Spotlight on a BIG secret

Michael Brady at the K Kawai playing benefit concert in December 2024.

​This month the Merc spotlight focuses on a prized possession carefully guarded and secretly shrouded. Did you guess? Have you wondered, like me: “How does a small, unprepossessing community theater in a remote (though beautiful) valley in Washington State far from any population hub afford to possess a concert grand piano?”
 
Here’s what I discovered in our Merc Archives (thanks, Christine Kendall, for championing  this archiving  project):

Sometime  in the spring of 2000, the Board of Directors of the Merc Playhouse was asked to return the Chickering Grand Piano which they had secured on loan. The loan, it seems, had run its course. However, the Merc’s desire to own its own grand piano had not faded.
 
They returned the loaned Chickering as requested, and then sought the help of the Community Foundation of North Central Washington. The Board applied to this benevolent foundation for funds toward the purchase of a grand piano. Turned down for this request, the Board reapplied, and their tenacity earned a $1500 grant toward the purchase of the piano.
 
The community at large was responsible for raising the remaining funds, and soon “everyone” was involved (you know our community.) Local musicians signed up to provide benefit recitals with donations directed to the grand piano fund. Pam and Terry Hunt, John Weeks, and new resident Lynette Westendorf provided evenings of musical entertainment and refreshments for (hopefully generous) donations. Later, Lynette arranged a whole series of fund-raising recitals. She was so invested in this piano project that she stepped forward to find just the “right” piano to enhance the ideal Merc acoustic discovered by Carolanne and Egon Steinebach when they first stepped into the former Mercantile.
 
The Merc has many people to thank for helping us secure our beautiful and cherished ebony K. Kawai Concert Grand Piano, a treasure for decades to come.
 
Cheers to 25 Years!
​Jane Hill

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