To inquire about services offered by Marc, please email actiondirectpian@aol.com. You can also reach Marc directly at pianomarc@aol.com.
About Marc Wienert
Marc Wienert is a native of Baltimore, Maryland, and also lived in England and France as a child. Marc credits his mother, Paula Callou, a former prima ballerina with the Nice Opera Ballet and the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, with his love of music and the arts.
After studying languages, film scoring, and performing on guitar, Marc discovered his true vocation at Boston’s North Bennett Street School, where he studied piano technology. After graduation, he left for Paris, where he served as a piano technician for Radio France, the Maurice Ravel Center, the American Cathedral, the Anglican Church, and the Canadian Cultural Center, as well as various conservatories of the local arrondissements. Marc was also the piano technician for students of Yvonne Loriod and Nadia Boulanger, as well as for writer and composer Jacques Barzin.
In 1987, Marc returned to the States to take a position with world-famous Steinway & Sons at their flagship location on 57th Street in New York City. Marc has lived and worked primarily in New York since that time, eventually becoming the principal voicer for several of New York’s commercial piano restorers on 58th Street (also known as “Piano Row”).
In 2000, Marc was appointed Head Piano Technician at the Manhattan School of Music, later being promoted to Director of Piano Technical Services. At the Manhattan School, Marc oversees the maintenance and restoration of close to 200 pianos, with the help of his dedicated staff.
In addition to his duties at MSM, he has tuned for the Fisher Center for the Arts at Bard College, the Weiss Center for the Arts at Bucknell University, Montana State University, Columbia University, Nyack College, Lincoln Center, Merkin Hall, and the Bozeman, MT, Center for the Arts.
Marc is a central character in Perri Knize’s book Grand Obsession: A Piano Odyssey, published by Scribner in January 2008. He is the technician who created the piano voice that Knize falls in love with and is haunted by when she plays a Grotrian grand Marc prepared for Beethoven Pianos in New York, and he becomes her guide throughout her “odyssey.”
Marc is also featured in Jarred Alterman’s award-winning short film, Mott Music, which debuted at Austin’s South by Southwest Film Festival in March, 2005, with its subsequent New York Premier occurring in May of that year and its multiple showings on the Sundance Channel in October 2005 and encore performances in January 2006.
Since 2006, Marc has worked with Zenph Sound Innovations. Beginning with the recording of the debut re-performance of Glenn Gould’s 1955 performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, the re-performance was in the CBC’s famed Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto and was later released by Sony BMG Masterworks. Marc served as the piano voicer for this project, bringing his specialized skills in precisely adjusting piano acoustics. His task for this new recording was unique in history: coordinating one piano’s timbre to another’s from 50 years earlier, to invoke a gorgeous sound – yet one Gould would recognize. Marc is the exclusive piano voicer for Zenph Sound Innovations, including work on Art Tatum: Piano Starts Here; Rachmaninoff plays Rachmaninoff; a re-performance of Oscar Peterson, Oscar Peterson: Unmistakable, to be released in September 2011, and the current Zenph project which features Spanish composers Isaac Albeniz and Manuel de Falla, in some instances using reference recordings of the composers from wax cylinders.
Education
- Diploma in Piano Technology, North Bennett Street School, Boston, MA
- Studies in Film Scoring at Berklee College of Music, Boston, MA
- Bachelor of Arts in Languages, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL
- Graduated from Friends School, Baltimore, MD
- Currently Director of Piano Technical Services, Manhattan School of Music; President, Action Direct Piano Technologies, Inc.