Like sands through the hourglass, alas, thus is the last day in the life of iconic classical sheet music seller Frank Music Company: closing its West 54th Street doors (between Broadway and Eighth Avenue) for good this Friday, March 6.
The culprit? Dwindling sales in the shadow of new technology.
As shop owner Heidi Rogers ntells, the sheet music store has been struggling for years. Since those sheets are so readily available via the Internet, waning profits claimed the store's fate.
"We went from seeing 15 to 20 people per day to seeing two or three," Ms. Rogers says in The Wall Street Journal.
She continues: "I went from feeling like I was at the center of the world to feeling invisible."
The store, which is located in Midtown West, opened in 1937 and provided the city's musicians with scores from the standard--Bach and Beethoven--to the arcane--Babbitt and Boulez.
Ms. Rogers bought the emporium in 1978.
Frank's is considered the last store in the New York area dedicated to selling classical sheet music. Ms. Rogers notes, too, that while other places like the Juilliard School's bookstore at Lincoln Center will still have it on their shelves, her store will be the final one to go.
Colburn School president and chief executive Sel Kardan called Frank Music's scores "invaluable resource for students and faculty for years to come."
And for the 63-year-old Ms. Rogers, nothing trumps the arts.
She says, "The idea that classical music is irrelevant is ridiculous. People should be paid in terms of what they contribute to people's well being."
Some of the famous clientele to pass the store's threshold include pianists Emanuel Ax and Jeremy Denk, violinist Pamela Frank, cellist David Finckel and more.
So, in the meantime, make your way to Frank's for a last minute memento before the store closes forever. And do check out one artist who's definitely on file there below: Frédéric Chopin.
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