On the other side of the stage, Mr. Novack hopes to conjure up this room’s polar counterpart in time for Christmas. By then a Steinway
Model D concert grand piano should rest, in its tailored wheel truck, under a padded Mackintosh cover and tucked carefully into a specially-
designed, Novack-conceived piano garage.
There are some logistics involved — getting the money transferred in time is one; a municipal organization like the public regional high
school cannot just cut a check for the piano. But Mr. Novack hopes that when the all-Island student chorus performs, they will be
accompanied by the Steinway. He has already ordered the truck.
In his decade-long piano quest, finally at its happy conclusion, Mr. Novack has had an unlikely silent partner. Daniel Alisio, who died in
2001 at the age of 98, left money to several institutions, including close to $100,000 to the performing arts center.
Although immensely grateful for the contribution, Mr. Novack was puzzled by it, having had no previous dealings with Mr. Alisio.
One person to whom the donation was not surprising is oral historian Lindsey Lee, who interviewed Mr. Alisio twice. He was, she
reveals, a serious music enthusiast.
Mr. Novack had been looking for a concert piano with a large enough sound to work in the arts center since he began his tenure in the fall
of 1997. He had all but written off as an impossible dream his search for a concert piano capable of filling the auditorium. Concert-grade
Steinways are hand-manufactured in New York at great expense. Even used, the pianos are extremely valuable.
As an investment, the Steinway must be as close to the intention of Mr. Alisio the music lover as any one single thing could be. Though
they were not friends and never met to devise the plan — if they could have put their heads together surely this piano would have been
their shared brainchild.
