Saied Celebrates 60 Years with New South Tulsa Store
By R. COLE PERRYMAN
Associate Editor
PIANO MAN: Saied Music Company President Bob Saied in the Steinway Gallery at the 9320 E. 71st St. location. Steinway is known by many people as the best crafter of pianos in the world.
GTR Newspapers photo
For the last 60 years, Saied Music Company has offered musicians of all ages and abilities some of the finest brands of instruments available, alongside a knowledgeable and courteous staff ready to help clients find the perfect instrument.
With the addition of a new South Tulsa location, 9320 E. 71st St., to complement Saied’s flagship store at 3529 South Yale Ave., comes a variety of educational programs, services and innovations that help maintain its place among the top music retailers in the nation.
Saied’s new store offers myriad instruments, from harmonicas and bongos to guitars, clarinets and flutes—the whole orchestral lineup of brass, woodwind, percussion and strings are literally right at one’s fingertips.
But perhaps most striking about the new facility is the elegantly designed Steinway Gallery, which showcases some of the most well-respected and expertly-crafted pianos available for purchase. The gallery’s massive floor-to-ceiling windows bathe the pianos in sunlight, and crown mouldings, wood-floors and tactfully placed rugs allow customers to visualize the beautifully crafted pieces in their own home. The effect is truly amazing.
The instrument showrooms are indeed beautifully designed, although it is what the browsing customer doesn’t see that makes special the South Tulsa Saied location. Various music education programs, a digital piano laboratory and multi-purpose recital hall all make this location a haven for anyone interested in expanding their breadth of musical knowledge.
The store offers traditional, instructor-based lessons for nearly every instrument imaginable. Instructors are all hand-selected by Saied Music Company managers, and all come with teaching experience and college degrees—some even hold master’s degrees.
“The number one requirement for our instructors is to come for the fun, and stay for the education,” explains Bryan Elmore, manager of music education at the South Tulsa Saied location. “If our teachers don’t have an orientation to music and fun, they don’t really belong here.”
Elmore continues to explain that he wants the student entering the store to be welcomed by an atmosphere that is bright, cheerful and safe, all conducive to fostering a comprehensive music education.
Students who enroll in lessons at Saied should expect highly individualized instruction directed more by the student’s talent and expressions rather than the instructors. “We find out what students’ needs are and customize our lessons by placing them with the right teacher,” Elmore explains.
“It’s amazing when we see our teachers allow students to let their emotion well up inside them and respond to what they’re doing,” he continues. “We don’t want to force a student into a genre, we want it to swell up from within themselves.”
Musikgarten, the latest addition to the Saied music education arsenal, is aimed at awakening children’s innate musical abilities and providing a foundation from which to explore their musical talents. The program groups children by age, and provides a tactile, hands-on music learning experience.
“We know that 70 percent of the hearing development occurs in the child’s ear between the ages of three and eight. If we take a child during this time and teach them the fundamentals of music and ear training, it’s possible for them to have perfect pitch by the time they’re eight,” says Elmore.
The Musikgarten program is unique in that it does not limit the child to a certain instrument, but rather encourages musical endeavors later in life. “When they finish this program, they should be able to sit down and have music be a part of them, like a part of their soul,” says Elmore.
For those looking to expand their keyboarding skills, Saied’s Roland digital piano lab, headed by Elmore’s sister Kenille, offers group piano and music theory instruction. Targeting everyone from children to seniors, the program allows students to practice on individual digital pianos via headphones, while the instructor monitors their progress from a master computer (also via headphones) and offers individual instruction to help refine students’ technique.
The Roland digital piano lab is also an integral part of a plan Saied is working on to help involve more seniors in the lessons, with Elmore noting recent research that suggests music’s positive influence on seniors suffering from the effects of Alzheimer’s disease. “We’re going to have several different assisted living centers bring a bus to us so that our seniors can participate in this wonderful course.”
To further extend the spirit of music to the Tulsa community, Saied’s new South Tulsa location has incorporated an acoustically-designed recital hall complete with a nine-foot Steinway and Sons Concert Grand piano. The recital hall is available for a plethora of uses, including parties, piano recitals for area teachers and organ recitals to name but a few.
“This room is not just for Saied, it’s for the whole community,” Elmore says.
Saied continues to make plans to help give back to the community that has helped the business thrive for the past half-century and more.
Preparations are currently underway for the establishment of The Steinway Society, a non-profit organization established to help provide music lessons and instruments to those otherwise unable to afford them. The program is expected to be fully operational by the summer of 2007.
For more information on Saied Music Company instruments, lessons or other products or services, visit www.saiedmusic.com or call 252-5541.
Updated 08-23-2006
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