Classy Keys: Steinway & Sons Opens Piano Store in Cherry Creek

Around thirty pianos stand tall and gleaming under the careful placement of lights in a Cherry Creek showroom. All of them exude an elegance...and a hefty price tag. Situated at the side of the showroom on a raised platform is an immense concert grand that can play itself. It's available for purchase — if you have $280,700 to spare.

These aren't just any pianos; they're Steinways, the Ferraris of pianos.

Steinway & Sons just opened its first Colorado factory store, a nearly 3,200-square-foot gallery at 56 Steele Street, where people can come and browse (or just admire) quality pianos. "Colorado is a fantastic market for music," says store manager Betsy Johnson. "There are a lot of great musicians that come out here regularly, and a lot of Steinway buyers and lovers of good pianos."
Steinway & Sons was founded in 1853 and the pianos are still built at the company's factory in New York City; Johnson says each instrument takes over a year to make. "We still use a lot of the processes that we used when we started making pianos well over one hundred years ago," Johnson says. "They create a solid piano that lasts for a long time."

The oldest piano in the Cherry Creek showroom is from around 1943. According to Johnson, it was taken back to a rebuilding facility and given new parts so that it could live to play another day. The cheapest piano in the room is the smallest Essex upright piano, priced at $7,200.
The opening of a store like Steinway & Sons in Colorado is something of a novelty these days, when instruments and musicians alike are veering into more electronic realms, and the most popular place to buy a new instrument around here is Guitar Center. "We see a lot of movement toward electronic instruments," Johnson admits. "They're handy, you can move them around, you don't have to tune them. But with an acoustic piano, there's a connection the player has with the piano that you just cannot have on a keyboard. ...It's not just volume control, it's a whole orchestra at your fingers."

There are currently nineteen Steinway factory stores like the one in Cherry Creek in the U.S., and Johnson says the venture is growing.

So, who's buying these things? Other than piano lovers with the money to spare, entities like the Colorado Symphony, MSU Denver and CU Boulder. "You'll find Steinways everywhere," Johnson says. "They're on stages, in colleges, in performance halls."

The factory stores recently rolled out a Steinways of the Stars tour, in which Steinway pianos played by artists like Lady Gaga and Olivia Rodrigo go on tour, stopping at different Steinway stores around the country to give people an opportunity to see and play the instruments that musicians played.
The store in Cherry Creek just packed up the celebrity pianos it had on display — Olivia Rodrigo's and Jacob Collier's — but Johnson hopes that more starstruck instruments will make their way back to the store soon.

In the meantime, Steinway & Sons holds concert events with its Spirio player pianos, which can be connected with an app to play themselves, often along with concert footage. "Customers can come and watch the Spirio play a concert," Johnson says. "We roll out a TV so you can see the concert in action, and they're usually about thirty minutes long. It's really an opportunity to hear an artist you wouldn't necessarily get to hear."
The store also does piano rentals for events and concerts. While the showroom has regular hours, Johnson recommends that those looking to purchase a piano make an appointment to ensure a quiet time to select an instrument.

Steinway & Sons is at 56 Steele Street; find out more at steinway.com.