Oct 14, 2003
With Delivery – By Crane – Of 950-Pound Grand Piano, Distinguished Pianist Joins DePaul Music Faculty On A High Note
Grand Piano Was Lifted into Third-Floor Window of Home Studio Near Campus
Befitting her reputation as a dynamic pianist, new DePaul University School of Music faculty member Aglika Angelova – and her piano – made a grand entrance onto DePaul’s campus Sept. 30. Angelova and her husband, violinist Robert Waters, orchestrated the two-hour move of her 950-pound, 7-foot-long grand piano by crane into the third-floor window of their home studio in the nineteen-hundred block of North Halsted Street. Angelova uses the piano to teach DePaul music students, give private lessons and prepare for performances.
The Hamburg Steinway piano and Angelova have traveled an exciting path to arrive at the highly respected music school. Crafted in Germany in 1924, the piano was purchased in Los Angeles by Angelova, who arranged for its transportation by truck across country Sept. 19 to Chicago, where the piano was kept storage because it is too big to fit through the doors and up the stairs of the third floor walk-up Halsted Street apartment, which Angelova shares with Waters, a distinguished violinist who also has joined DePaul’s faculty. The couple explored various options and settled on having the instrument – sans legs and swathed in blankets – hoisted vertically through the third-floor window of their apartment.
On the sunny and crisp moving day, six workers from Chicago Movers unloaded the piano from a truck and attached it to ropes and the hook of a bright red Gatwood construction crane hired by Angelova to lift the instrument through the window. While the movers secured the piano, Waters and Angelova affixed the wooden platform to the sill on the middle window facing Halsted. Carefully, the crane operator lifted the piano to the sill. From the apartment, movers pulled the piano in through the window, unwrapped it, reattached the legs and set it upright in the couple’s living room. With a smile, Angelova played a tune on the piano and pronounced it “Perfect."
“It’s been a long journey, but it’s worth it,” she said.
The same can be said for Angelova’s and Waters’ journey to join the School of Music faculty this fall.
When Angelova was four and took her first piano lesson in her native Varna, Bulgaria, it would have been hard to imagine that one day she would settle in the United States and co-found a prize-winning chamber group. However, she knew early that being a musician was her destiny.
As a young pianist, she pursued her musical education in Germany, while winning competitions and playing recitals and concerts. After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from the Hamburg Academy of Music, she moved to San Francisco in 1997 to experience the American perspective on the influence of European musical traditions. There, local artists befriended her and introduced her to the area’s professional music community. Angelova began teaching at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, as well as giving private piano lessons to students of all ages. She quickly became a sought-after soloist and chamber music performer in the San Francisco area. Her love for chamber music led her to co-found the Jupiter Trio, which won first prize at the 4th Osaka International Chamber Music Competition in 2002. She is known as a dynamic solo and ensemble performer, as well as a dedicated and insightful teacher.
Angelova co-founded the Jupiter Trio with Waters, whom she married this summer. An active performer of solo, chamber and orchestral repertoire, Waters has presented concerts throughout the United States and abroad. From 1998 until his appointment to DePaul’s faculty, he was associate concertmaster of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra. Waters toured the Eastern United States under the Musicians from Marlboro program and is featured on its 50th Anniversary CD. He has collaborated in performance with such noted artists as Claude Frank, David Soyer, Midori and Felix Galimir, and he has been featured on numerous National Public Radio broadcasts, as well as local radio programs in New York, Boston, Seattle and San Francisco. A vigorous advocate of contemporary music, Waters has worked closely with such composers as Krysztof Penderecki, Gyorgy Kurtag, Luciano Berio, Leon Kirchner and Martin Bresnick. He studied music at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Yale School of Music and the Juilliard School.
Click the links below to view a photo essay documenting the move of Angelova’s piano (photos by Bob Kusel):
Movers carefully unload the piano from a truck.
The piano is attached to the crane’s hook.
