Lam Duan

Really beautiful story pointed out to us by one of our supporters:

A British musician by the name of Paul Barton dragged out a piano into the middle of an elephant sanctuary and began playing classical music to a blind elephant named Lam Duan.

Read the full story here: Blind Elephant Starts To Dance Once She Hears The Pianist Playing To Comfort Her

If you love elephants, you can also check out the Sheldrick elephant sanctuary in Kenya and adopt one.

Hammering it Out

You may remember, back in the early stages of this project, that we enlisted the help of Ocean Sole in Kenya to create hammer heads made from recycled flip-flops. The idea was to see whether there might be any locally-available materials to make hammer heads from instead of importing felt from outside Africa. 

Thanks to our new volunteer, Charlie, we should soon be able to test this out. We have no idea at all what it would sound like, but it's exciting to try. He's made amazing progress putting the Lirika action back together, though the flip-flop hammers need a little filing to make the correct size.

 

Helping Hand

Please welcome Charlie to the team. A Londoner living in Kigali. 

He's got an engineering background and wanted to get involved with the project. We're giving him the task of rebuilding the Lirika action so that we can use it to test the prototype. Marion was supposed to be in charge of that but her day job has her pretty busy so we're practising delegation. 

He's got quite a job ahead of him.

Museum of Music

Happy New Year!

We've been a bit late getting started, but we're on the move again. Updates soon.

Meanwhile, check this out. Rwanda is opening a museum of music.

Maybe we could do a display about our piano someday. 

Balance Pins

Paulin has returned from DRC. Thanks to everyone who made a donation. There's still time.

Here he is putting the front rail and balance rail pins in the keyboard. 

Goma Tragedy

News Photograph

We have some very sad news to report at Kigali Keys. 

Three weeks ago a plane went down in Goma, a city in the DRC just across the border from Gisenyi. The plane landed in a residential area. One of the houses it hit belonged to the brother of our chief piano carpenter, Paulin. His brother was at church at the time, but it killed his sister-in-law and their children.

Our thoughts are with him at this time and we are holding a collection for his family. If you would like to contribute, you can do so through our donation button, or contact us for mobile money details. Add Paulin to the PayPal note and we'll make sure he gets it. Our condolences to all those who died and their families.

Paulin, left.

Lirika Rebirth

Rodrigo Putting in Tuning Pins

A much awaited update.

Recognise this lovely instrument? 

It's our original Lirika. The 1968 Soviet piano we took apart to learn how pianos work. We're starting to put her back together. Painted black with a purple frame. Fresh tuning pins are being put in and then she'll come to mine for stringing. We'll be using the same red leather as our new build piano and even attaching some candle sconces. She's having quite a makeover. Even contemplating replacing the white key tops with mirror plastic, just for fun. But we'll see where we get to. If you missed it, the original Lirika bass strings were turned into a giant treble clef.