John served 44 years in the Technical Department of Steinway & Sons, London. Since his introduction as an apprentice in 1964 under both Bob and Mike Glazebrook, he has worked his way to the top.

John’s experience within the piano rebuilding and concert technician business is simply huge. Since his apprenticeship days, he has been both hands on, and responsible for overseeing the rebuilding, repairing and servicing of hundreds of Steinway grand and upright pianos. He has represented Steinway on the concert stage throughout the UK and beyond.

During the 1970’s, he worked during the day as a workshop technician, and also on evenings and weekends as a concert technician working for many, if not most of the big names. At this time there was a particularly busy London recording scene. Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Philips and EMI made legendary recordings with legendary artists: Andre Previn, Claudio Arrau, Daniel Barenboim and Vladimir Ashkenazy to name a few with whom John worked.

In 1982 John took over the management of Steinway’s workshops. In this role he was responsible for all technicians and was not only charged with the day to day running of operations, but all technician training and quality control of both technical and polishing work.

When Mike Glazebrook retired from his role of Technical Manager at Steinway Hall in 1990, John also took over this position, becoming responsible for all Steinway servicing, repair and restoration work throughout the UK.

In the mid 1990’s, John temporarily stepped into the role of managing the tuning department in addition to his other responsibilities, and was subsequently made ‘National Manager of Technical Services’ where he remained until his semi-retirement in 2008.

Although career highlights are too many to mention here, particular memories include working for such artists as Shura Cherkassky and Mitsuko Uchida to Sir Elton John and Sir Paul McCartney.

In addition to undertaking technical and concert preparation work in many exciting places around the world, from amphitheatres in Jordan to the Carnegie Hall in New York, John has written and presented technical seminars for Steinway in Europe and China.

Although John is cutting back on his overseas work, he remains as a Senior Technical Advisor within the GPS team.