In 1984, reluctantly, he retired. But almost immediately, he said, he enrolled in a course in piano technology, tuning and repair at Temple University. He was enthralled and started practicing on friends' pianos. He returned to the school district in the late 1980s, and tunes all 40 pianos twice a year and before concerts.
"I have to fly around sometimes," he said.
On a recent visit to Lower Merion High, students and teachers stopped him to chat and shake his hand or give him a hug.
Junior Max McAdams sang in a recent concert that Giersch conducted.
"He's a lot of fun," said McAdams, who met Giersch one day while he was tuning a piano and asked him what he was doing. "But he's very demanding: It has to be right."
"He's my inspiration," said Tom Elliott, head of the school instrumental music program. "He inspires our entire school."
Giersch, a Wawa resident, counts among his former students several members of the Philadelphia Orchestra as well as jazz musicians.
Elliott said that when he was playing with a quintet in California, "countless times people would come up to me and say did I know Herman Giersch?"
Giersch totes his tuning tools around in a well-worn satchel that holds a flashlight, screwdrivers, pliers, mutes, a tuning hammer, a can of spray lubricant, an electronic tuner, and an extension cord.
As the school jazz band rehearsed on stage in the background, he opened the lid of the Baldwin grand and plugged in his electronic tuner.
He struck middle A, where he always starts, and with a mute (a sort of rubber tongue depressor), isolated one of the three piano wires that makes up the note, watching as the electronic tuner showed that it was flat - very flat.
"Do you hear that? Ahh-uh-ahh-uh-ahh-uh," he said, his voice warbling to match the quavering, out-of-pitch tone.
With his chrome tuning hammer, which resembles a socket wrench, he adjusted the tuning pin for the wire until the tuner dial stopped spinning, showing that the pitch was correct.
