The Story of My New-to-Me Shigeru Kawai

As you might recall, a few weeks ago I sold my grand piano with the plan to upgrade to something newer. In the interim, I’ve been depending on my digital pianos. I’ve really missed having an acoustic piano — even more than I thought I would!

I’m happy to say that my piano search is over and I’ve purchased a fantastic piano. Here’s the whole story!

Throughout the spring and early summer, a colleague-friend and I visited various piano stores together. We generally like to get together about once a month to eat out, and it was fun tacking on visits to local piano stores. It was very helpful to play lots of pianos, because I wanted to gain a better sense of what I was looking for in a piano.

At the local Kawai gallery, I had the opportunity to play a Shigeru Kawai piano for the first time. I absolutely fell in love with the sound of it. They had a pre-owned Shigeru piano there, in addition to two new models. I was very interested in the used one, but I wasn’t ready to buy at that point because I had not yet sold my old piano.

A few weeks later, when my old piano was bought by a church in the U.P. (Upper Peninsula of Michigan), I was in a better position to buy — but unfortunately, the pre-owned Shigeru had sold in the meantime as well.

However, I couldn’t get the sound of that Shigeru out of my head. I knew I had to find another used one — either 5’11” or 6’2″ — in my budget. (In case you aren’t familiar with Shigeru Kawai pianos, I’ll share more about them at the end of this blog post.)

I took to the internet and found one listed on the website of a music store called Schmitt Music in Bloomington, Minnesota. My husband and I found cheap airline tickets for me to make a short two-day trip there and back, from a Sunday to a Monday.

It might seem crazy that I traveled to go check out this piano, but I really was quite positive at this point that a Shigeru Kawai was my dream piano! My goals with upgrading my piano were to: buy an excellent instrument that I will be happy with for the rest of my career, pay with cash (I don’t like debt), and buy the best piano I could with the money I had saved plus a financial gift my mother-in-law generously surprised me with to use towards my piano purchase.

I had played many wonderful pianos at various stores, including the Yamaha C-series, certain Steinways (they are all so different!), a Schimmel, a Petrof, and a memorable Mason & Hamlin. Pianos are a very personal thing. For example, one store had a $150,000 Bösendorfer, but I would take a Shigeru Kawai over that any day. I was smitten.

My trip to Schmitt Music went well. I was happy to find that their 2000 Shigeru Kawai SK-2 (5’11”) had the same wonderful sound as the one I had played at my local Kawai gallery. I could sense that it needed some regulation work, but I knew that could be remedied by my piano technician.

Schmitt Music, by the way, is a really neat music store! In addition to being a Steinway store and carrying used and consignment pianos, they are a well-known carrier of instruments from a wide variety of makers. The store featured beautiful rooms for various instrument families: a flute room inspired by luxury jewelry stores, a brass room with dozens of trumpets displayed on a glass wall, a violin room featuring wood cabinetry handmade by the company’s owner, a clarinet room modeled after a coffee shop, and a saxophone room inspired by a speakeasy. The store also has a large section of sheet music to browse, rooms for music lessons, and a recital hall.

Back at home, I arranged for an independent piano technician in the St. Paul area to evaluate the piano for me at the store, just for my own peace of mind. (It’s easy to find a registered piano technician using the Piano Technicians Guild‘s helpful website.) After receiving her report, I reached out to the salesman to make an offer on the piano.

The salesman put my offer before the family selling the piano. (The piano was there on consignment; it had been the studio instrument of a piano teacher who had passed away.) Unfortunately for me, the family did not take the offer and said the price was firm.

After thinking it over, I decided that price was higher than I was willing to pay after taxes and taking into consideration the cost of having the piano moved 10 hours from Minnesota to Michigan. So, I let the salesman know I unfortunately had to walk away. I was disappointed, especially after having traveled to see the piano. But I had to be okay with the fact that perhaps this just wasn’t meant to be my piano.

In a turn of events, however, the sales rep talked to the sellers further on my behalf and they came back with a price closer to my offer. I agreed to that price, and we made the purchase official a day later. This was a rollercoaster of a week emotionally, but I was thrilled that the piano was mine after all!

The next task was finding a piano mover, which proved more challenging than I expected. The salesman was kind enough to get an initial round of quotes. One quote in particular was very competitive, but they would not be in the area to pick up the piano until mid-September and then would deliver the piano to me in mid-October. I did not want to wait three months to get my new piano, so I decided to get another round of quotes from additional piano movers.

Because the salesman at the store was getting married that weekend and I didn’t want to burden him, I did my own research and reached out to about a dozen other companies I found online.

One of them, Metroplex Piano Moving, happened to be planning to be in Arkansas before heading to Michigan over the next week, and they were very willing to stop in Minnesota first to pick up my piano. I was thrilled at the thought of having my piano within days rather than months, so I booked with that company. They did a flawless job delivering my piano safely.

Here is my new-to-me piano in my new home!

It is thrilling to hear that Shigeru sound in my piano room. There is so much range to the sound, and the action is so responsive. The sustain seems to last forever, and the bass register sounds like a much bigger piano than 5’11”. I feel blessed to own this piano. I’m still pinching myself!

Now that the piano is here, I’ve found myself appreciating even more the story behind the Shigeru Kawai line. In case you aren’t familiar with Shigeru pianos (I wasn’t, until recently), here’s a little history lesson. 🙂

The Kawai piano company was started by Koichi Kawai (1886–1955) in the 1920s. His son-in-law, Shigeru Kawai (1922–2006), started working in the company as a lowly factory worker and worked his way up in the company. He took over as president at the age of 33 after Koichi suddenly died in 1955.

The ambition to add a premium-line piano to the Kawai line-up began in the early 1970s. The company began stockpiling wood — aging timber for beams, soundboards, and rims — even before any designs existed. The goal was to create the premier piano of Japan, competitive with the world’s best European and American instruments.

In Japanese culture, attaching both given name and surname to a product is a personal pledge. By naming the line Shigeru Kawai, the chairman staked his family honor on it.

Shigeru’s son, Hirotaka Kawai, became president of the company in 1989, with Shigeru continuing on as chairman from 1990 to 2002. Shigeru spent those chairman years developing the premium line. The Shigeru Kawai (SK) series launched in 1999 under Hirotaka’s presidency but as Shigeru’s personal project. Shigeru pianos feature a variety of innovations designed to give them a responsive action and singing tone.

There are six models available in the Shigeru series, all grand pianos, and all hand-built at the Ryuyo Grand Piano Facility near Hamamatsu by a small group of Master Piano Artisans (MPA). The SK-2 is a 5’11” salon grand; the SK-3 is 6’2″; the SK-5 is 6’7″; the SK-6 is 7′; the SK-7 is 7’6″; and the SK-EX is a 9’1″ concert grand. Each Shigeru Kawai piano ships with a certificate bearing the signature and biography of the MPA responsible for it. In fact, if you purchase a brand-new Shigeru, an MPA will come to your home within the first two years for concert-level regulation, voicing, and tuning.

The Kawai company continues today under the leadership of Hirotaka’s son, Kentaro Kawai, and is poised to celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2027.

Although Shigeru Kawai pianos may not yet have the same level of name recognition as some other top-tier brands, they have been gaining recognition on the international stage: the SK-EX was chosen as the official piano of the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition and has been selected by finalists and prizewinners at major competitions.

If you ever have the opportunity to play a Shigeru, I hope you’ll give it a spin!

My Shigeru Kawai SK-2 was the 9th of 100 pianos built in 2000, as this plaque denotes.

One of the things I like about this particular piano is the unique styling of the legs and music rack.

I love the look of historic pianos, so I really appreciate this nod to the past.

It feels great to have an acoustic piano in my home again. And this one already feels like it belongs here. I’m having a great time getting acquainted with my new piano and introducing it to my students.

Thanks for reading my story and allowing me to introduce my piano to you! I’m sure you’ll be seeing it in the background of many blog photos for years to come.