MOSES LAKE - The Big Bend Community College Music Department recently announced an effort to both preserve its musical history and update its facilities.

The department will host the fundraising event at the Wallenstein Theater, featuring the Big Bend Community Orchestra and the newly formed Collegiate Singers performing works on the theme of winter drawn from the last seven centuries, said the announcement.

The concert is 7 p.m. Monday in the Wallenstein Performing Arts Center.

According to the announcement, the main purpose of the concert is to refurbish the BBCC's seven-foot Baldwin Concert grand piano. The estimated cost of the project is $10,000.

BBCC Music Department Director Patrick Patterson said fixing the piano is a good investment for the college. He said a used grand piano costs about $50,000. He said pianos, like other machines, need tune ups. In this case, he said the piano will be getting a whole new motor, including new strings, felt and hammers.

The piano would be used more if it were in better condition, Patterson said. Lately, the piano was used for the Fantastics performance, but will not be used by the Volta Trio, an upcoming act who will have to use the theater's other piano.

Patterson said after the piano is fixed, other big ticket items for the theater, such as a new curtain, will be bought with raised funds as well.

Patterson said the piano gets quite a bit of use by advanced BBCC music students, Columbia Basin Secondary School, Columbia Basin Allied Arts performances and the Community Concert series.

"We're taking it on because (BBCC) budgets are tight and this is a chance for all different groups that this piano has played for, to be involved," Patterson said.

Patterson said donations have started coming in already. "We're delighted to realize there is an awful lot of support from the community," he said.

Performances in Monday's concert will include pieces by Antonín Leopold Dvo?ák, a Czech composer, Émile Waldteufel's The Ice Skaters waltz and American composer Leroy Anderson. All pieces save one, the oldest one from the 14th Century, are within the winter theme. The oldest piece is a hopeful piece, reminding listeners that spring is indeed coming, Patterson said.

Patricia Dougherty, Columbia Basin Allied Arts executive director, said the CBAA and the Community Concerts rely on the piano, and also on the Wallenstein Theater in general. She said the CBAA would welcome several updates to the theater.

She is interested in conserving the classic piece, and looks forward to updating the theater to more modern capabilities.

"If we're trying to bring in current acts, they require certain technical aspects that we need to fund," that the college does not have the budget to fund, Dougherty said.

Dougherty said the piano is 82 years old, based on the serial number.

She said the piano was bought in 1968, according to school records.

But that is as far as knowledge of the piano goes. The real history "is a puzzlement," Dougherty said.

Wayne Freeman, Patterson's predecessor, said the piano was already at the college when he was hired in 1972. "I never thought to ask" where the piano came from, he said.

"When I arrived in '72 it was kind of beat up. I had it refurbished by a carpenter at the college named Keith Sherwood." Freeman said he had it "sanded down and repainted with several coats of black and varnish." He said that was 40 years ago, and has been in that shape since.

Freeman said the repair of the piano is " a wonderfully important thing."

He said throughout his years as music director he tracked interesting people in the music world. He said he started the musicals and produced them, and hired "the stars and Broadway directors" to play at the college. Notable guests include Bob Fitch, Drama Critics award winning director, the Maynard Ferguson of the Birdland Dream Band, and George Shearing, a "famous famous famous blind jazz piano player."

Patterson was hired about two decades ago and has not discovered where the piano came from, either.