Great Barrington — Ever since he was a young child, Connecticut native Terence Flynn has had a love for pianos and their sounds. “Since I was a little child, there has always been a piano in my house,” Flynn told The Berkshire Edge. “Since I was a little kid, there was a piano in the house, and I loved playing. From my earliest days, I was always with a piano.”

Flynn is a master piano technician and the owner of Flynn Pianos Sales and Service, located at 11 Hemlock Hill Road. He graduated summa cum laude with a BA in music and liberal arts from Western Connecticut State University.

Flynn said that, while he can also play guitar, pianos, and the art of keeping them in tune and restoring them, has been a major part of his life. “I was a freelance musician when I was young, and somewhere in my early 20s, I was dating this girl whose father was a piano tuner who did minor repairs,” Flynn said. “One time he got me to work on the actions in the piano in his little workshop, and I realized how much I loved to work the actions.” (The “action” of a piano is the mechanism that makes the key’s hammer strike a string when it is pressed.)

Flynn said that being a piano technician is very different and much more complicated than being a piano tuner. “A piano technician is supposed to know how everything works in a piano,” Flynn said. “What a piano tuner does is tune, with some minor repairs. A piano technician is supposed to know how to do any kind of repair, and this includes a full rebuilding of a piano. To learn how to be a tuner takes about a year. To be a piano technician takes from five to 10 years of work and experience under a master. You have to have a lot of experience working on concerts or high-end pianos to learn how to do it well.”

Over the years, Flynn has worked for multiple clients restoring pianos, including the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center and Saint James Place, and Flynn was the piano technician and tuner for over 30 years for legendary jazz musician Dave Brubeck, who lived near the Berkshires in Wilton, Conn. “Working on pianos for Dave was always a huge pleasure,” Flynn said. “He always was just a terrific guy, very unpretentious. He was always a good teacher, and I can’t say enough good things about him.”

Flynn said that he has worked on a variety of different pianos, including antique and new models, over the past 50 years since he became a piano technician.

He has also worked with various musicians over the years in many different contexts. “One time I was working with Russian concert pianist Vassily Primakov in New York City for two weeks of recording sessions,” Flynn said. “We ended up working on one of the coldest nights in the winter in New York City. In the recording hall itself, it was around 40 degrees, and you could see your breath because it was very cold. But for him, it was nothing because he grew up in Russia. Vassily told us that, when he was 13, he toured Russia and had to play concerts where the temperatures were way below freezing. His teacher would give him a little sip of vodka to improve the circulation of his fingers. For me, playing in a very cold hall was very memorable, but for Vassily, it was nothing at all.”

Flynn moved to Berkshire County from Connecticut in 2012, but he worked in the area on concert pianos for decades. “I got to like the area so much that I wanted to move here,” Flynn said. “When Harlan Ross pianos moved out of this space, I saw an opportunity to move into the area.”

From his space in Great Barrington, Flynn sells a variety of pianos, including grand and upright pianos, along with renting out pianos for concerts and home use. “When I opened in Great Barrington, I intended to hire just one additional person to work with me and learn the business,” Flynn said. “Within two years, business continued to grow and I needed to get more people, and we’ve grown to six full-time employees.”

Flynn also services and repairs pianos at his workshop, which he said has grown from 500 to 3,000 square feet.

He said that, while piano sales have decreased in recent years, and despite the advent of synthesizers that mimic piano sounds, there is nothing like the sound of a real piano. “There is no substitute for a piano if you are playing classical music, and it’s not even a good substitute if you are playing jazz or even pop,” Flynn said. “If you are starting to learn piano, get a real one and not an electronic synthesizer. And if you want to learn how to play, learn from a real human being who will sit with you, inspire you, and help you appreciate the possibilities of a piano.”

For more information about Flynn’s Piano Sales and Service, visit its website.