A Wave

Mike Toia, our piano tuner from the Big Island, beloved by everyone at Tippet Rise, had tuned for us for decades in Kailua, and in Seattle, when he was passing through to California, where he did some tuning as well. Eventually we talked him into spending time at Tippet Rise in Montana, and before long he was there for the music festival and four or five other times for residencies and off-season recordings.

Mike’s calm and kindness, along with his quirky sense of humor and his complete lack of any kind of agenda except for fishing and tuning began to enthrall our team. They now wear Hawaiian shirts on the day Mike died, as well as at other random times. You can’t remember Mike too much.

We began tuning our pianos in Colorado, and, when the Bravo! Festival tuner left, Mike began tuning for the summer festival in Vail, which featured four orchestras and monumental artists from all over, mainly pianists and violinists. One day the NY Philharmonic disappeared, until someone pointed out they were all down on the river, fishing with Mike.

Jenny van Ooyen, our head of education and chief ranger, who reads Proust in her spare time, has very funny stories about Mike. We all do. Mike wanted to imitate all the signatures on the Bravo! Steinway piano plate, swap it with our own Pro Piano Hamburg D, also from Ricard de la Rosa, and keep theirs in our Tractor Barn in the Vail Valley. He wanted to assemble some 50 Steinway B’s and lend them out around the county. He tuned everyone’s piano for free in many communities, and he brought one of our Steinways to Red Lodge each summer and tuned it for their music festival. He became a fixture there, anchoring the festival with his wry calm.

When Mike died in a traffic accident one summer night in 2024, no one could believe that he was here one day, kibbitzing with Sir Stephen Hough and Marc-André Hamelin, tuning for my recording of the Moonlight Sonata, and then the next morning there was my piano with Mike’s signature warmth and tight unisons, but no Mike. A hundred pianists, festival leaders, orchestra musicians were devasted, everywhere. We heard from London, Vail, New York, Hawaii, Seattle the disbelief that such a gentle angel could have been wiped from the earth so carelessly, with his good friend Tim, a neighboring ranch owner.

Mike’s miracles had been broken, but we all thought of him as Hawaii, the pineapples and coffee he brought as gifts to everyone from his gardens in Captain Cook, and the beaches, tides, and reefs of the islands bring him back to us with each wave.

Ben Wynthein had been building a pond in a distant spot far out on Tippet Rise, and we all decided we should name the pond Mike’s Pond.

I wrote this poem for its dedication. A few of the lines were re-purposed from my poem “Mai Tai Bar,” written back in April of 2022.

It is one of three poems I’ve written in memory of lost friends: “Mirrors,” about the loss of Teddy, our gardener in Kahalu, many years before; and “Solstice,” a poem about the loss of our friend Antón García Abril, composer of thousands of pieces for contemporary Catalonia, including his Six Partitas for Violin Solo for Hilary Hahn, which she debuted at the Kennedy Center and recorded, as well as playing one partita, “Immensity,” for Hamid Shams’ film of that name. The film of “Immensity” and “Solstice,” a film made by his son Antón and daughter-in-law, Débora, are available on tippetrise.org.