Faith Friday: HPUMC Donation Strikes A Chord
Adletas provide rare Fazioli concert grand piano
Jack and Dianne Adleta didn’t get to celebrate the 100th anniversary of their flooring company last year as planned. Still, they hope what they helped Highland Park United Methodist Church accomplish instead will have a much more lasting impact.
“It was a God thing because now we’re able to do other things,” Dianne said.
The Adletas provided the primary funding to their longtime church to acquire a rare, reportedly $225,000 Fazioli concert grand piano. They have also helped fund new choir robes and stoles for the chancel and youth choirs and made numerous donations to the Highland Park United Methodist Church Tower Arts Program and the children’s choir.
“I think that the piano especially is going to be there for generations,” Dianne said.
Each Fazioli grand piano takes about three years to build. The red spruce wood used in the piano’s soundboard comes from the same forest in the Western Italian Alps and is the same kind of wood that violin maker Stradivarius used, HPUMC senior minister Paul Rasmussen explained.
I think that the piano especially is going to be there for generations.
Dianne Adleta
The opportunity came about because former Highland Park United Methodist Church Alan Raines helped persuade the Adletas to support replacing the church’s old Steinway piano with the Fazioli.
Renowned pianist Natasha Paremski performed in a recital at the church in June using the new Fazioli.
“Everyone that was at the recital that night came away just awed not only from her talent but from the sound of the piano because she was really able to bring that out and to bring that forth,” Dianne said.
Rasmussen called it an exciting debut.
“The piano was installed in early 2020, just before the world was impacted by the COVID pandemic, and we are excited to share this beautiful instrument with our congregation, the Dallas Community, and music lovers everywhere,” he said.
The Adletas went to see Paremski perform again in San Francisco in July for their 44th wedding anniversary.
Jack’s family had attended Highland Park United Methodist Church for generations, and Dianne began going to church with him after the couple got married.
“After Jack and I married, I was teaching Sunday school at Wilshire Baptist, and I don’t think he was as interested in going there, so I decided if I wanted to go to church, which I do believe in wholeheartedly – I went to church with him,” Dianne said.
Dianne’s mother was a pianist/organist at a couple of Baptist churches in Dallas.
