Piano Man – Hulme in tune with CT music realm for five decades
Updated: 4 days ago
• Piano Company a Mainstay for Two Decades
This feature has received an SPJ award and was first published in our monthly Today Magazine in September 2023 — facts have been vetted through that time frame — the story is still relevant and timeless today
By Bruce Deckert
Today Magazine Editor-in-Chief
A historical question: What is different about Connecticut's Farmington Valley today compared with the 1960s?
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If you were born after that notable decade, or if you didn’t live in the Valley then, you can still ascertain the answer — for you can ask someone like Tony Hulme.
And if you have the opportunity to ask him, your question will be not only a historical inquiry about life in the Valley six decades ago, but also a personal and business inquiry — because Hulme has personally resided in the Valley for nearly 60 years, and he is the owner of a long-standing local business, Hulme & Sweeney Piano Service.
Initially located in Bloomfield and now based in West Simsbury, Hulme & Sweeney is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year — yet Hulme has owned two other music stores, dating back more than five decades.
A native of Connecticut, he earned a Piano Technology diploma from the North Bennet Street School, a prestigious trade school in Boston, and moved from Massachusetts to West Simsbury in 1965.
In those days, the Farmington Valley was a slower-paced and less populated place. One prime example: In the 1960s, traffic congestion in the Valley was essentially a nonissue.
“When I traveled on Route 10 from Simsbury to Farmington to tune the pianos at Miss Porter’s School, I would barely see one car at 8 o'clock in the morning,” Hulme says. “Route 44 was a two-lane road, before I-84 was in the Hartford area. There was nothing here. This was all farm country.”
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Imagine that — rush-hour traffic on Route 10 throughout the Valley with virtually no cars on the road.
These days, Hulme is 83 years young, and he is still tuning pianos. This begs a question: Why hasn’t he retired? His answer is straightforward.
“I love working on pianos and servicing pianos,” he says. “When I was a kid, I worked for a piano store, sweeping floors and helping deliver pianos — that’s how I started.” His company website echoes this sentiment: “Working on a piano is a labor of love.”
By the way, Hulme is pronounced with a long-U sound, a fitting serendipity given the onomatopoeia-like connection with the long-U in tuning — one of his lifelong professional pursuits.
Hulme & Sweeney technicians offer piano tuning and repairs, piano rebuilding and restorations, piano appraisals, and a variety of pre-owned pianos for sale, per the company website — including Baldwin, Kawai, Mason & Hamlin, Steinway and Yamaha.
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When Hulme first moved to West Simsbury, he worked as a piano tuner for Houston & Sons (pronounced: House-ton) of West Hartford. In 1967, he established Clavier Music with Larry Gillman in the SimsburyTown Shops.
“In terms of commercial space, that’s all that was in town then,” Hulme says. Today, the SimsburyTown plaza is home to Starbucks, Popover Bistro, Berkshire Hathaway and Andy's Italian Kitchen, among other businesses.
Gillman and Hulme were co-owners for a few years until Gillman opted out of the partnership, making Hulme the sole owner. “Larry Gillman was a genius with sheet music,” says Hulme. “He was a teacher at Westminster School and the head of the music department — he has since passed away.”
Clavier Music was a full-line music retail store — a clavier is defined as a keyboard instrument — that sold pianos, guitars, band instruments and sheet music, while offering music lessons for the same range of instruments. Over time, Clavier served more than 400 students, Hulme says. If students didn’t own an instrument, they could rent one.
Clavier also sold records (aka albums) by popular Top-40 bands and musicians — back in the days when albums were available not on CDs or MP3 players (such as the iPod) but instead on thin black plastic disks with spiral grooves called records that, yes, required a record player for listening pleasure. Granted, for Generation X and the Baby Boomers and earlier generations, the preceding sentence is unnecessary, yet for Millennials and subsequent generations the record explanation is likely essential.
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LEADER OF THE BAND
In terms of band instruments, Clavier initially provided about 50 instruments as rentals, and that number grew exponentially to about 1200 — no kidding. Specifically, Clavier rented clarinets, flutes, trombones, trumpets, saxophones and string instruments such as cellos and violins and occasionally guitars.
“We worked with school systems,” Hulme says, “and rented instruments for school bands in Greater Hartford.”
Clavier also sold the above instruments, of course, along with pianos, the big-ticket item. In addition to band-instrument lessons, Clavier offered organ classes for a dozen or more people on a weeknight. Hulme was one of the teachers.
Meanwhile, the company’s presence and reputation in the sheet-music realm likewise flourished.
“Our sheet-music business was gigantic,” Hulme notes. “It was probably the biggest sheet-music business in the state of Connecticut — people would come from New Haven and all over the state. We sold to churches and institutions, schools and colleges. Church organists and choir directors would come to the store and select from our large library of sheet music.”
Circa 1974, Hulme moved Clavier Music from Simsbury to the Caldor shopping plaza in Avon on Route 44, leasing the building at 176 West Main Street aka Route 44 — now this edifice is the home of Carpetland of New England and Paul Howard's Valley Music School. Howard opened his school in 2009, but he began his music teaching career as an independent instructor at Clavier in 1979.
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“The Caldor plaza in Avon was the first shopping center that went up in the area — there was almost nothing else on Route 44" — Tony Hulme
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As an aside, if you’re wondering why circa precedes the year in the preceding paragraph, perhaps you’ve never tried to recall with specificity the date of an event that occurred about five decades ago. The word circa is synonymous with the words about and approximately, and when a Today Magazine reporter asked Hulme about the chronology of certain aspects of his business history, he commented at times that he wasn’t exactly certain and offered the caveat, “It was about [insert year here]” — and after several answers with that qualifier, he quipped, “Say about about everything!”
But we digress, so let’s return to our regularly scheduled program — and to the earlier theme of the Farmington Valley as a more undisturbed and less developed region 50 to 60 years ago.
“The Caldor plaza in Avon was the first shopping center that went up in the area,” Hulme says. “There was almost nothing else on Route 44.”
Once more, imagine traveling through the Farmington Valley along Route 44, and instead of driving by countless buildings and commercial plazas and parking lots, you were surrounded by countless trees and meadows and open space.
Circa 1979, Hulme purchased 176 West Main Street. By the way, Clavier’s role as an official Baldwin Piano dealer had prompted the move to Avon about five years before. Baldwin and Steinway are two of the top piano companies in the country, according to Hulme.
“The Baldwin franchise was up for grabs in the Hartford area and I finally became a Baldwin Piano Company dealer — I was lucky to get it,” he says. The catch: Baldwin required Hulme to relocate Clavier Music in Avon: “They said, no, you can’t stay in Simsbury, you’ve gotta go to a more traveled place,” he recalls.
Later, Hulme opened a second Clavier store in Wethersfield.
DYNAMIC MUSICAL DUO
When Hulme was the owner and manager of Clavier Music, he hired an employee named Randy Sweeney, and they have worked together since then. In case it isn’t clear — yes, Randy lends his name to the business known as Hulme & Sweeney Piano Service that was established in 2003.
Sweeney, 71, is a West Simsbury neighbor of Hulme.
“He answered a Clavier Music ad and I gave him a job in the early 1970s,” says Hulme. “He had just graduated from UConn.”
Hulme is the company’s majority owner. Sweeney and Hulme’s oldest son, Tony Hulme Jr., are equal part-owners. A longtime West Simsbury resident, Tony Jr. and his family moved to Maine in early 2022, so he is no longer involved in day-to-day operations.
Tony Sr. and his wife Evelyn (aka Evie) raised four children, initially in West Simsbury and then in Simsbury. They have two sons (including Tony Jr.) and two daughters, whose names are being withheld for the sake of privacy. Evie has worked part-time in the office since the company’s inception — currently she works one day per week.
Today, Tony Sr. and Evie are West Simsbury residents once more, having lived in town since 1965.
Let’s return to the career history of Tony Hulme Sr. — the Baldwin Piano Company wanted him to open a third Clavier store in Greater Hartford, but Hulme went in a different direction: He sold Clavier Music in 1982 to Carl Bulgini, who also owned Saybrook Piano & Organ Company in Old Saybrook, Conn.
At this juncture, the story enters the ballpark of the classic baseball saying, “You can’t tell the players without a scorecard” — or, keeping in tune with the music theme, a complicated game of musical chairs ensued.
“Bulgini was only interested in Clavier’s piano and organ business,” says Hulme. “He didn’t want the band-instrument business or the sheet-music business.”
After buying Clavier, Bulgini maintained the Clavier brand name and the Baldwin dealership at the Avon location. However, he sold the band-instrument component to George Sullivan and the sheet-music component to Jamey Roberts and his wife Vera, according to Hulme. George and Jamey had been Hulme’s employees at Clavier’s Avon store.
Further, Bulgini relinquished the Wethersfield store, handing that baton to Harold Niver, who had managed the Wethersfield location as Hulme’s employee. Niver called his new store Sherlock Piano & Organ. Meanwhile, Jamie and Vera started a new venture called The Music Score — focusing on sheet music, of course — in a small section of the Wethersfield building newly occupied by Sherlock Piano & Organ.
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“Our sheet-music business was gigantic — it was probably the biggest sheet-music business in the state of Connecticut .... Church organists and choir directors would come to the store and select from our large library” — Tony Hulme
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George Sullivan, a longtime Simsbury resident, had enjoyed a distinguished career at Clavier. He managed the Avon store’s band-instrument department for Hulme.
“I sent him to school to learn band-instrument repairs,” says Hulme. “George became one of the best flute repair technicians on the East Coast.”
As part of the Clavier sale agreement, Hulme and Sweeney became Bulgini’s employees in Avon for four years, from 1982-86, but Hulme maintained ownership of the building at 176 West Main Street in Avon. In 1986, Hulme’s second ownership venture began when he established Piano & Organ Warehouse in Bloomfield, leasing a place on Cottage Grove Road. That same year, he sold the Avon building to Bulgini.
“The timing was fortuitous,” Hulme says of the sale. “I’ve had a lot of miracles, and that was one of them.”
After the property sale, Sullivan managed his original Valley Music business, the predecessor of Paul Howard’s music school, at Clavier’s Avon location via a sublet agreement with Bulgini. Meanwhile, Howard continued as a music instructor in conjunction with Valley Music — remember, he had taught music at Clavier. More than two decades later, when Sullivan died in 2009, Howard debuted Paul Howard’s Valley Music School in the same West Main Street building in Avon.
In 2003, Hulme sold Piano & Organ Warehouse to Tony Falcetti, the owner of Falcetti Music, and launched his third ownership venture — you guessed it, Hulme & Sweeney Piano Service.
Tony Falcetti maintained the Piano & Organ Warehouse brand name after the sale. Hulme continued to lease the Bloomfield building, subletting a larger space to Falcetti while running Hulme & Sweeney in a smaller section of the building.
“The music industry is a small world,” says Hulme. “We did all the service and tuning for Falcetti’s pianos — that was part of the agreement.”
Based in Springfield, Mass., Falcetti Music opened a Simsbury space in 2022. The company previously had locations in Connecticut that closed years before the Simsbury grand opening.
For a decade, Hulme & Sweeney’s home was in Bloomfield until the move to West Simsbury in 2013.
Whew, let’s pause to catch our breath — indeed, the musical-chairs comparison is fitting given the complex maestro-like maneuvering required of Hulme and his business contemporaries to achieve their desired objectives.
MARINE MUSIC
Before Tony Hulme Sr. pursued a professional career as a music store owner, he enjoyed a four-year tenure in the world of military music. As a 20-year-old, he enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1960 and served in the military police for a few months. Then he joined the renowned U.S. Marine Drum & Bugle Corps via a competitive audition.
The Marines feature four Drum & Bugle units — in Washington D.C., North Carolina, San Diego and Okinawa, a group of islands that’s part of Japan.
“The main Marine Corps band is in D.C.” says Hulme. “That’s the top one — you’ll see them on TV.”
Hulme was stationed in Okinawa for about two years and then was assigned to the band at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, traveling as a promotional musical arm of the Marine Corps.
“That’s what I did for a job,” he says. “I loved it — it was fantastic. I played the bugle, a two-valve bugle, like a trumpet.”
After serving in the Marine Corps from 1960-63, Hulme returned home to Connecticut and sought employment at the aforementioned piano store of his youth, the Greenwich Music Store, where he worked in the summertime and on weekends from age 13 through high school, and up until he joined the Marines at age 20.
Store owner Irving Kauffman asked Hulme a question that changed the trajectory of his life: “When I went back to Kauffman to see about getting a job, he said: Instead of being a clerk behind the counter, how about becoming a piano technician?” Hulme decided to answer in the affirmative.
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“The timing was fortuitous — I’ve had a lot of miracles, and that was one of them” — Tony Hulme
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“That’s when I went up to the North Bennet Street School in Boston, one of the best piano technician schools in the country,” he says. “Bill Dowd was a harpsichord builder in Cambridge — while going to school in 1964 and ’65, I worked for Dowd in the afternoons.”
In 1965 Hulme moved to West Simsbury — from Bedford, a Boston suburb — and opened Clavier Music two years later. Kauffman gave the new store a major assist.
“When I opened Clavier, he was retiring and closing his store,” Hulme notes. “He gave me his cash register, shelving, a glass-front guitar cabinet, all for free. Kauffman was instrumental in helping me start Clavier. He was the Baldwin dealer in Greenwich — I learned a lot from him.”
The music realm in America has changed drastically since the early Clavier days. Hulme cites a magazine article he read about five years ago that reported these numbers: In 1971, more than 760,000 new pianos were sold in the United States. In 2017, about 30,000 new pianos were sold. The decline has been attributed largely to the proliferation of youth sports.
“It was nothing to sell 10 pianos on a Saturday,” Hulme recalls. “Organized sports have really cut into music. Kids 5 and 6 years old have multiple practices every week. Computer and video games are also a factor — young people aren't taking music lessons nearly as often.”
TUNEFUL UCONN CONTRACT
Today, Hulme & Sweeney has a tuning contract with UConn. The university has 125 pianos in Storrs, according to Hulme, and most of them are Steinway pianos.
“We’re there almost every day from September through May,” he says. “Some UConn pianos are tuned four times a year and some are three times, and they have tuning needs for all their concert work and recitals.”
Hulme & Sweeney technicians have also serviced Baldwin and Steinway pianos at the celebrated Tanglewood Music Center in Stockbridge, Mass.
Besides the two principals, the company has two full-time and two part-time employees. The full-timers: piano technician Josh Cantania of Simsbury and office manager Alysa Carlozzi. The part-timers: office assistants Chris Rossetti of Simsbury and Joan Baffo. Three more piano technicians serve as independent contractors: Peter Hickey, Tom Thornton and Jamey Roberts, who formerly managed The Music Score in Wethersfield.
Hulme was a founding member of the Avon-Canton Rotary Club. He served as president of the Avon Chamber of Commerce and as a board member for the University of Hartford's Hartt School of Music. Hulme & Sweeney is a longtime stellar member of the Better Business Bureau.
Oh, in case you’re wondering: Hulme plays the piano most days at home, but he refrains from public performances.
Hulme & Sweeney’s venue at 247 Farms Village Road (aka Route 309) is a stone’s throw from the West Simsbury Post Office — not to be confused with the main Simsbury P.O. downtown on Hopmeadow Street.
Speaking of post offices: Hulme & Sweeney’s home on Farms Village Road was previously the home of the West Simsbury Post Office. Hulme purchased the property from Don Tuller, the owner of adjacent Tulmeadow Farm. Across the street, at 250 Farms Village Road, Hulme & Sweeney has leased a storage facility from Tuller for extra pianos since 2021 — and this building was originally the West Simsbury P.O., according to Hulme. So the current post office is West Simsbury’s third USPS facility, and all three locations are within easy walking distance.
This begs a question: Why did the post office cross the road?
Perhaps a chicken at Tulmeadow Farm knows the answer. If so, it’s clearly debatable whether a human being could understand a chicken’s clucking reply to this joke of a question — but what’s crystal-clear is this: Tony Hulme and Randy Sweeney know plenty about supplying and servicing pianos.
Indeed, Hulme & Sweeney carries forward a robust delivery legacy from these two former P.O. locations — yet instead of delivering mail, this historic company aims to continue a tradition of conveying quality piano service in the Farmington Valley, Greater Hartford and beyond. +
Today Publishing features community news that matters nationwide and aims to record Connecticut’s underreported upside — covering the heart of the Farmington Valley and beyond
This story won a second-place SPJ award and first appeared in the September 2023 edition of Today Magazine, our monthly publication
Today editor-in-chief Bruce Deckert is an award-winning journalist who believes we all merit awards when we leverage our God-given gifts for good
Related News • Today Wins Most SPJ Awards Among CT Magazines
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