Considering it's been the object of her obsession for the last six years, the Missoula writer is surprisingly reluctant to sit in front of it, at least when company's around. She is, she says, too shy to play much for other people.
Instead, she offers a reporter a chance to play a few strains of “Autumn Leaves” on it, opening the top to let its beautiful, warm sound fill the room.
“Discovering what it was is quite remarkable and fascinating,” said Knize, an environmental writer and reporter who is also the author of the soon-to-be-released book “Grand Obsession: A Piano Odyssey.”
Published by Simon & Schuster, “Grand Obsession” tells the story of a woman on a quest to buy a piano after having an epiphany, at age 43, that she wanted to do nothing but play the piano. And it ends in a metaphysical exploration of music and humanity, the things that drive us and the sounds that stir us.
Looking for a piano in Montana years ago, Knize soon expanded her search to anywhere her writing took her, finally becoming love-struck with the Grotrian she found in a New York City showroom.
“When I played this piano, I found it,” said Knize, who has written for the Atlantic Monthly, Sports Illustrated and the New York Times. “I knew I could never buy it, and I was OK with it, but I could never afford it.”
As it turned out, she could afford it. Barely. Knize wouldn't say how much she paid for her piano, but prices for Grotrian-Steinwegs can range into six figures. By refinancing their modest home, she and her husband, Wendell Holmes, soon had that Grotrian in their living room, which had to undergo some remodeling before the piano would fit.
But when Knize's fingers first struck the keys, she heard nothing of that gorgeous, perfect sound that stirred her spirit in New York.
Why was the sound so “dead”? Where did it go? How could she get it back?
Those questions, and her driving passion to get that sound back, take up the bulk of “Grand Obsession,” a journey that led her to find other sound-obsessed pianists and musicians, to interview the colorful characters who inhabit the piano-technician world, and even to voyage to Germany to meet the piano makers who crafted her Grotrian.
“I started to understand that I wasn't alone in my experiences,” said Knize. “I don't really know what's so seductive. The book became a search to understand what this experience is all about. What are we yearning for? What does it tell us about ourselves and the nature of music?”
And then there is the practical aspect of her dilemma: How would she get the piano fixed? And who knew how to do it?
Knize said the book takes the reader through “three octaves” of a six-year journey: “Girl gets piano, girl loses piano, girl gets piano back.”
But how that sound was restored is part of the mystery of the book, and it's a mystery that unfolded daily as Knize continued to write and report. Knize isn't telling - she'd rather have you read the book, of course - but let's just say that Missoula and Missoulians figure heavily in the development of the story.
“It became a science project,” said Knize. “I got very excited when I realized that that's where it was heading.”
But the most important question “Grand Obsession” tackles, said Knize, is the nature of her single-minded, soulful obsession.
“I was a slave to the sound,” she said. “Why would something like this have an effect on someone to such a degree? ... It became a very metaphysical book.”
Reporter Jamie Kelly can be reached at 523-5254 or at jkelly@missoulian.com
Ivory obsessed
Author Perri Knize will sign and read from her book, “Grand Obsession: A Piano Odyssey,” on Monday at 7 p.m. in the MCT Center for the Performing Arts, 200 N. Adams. The public is invited, and pianists are especially encouraged to attend and provide piano music for the occasion. Wine and hors d'ouevres will be served.
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