The only African-American piano maker in the nation has ‘Empire,’ the Vatican as fans
WASHINGTON» At Catholic University on a warm September evening, a student plays piano at a fundraising dinner to celebrate the school’s new arts council. As musical preludes waft through the candlelit room of donors and university officials, Warren Shadd sits with his back to the performance and listens intently to the piano, which bears his name.
After the final note, he applauds and smiles softly. He wasn’t expecting any problems. But he has been making and selling pianos only since 2012, and everything matters to him — from the shop floor in the Bronx, where he “whitegloves” each instrument, to performances like this one.
Shadd — decked out that evening in a black suit and gold silk tie — is keenly aware that century-spanning companies, such as Steinway & Sons or Bösendorfer or Yamaha, have a head start. “We’re brand new,” he says. “We can’t let anything seep through the cracks.”
If product placement is any measure, then something’s going right. Shadd, who, as far as anyone knows, is the nation’s only African-American piano maker, has his high-end, made-to-order instruments in several Rolls-Royce dealerships, on the set of the television show “Empire” and at the Vatican.
It helps that he is an accomplished musician with a salesman’s drive and a showman’s charm. When he first heard the Holy See was looking for a piano, he wrote Vatican officials a letter. To his amazement, they wrote back. In 2015, three donors gifted an instrument to the Vatican, and Shadd personally delivered a gleaming black grand piano emblazoned with the papal seal.
At the performance in September, Monsignor Massimo Palombella, head of the Sistine Chapel Choir, tells me that he uses the piano for daily rehearsals and that the Vatican has another one on the way for “official moments,” which Shadd plans to deliver in December. He and Palombella chat for a bit. “You see that,” Shadd says later, with a bit of awe in his voice. “You can’t fake that kind of warmth.”
“Starting a piano company is not for the faint of heart,” Shadd says. For the first 10 years, he struggled for funding, and he got help with his first patent only after several lawyers passed on it. (One finally agreed to help if Shadd tuned his daughter’s piano. He did.) Today, Shadd upright pianos start at $22,000, its concert grands at $185,000. Custom pianos can go for more than $300,000.