It has been in speed dialing for 50 years

Sydney Opera House opened more than 50 years ago, many music stars, world leaders and awestruck guards visited his iconic rooms.

The outdoor front has been thousands of bare bodies in the name of art and within, inside, was less naked than Arnold Schwarzenegger. It has been renovations and discussions, staged protests and history.

And constantly, all this is Harper Terry.

The piano of the building is tuning in half a century, working behind the scenarios, to ensure that the technical Uber tools are ready for the best musicians in the world.

Father began his family heritage when the Opera House opened in 1973, and ended this week with Terry’s retirement.

The 69-year-olds still remember the first time he entered half-finished opera, as a wide eye.

“The departments rose, but it was very naked,” BBC said, flashing to the edges of the great concert.

“There was nothing inside … it could be seen in the harbor on both sides.”

At the time, he did not pass the most of his life inside the iconic hall. Father, on the other hand, had certainly grand Plans, Terry says.

By then, Liverpool Emigrant Ron Harper had a great reputation as a piano tuner in the Sydney music scene and as an actor.

“It would take me to these disco (kid) in my small school uniform. And I would see all these world actions,” he remembers. Dame Shirley Bassey, Wals Shirley Bassey, Stage icon, and British TV and black black music.

“It was interesting childhood,” Surmises, with a daughter of laughter.

But it is what created a love of music, though particularly interested in doing it.

Somewhat ironically, Terry recognizes the piano for about a year before he admits, instead of battery and his school choir.

It was in 1973, the Opera House officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II, who achieved his father Ron.

“One day, Sydney’s symphony was rehearsing on the ground floor, and the piano was not well tuned in the morning,” says Terry. “One of the villages working here was known to his father.”

Three years later, a 19-year-old Terry was introduced under Ron, when he left the school after the end of a year piano tuning course.

He began rehearsal pianos in the shelter while building his skills and trust, when his father retired later a decade.

These days, it can go to a room and will immediately know that the piano is tuned.

“I always had a good sense of the field,” he says, “(but) very difficult to master”.

And everything is done through the ear.

In front of him he explained to the piano, with 243 chains. In most keys, three separate steel wires combine to make a note.

“They once start diverting from the same frequency, causing these things we call the heartbeat, and that’s what we are tuning when we are listening.”

“Can you hear this?” He asks, enthusiastic.

Allah, I – Pleb music – cannot.

“It’s not like tuning a guitar,” he said, offering a floor.

The process can take 90 minutes and each 30 piano of the building must basically use each time they are used.

“There are so many chains, tuned, especially when you are playing great piano concerts,” Terry explained.

“I refer to F1 race cars … they are really friends.”

It can be a sharp and steady work.

“It doesn’t stop. It’s time for the night, they are early early, it’s usually two to three times a day,” says Terry.

But the advantages, the world’s shoulders brush with some of the most decorated musicians and those who have searched the town tickets.

Terry has also tuned with pianos in other relevant places – Royal Albert Hall and Abbey Road Studios BBC broadcast offices.

But no one operates a place in his heart like the home of the opera.

“It’s a very happy place for me. It’s pretty my life.”

This year, after five decades, Terry decided it was time to hang the tools.

“I was pretty comfortable in Covid, having to work,” he loses.

His son could not be tempted to take a family business. “They are computer things, like good young men,” so Fridays also marked the end of the Harper heritage inside the Sydney opera house.

The premises have opened a new tenderer to tune in pianos – and Terry says he hears some of them from here.

“I think someone owes me a little money … I did the work of six friends,” he said.

Aside from jokes, he accepted his exit as he approached, a wave of emotion came.

“Tuner piano, we are quite lonely,” he noted. “We like to be quiet in a room, because you have to pay attention to what you are doing … (but) I’ve always been working in the cameraaderia.”

“I will lose the place.”