When he graduated from ASU’s School of Music in 1993, Jason Sipe, owner of AZ Piano, was a little too preoccupied to wonder what he’d be doing in 12 years.

“I took over [the business] in April, graduated in May and got married in June,” said Sipe, 39. “My whole life changed in three months. [But] ASU’s always been in my blood.”

So, more than a decade after graduating with bachelor’s degrees in piano and theory composition, Sipe found a way to give back to his alma mater three years ago — by becoming the School of Music’s piano loaner and helping current students by offering better pianos for less money than dealers in the past.

“It’s worth it — hearing people happy and excited about playing the piano,” he said. “To me, that’s fulfilling, to know that you have people happy from what you’re doing.”

ASU, like many universities, gets most of its pianos through loan programs with local dealers because the school doesn’t have the funds to purchase its own. In relationships like these, the dealer agrees to loan pianos to the university for the year if the school holds a public sale afterward, at which the dealer can turn a profit off the instruments.

However, unlike many of these dealer relationships, Sipe said he has loaned ASU the highest-quality instruments he can and sold them for a discounted price to benefit the school.

Part of the revenues from these sales, held this year in the School of Music building lobby from May 21 to 24, will go directly to ASU, which uses the proceeds to buy two or three pianos of its own.

“That’s two less pianos they have to loan each year,” Sipe said.

Sipe said it’s become “harder than ever” to maintain such a generous loan program because of the economic downturn. But to him, the relationship’s benefits to the School of Music outweigh his business profits.

“Our goal is for ASU to become self-sufficient so they don’t have to rely on a loan program,” Sipe said. “That’s the ideal situation for ASU. If we keep on doing this, every year, they get that much closer.”

Rick Florence, the School of Music’s senior piano technician, said piano-loan programs usually benefit the dealers more than the school because the business gets all the sales money plus exposure and
advertising.

However, when the School of Music looked to form a new loan program three years ago, “Jason [Sipe] came in and said, ‘I’m an ASU alumnus, and I don’t want to [just] sell pianos — I want to help out the school,’” Florence said.

Sipe has loaned more than 25 pianos this year — worth more than $300,000 — that fill about 60 percent of the School of Music’s practice rooms. Without them, Florence said, music students wouldn’t be able to learn.

“How well could a science student perform if they couldn’t do their homework?” he asked. “Practice is a musician’s homework, and taking practice rooms away from musicians [because they lack equipment] is like taking textbooks out of the library or a lab away from a science student.”

Losing these resources would have “a snowball effect” of consequences for the School of Music, said Jon Guenther, a 30-year-old piano performance studies graduate student.

Guenther, who works as a piano technician apprentice, said the high quality of the instruments Sipe loans is linked not only to the success of piano students, but also of faculty and other music students who need the pianos for practice or accompaniment.

“If he doesn’t provide these, [then] ASU has to go buy crappy pianos — it’s just not going to work,” he said.

Besides their benefits to ASU music students, Guenther said Sipe’s actions are just a good example of how meaningful the relationship between alumni and alma mater can be.

“I’d like to think that anybody in any profession, at some point along the way, [realizes] somebody helped you to get there,” he said. “That’s what Jason’s doing — he’s just giving back to those who helped him get where he is.”

Reach the reporter at trabens@asu.edu.