The last piano factory (in England)
It makes me a little sad to hear that the last piano factory in the UK, Kemble’s in Bletchley, is closing today, with a loss of 90 jobs (and the skills they comprise). I visited this factory back in the mid-1980s when I was doing research for a film I never got to make on the social history of the piano (instead, it became a chapter in my book Musica Practica).
You might suppose that this closure is yet another sign of the recession, but in fact it reflects a much longer term trend, with the recession merely the last straw. Read more