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On a recent snowy evening, Grant West wore a glittering suit coat as he played a jazzy rendition of “Sleigh Ride” for an audience at the new performance hall at Walker West Music Academy in St. Paul.
His coat sparkled in the gleaming black lacquer of the new concert grand piano.
The concert was what West called the “maiden voyage” for the new instrument. Two days earlier, the 9.2-foot, 1.2-ton piano had been delivered after a cross-country voyage that started in Washington, D.C.
“It's especially important to us because it brings a high point for the culture of Walker West,” West told the audience. “It's a piece of the identity.”
The piano is made by SHADD, the only Black piano manufacturer in the world, which was started in D.C. by jazz drummer and inventor Warren Shadd. Shadd pianos can be found at the Vatican and in Rolls-Royce showrooms.
They have appeared on “American Idol,” and six SHADD pianos appeared on the show “Empire,” which revolved around the hip-hop and entertainment industry.
Now, the Walker West Music Academy is home to the first SHADD piano in Minnesota and, Warren Shadd posits, likely the region.
Shadd’s grandmother was a classic piano player and his father was a piano technician.
“He was the first African American registered piano technician,” Shadd says. “I learned everything under his tutelage of how to rebuild pianos. From there, I just extrapolated that knowledge into piecing together the best parts to go into a piano and to build prototypes.”
A few days before the concert, Shadd came to St. Paul for the piano’s delivery, which he says isn’t typical.
“We're so elated to be able to do this not only for the academy, but also for our good friends there,” Shadd says.
Shadd says he came because of the relationship he formed with the academy founders, West and Rev. Carl Walker. It was Walker’s son, Anthony, who introduced them to the piano company; Anthony Walker teaches music at a school in Maryland, where they had a SHADD piano on site.
On a visit, Carl Walker played it.
“And I said, ‘My god, this piano is one of the best,’ and the sound was so clear,” Walker says. “I said, ‘We must have one.’”
Ten years later, Walker and West visited Warren Shadd in D.C. and began the process of commissioning a custom concert grand for the academy’s new 200-seat performance hall, one of the final stages of the academy’s new building on Marshall Avenue in St. Paul.
The SHADD cost around $180,000. When Walker and West started the academy in a duplex in 1988, they had a rented piano.
“We've come a long way. We started out with one piano,” Walker said.
Now the academy has several pianos, including two Steinways, but West says it was an important statement to acquire a Shadd for the school, which has long been a community hub in Rondo, St. Paul’s historically Black neighborhood.
“We are a school that's founded in the African American tradition,” West adds. “How great it is, during this lifetime, to find a Black man, an African American, who makes pianos.”
“We're proud of it,” Walker says. “It also tells our students that they can demand the very best.”
The academy will host a grand opening for the concert hall in 2026.
Correction (Dec. 12, 2025): This story previously misstated the cost of the SHADD piano, and the number of Steinway pianos the Walker West Music Academy owns. The story has been updated.
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