Nancy Burkhalter

Nancy Burkhalter has taken a circuitous route to her first historical novel. With a BA in linguistics, she worked at a Berlitz school in Chicago. Wanting more challenge, her friend suggested—apropos of nothing—that she become a piano tuner. She sought out a master tuner, who agreed to take her on as an apprentice. She spent the next year working on piano actions and learning to tune on an old, abandoned piano she’d found in an alley. Her career led to tuning for pianists with the Dooby Brothers, Tom Jones, Pat Metheny, and classical pianist Garrick Ohlsson. She used that income to fund linguistics graduate training and eventually earned a doctorate focusing on teaching writing. She taught composition for many years in the U.S., Germany, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, and Russia (and even tuned abroad, too). She used her degree in journalism as a freelancer for magazines and newspapers. When she embarked on fiction, she enrolled in many workshops and courses. The idea for this book was spawned while listening to her favorite composer, Frédéric Chopin. Who was his tuner? she wondered. And voilà! Her tale was born. The novel has braided together the two strands of her career—tuning and writing—into a book about the famed composer/virtuoso pianist, and his star-crossed tuner during a tumultuous time in France’s history.

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chopin    classical music    france    george sand    napoleon    napoleon iii    vidocq