With more than 25 years of hands-on experience, Aaron Sandner
has built his name on doing right by every piano he touches.
He spent the better part of a decade — from 2015 to 2022 — as
lead piano technician at Northern Arizona University, a role
that placed him at the center of institutional and
concert-level instrument care: tuning, voicing, and
rebuilding pianos under the real demands of performance and
conservatory schedules.
That standard didn't happen by accident. Aaron has trained
directly with three of the most respected names in the piano
world — Steinway & Sons in New York, Yamaha in Los
Angeles, and Shigeru Kawai — and holds his RPT (Registered
Piano Technician) certification as an active member of the
Piano Technicians Guild. He brings that same concert-level
discipline to every piano he services today, whether it's a
family upright or a stage-ready grand.
Growing up around musicians taught him this much: a piano
isn’t just tuned — it’s understood.
None of it started in a workshop. Aaron grew up underneath a
piano, not beside one. His father was a professional jazz
pianist, and in the Sandner household, the piano wasn't
furniture tucked in a corner — it was the instrument
the whole house moved around. Rehearsals ran late.
Standards got worked out note by note. The particular hush
right before a downbeat became as familiar to Aaron as
anything else in childhood.
That upbringing gave him something no trade certificate alone
could: an instinct for what a piano is actually supposed to
sound like, and a respect for the instrument as a living
partner to the musician playing it — not just a machine of
hammers and strings.
It's a level of training and artist-support experience that's
genuinely rare in a piano technician serving Northern Michigan —
concert-hall standards, brought home.
