The Piano Tuner (2026) + Q&A

Friends of Araluen presents the screening of The Piano Tuner (2026) with Q&A by Director, Natalia Laska and Piano Tuner, Martin Tucker.

Following the success of the Festival of the Piano, held at Araluen Arts Centre in 2025, Friends of Araluen continue the celebration with a special screening of The Piano Tuner (2026). 

The Piano Tuner is a documentary set in Tasmania and the Northern Territory that follows an eccentric piano tuner determined to save both pianos and his way of life.

Travelling across the Australian continent, we discover domestic piano culture that thrives in some of the country's most piano-hostile places, where people play well or badly, but always with passion. Along the way, we learn that listening to music, to place, and to one another can be just as important as tuning the instrument itself.

From a tiny island at the bottom of the world, piano tuner Martin Tucker is on a mission to save the musical instrument and a way of life.

When pianos die, the piano tuner will follow, but Martin refuses to give up.  To rescue instruments and himself from redundancy, he transforms into a rough travelling piano tuner. From Tasmania to the Northern Territory, Martin traverses the harsh Australian environment, one that is challenging for humans and even more so for pianos. Martin will create his own musical art of survival.

The film follows Tasmanian Martin over an eight-year period as he carries out his full-time job as ‘the piano doctor’ and navigates a professional existential crisis. Once upon a time, Australia was home to the largest number of pianos in the world, but now acoustic instruments are falling out of fashion, replaced by electric keyboards, modern forms of entertainment and the permanent shortage of time to practice.  

To prevent pianos from ending up on the street or the tip, Martin creates the piano orphanage - a space for unwanted pianos, where they can safely wait for better times to come. Martin and his friend, piano removalist Tony Gamble, collect old pianos and pianolas in a desperate attempt to save them from destruction. The piano orphanage in Tony's garage grows out of control, with no idea what to do next. Pianos spill into Martin's house, and Tony's donkey farm outside Hobart.

The film’s characters are piano people who live in a world that is rapidly changing or vanishing. The old, heavy instrument, which needs space, maintenance, tuning, and the discipline of practising, doesn't fit into modern life, where a lack of financial certainty pushes people to live light and mobile. There is also an influx of electric keyboards that require no tuning. 

Join Friends of Araluen at Araluen Arts Centre for this special screening and the continued celebration of the Festival of the Piano.