The man who made pianos sing for the Philadelphia Orchestra, Sinatra, Lady Gaga, and everyone in between

You may have never heard of Greg Sikora, but if you love music, his work has probably brought you joy, even stirred your soul.

For the past several decades, Sikora has tuned and voiced pianos for the biggest musical artists to play this region, from Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga and everyone in between. He also served as the chief concert piano technician for the Philadelphia Orchestra for many years.

“I had a wonderful career,” said Sikora, now 77. “No one could ask for better. I’m very happy with the extraordinary experiences that I had in life.”

A rare master of a craft that is both science and art, Sikora’s route to that career was hardly predictable.

Starting out in a West Philly trinity house, his family moved to Olney and then to Bucks. Like lots of Slavic kids of his generation, he took up the accordion. The instrument, shall we say, was not his passion. He still can’t read music, he said. At William Tennent High School in Warminster, he was a middling student, and did not go to college. Drafted into the Vietnam War just weeks after getting married young, he lost an eye, and almost lost his life.

As a very young man, he fell into a job at a music store, Taylor Music in Willow Grove, doing whatever was needed. That included helping with the pianos. Which is when it became apparent Sikora had a gift.

But even great gifts need nurturing, he learned.

As a fledgling piano technician, his first concert experience was with the Philadelphia Orchestra in the 1970s.

“It was a disaster,” he recalled.

Too green to know better, he tuned the piano and left. He didn’t stick around to meet the artist and learn how they wanted the piano to sound, or listen to the rehearsal and hear the piano being played in that space.

“The next day I read in the paper that the pianist was wonderful, but the piano went out of tune very quickly,” he said, still feeling the cringe.

From that day on, he stayed through. “If you were a concert pianist and you were in the building, I was in the building. ... That was the way it was for the next 60 years.”

Much of that time, he was working for Jacobs Music, passing the baton as the orchestra’s chief piano technician to Keith Sottovia, whom he recruited and trained, in 2018. Sikora continued tuning for Jacobs until last month, and now works one day a week as a consultant.

Christopher Rinaldi, Jacobs president, said that over time, the number of piano technicians has dwindled, as fewer people have pianos in their homes. But masters like Sikora are rare. He not only has “the ear,” Rinaldi said, but also the ability to grasp what high level artists want, and give it to them.

“He had a tremendous rapport with the artists,” Rinaldi said. “He just had tremendous perspective that probably comes from his earlier life experiences that weren’t necessarily tuning.”

And, boy, does he have stories.

There was the time he made Bob Hope laugh, and crooner Johnny Mathis cooked him and the other backstage “gypsies” a chicken dinner. Sikora will never forget being up close with the incredible instrument that was Luciano Pavarotti’s voice, during a rehearsal.

Rock, pop, jazz, country, comedy, classical — he worked on pianos for scores and scores of some of the biggest artists and entertainers for decades.

Cher, when she wasn’t busy with her lightning fast costume changes, was always friendly and warm, he said. Tina Turner was “just one of the regular people,” gracious to everyone in the crew including the security guards. Johnny Cash and his family were always super down-to-earth. And there was the time he sat with Rod Stewart listening to Peter Nero warming up at the piano. Stewart, with some salty language, kept remarking about how amazing Nero’s playing was.

When Sikora was still a young man and developing his skills, he was sent to work at the Temple University Music Festival in Ambler. There, he met the legendary jazz pianist and composer Dave Brubeck, and the older performer took a liking to the young man. They spent the better part of the day together, walking and chatting.

“He was talking to me like a mentor,” Sikora said. “I have to tell you that it was just extraordinary that while all my friends were in college listening to Dave Brubeck records, I was sitting with him, and he was telling me about life.”

Many years later, when Sikora was chief piano tech at the Kimmel Center, Brubeck played there.

“I said, ‘I don’t know if you remember me or not, but many years ago, you were extremely kind to me,‘” Sikora said. Brubeck remembered it all.

Sikora’s career also brought him some close encounters with the “Chairman of the Board,” Frank Sinatra.

One time, Sikora was tuning the piano Sinatra liked to have in his dressing room when the man himself showed up. The room was tiny and Sikora offered to come back later. But Sinatra told him to carry on. They chatted as the tuner did his work.

Another time, Sikora saved a Sinatra performance — and with not a minute to spare.

Back in 1988, Sikora was the piano tuner at a concert at the Spectrum featuring Liza Minnelli, Sammy Davis Jr., and Sinatra. Frank Sinatra Jr. was the orchestra leader. Minnelli and Davis had finished the first half the show, and Sinatra was due to come out in 30 minutes, when Sikora got word there was something wrong with the piano.

Something in the instrument had broken and the keys needed to be removed to make the repairs. It was a big job, and Sikora called on all his skills. He was still putting it together as Sinatra made his way through the tunnel. But as Ol’ Blue Eyes emerged, and the orchestra began to play his first number — “I’ve Got the World on a String,” everything was perfect, piano included.

Sikora, with no time to leave, sat down on the floor next to the piano for the rest of the concert.

Davyd Booth, a Philadelphia Orchestra violinist, has known Sikora for much of his career, both as the orchestra’s chief piano tech and for tuning the piano in Booth’s home.

“It’s a real art, and he was definitely one of the very best that I’ve known” Booth said. “Besides Greg actually tuning himself, there’s what he’s done to help the profession. You can’t imagine how important that is.”

During his decades with the orchestra, Sikora has worked with five maestros and has much respect for all of them. The first, Eugene Ormandy, he recalled with gratitude, loved young people and was tolerant of their need to learn.

Times have changed, and so have some of the demands on the orchestra.

“Yannick [Nézet-Séguin] is an extraordinary conductor in that not only does he know how to deal with today’s people, but he also has a feeling for the problems of a classical orchestra bringing in enough money to survive,” and doing creative things to help that happen, he said.

One of Nézet-Séguin’s predecessors, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Sikora said, was a maestro from the classic old world school.

One of the tuner’s best stories is about when the orchestra had moved to the recently built Kimmel Center, and everyone had to obtain a security badge. Including Sawallisch.

The security officer who had been processing hundreds of employees all day did not quite realize who was in front of him when it was the conductor’s turn.

“Name,” the man said.

“Wolfgang Sawallisch.”

“Spell it.”

S-A-W-A-L-L-I-S-C-H.”

“What is your position?

“I AM THE CONDUCTOR!” the maestro boomed.

Damage control was summoned, according to Sikora, but not before the security guy almost got blown off his chair.

As demanding as tuning has been, over the years Sikora has managed to do some performing of his own, singing and doing comedy. Aside from consulting work, his time now is devoted to Carole, his first mate and the love of his life, who is having health challenges. They now share a home in Marlton but have, in the past, lived on a boat they owned.

Sikora has also written three books. One is an instructional book about piano tuning, The Pianist-Technician Relationship: A Masterclass for Success. One Life is his memoir, and his most recent, Magdalena, is a novel inspired by his grandmother’s gutsy immigration from Ukraine as a young woman, fleeing Russian invaders.

His years of tuning were hard work, but also a gift. Meeting and mixing with all those famous people has been fabulous, but at the end of each day, for Sikora, the real reward was the work itself.

“It’s been a very satisfying career because it demands the best of you all the time,” Sikora said. “You have to keep learning all the time. You have to keep wanting to do a good job. That’s what’s important — when you’re by yourself and you say, ‘I did a good job today.‘”