And the moral of the story...

[iansinclair]

is to find a way to check on the instrument you are going to be stuck with when you agree to play a concert.

I recently agreed to play a concert at a venue I had not been to.  They assured me that yes, they had an excellent grand piano; good action, recently tuned.  So I said OK...

When the time came... well, it was a grand piano.  A very small baby grand.  Somewhat elderly, of an off brand.  It was in tune, I will say that.  It also buzzed unmercifully.  Action was not only heavy, but remarkably slow -- even had a sort of sticky quality to it (ever try Schubert Op.90#4 on a piano where the keys are slow to return?  Interesting...).

Very interesting...

I will say the concert went well -- no major technical errors! -- and was well received by the audience.  Practicing for it on that instrument... an exercise in patience or something!

But do find a way to really check out the instrument!

[stevensk]

This could be a nightmare!

1) Ask when the piano was tuned and contact the tuner
2) Ask for a photo on the piano (from the web), as an indication
3) Call someone who have played this piano earlier

[dcstudio]

I recently agreed to play a concert at a venue I had not been to.  They assured me that yes, they had an excellent grand piano; good action, recently tuned.  So I said OK...

and you believed them???  lol... c'mon you know that the people who book you are generally clueless about such things..usually anyway.   I usually just take a drive and check out the piano.   Those little off brand baby grands suck bigtime...lol.   I play one that has been painted a ghastly shade of red at a restaurant on the weekends.  They sound like toy pianos.

[indianajo]

Congratulations on the successful performance despite non-ideal equipment.
I've been asked to play background music for a  dinner this month at my church in the fellowship hall.  Caveat the beat up looking Howard console in there hasn't been tuned in 30 years. I tried it last Sunday afternoon., and had deacons volunteering to carry it across the parking lot to the picnic shelter for background music to the hot dog and chips cookout. So my crowd may be enthusiastic. The tone of the Howard is nice and bright, and no keys stick.  The tuning is quite flat above C5, not unexpected. I tuned a Howard in a country church last year to C7, and a Wurlitzer console in a downtown fellowship hall this year all the way up with the help of an Allen organ and a speaker on a 50' cable.  
The music committee that runs church services still sneers at my choice of music and insists I sing soprano to their their choice of 30 hymns or short lived "choruses", played on a Korg keyboard  on Yamaha PA speakers with 8" woofers, or play a Yamaha studio piano so soft it has to be amped through the same vile PA speakers with a vile $3 microphone installed inside the piano. So finally other people in the church not on the music committee have noticed that 1, I'm not going to  sing that **** to that collection of **** instruments 2. I'm not a soprano or even a tenor, and 3. I play things that are interesting even if they are not versions of the 30 hymns authorized as "our favorites" by the music committee.  I've been plinking some Saturdays on a beautiful sounding Baldwin Acrosonic 39 in a downtown church fellowship hall when our people were cooking for the indigent down there, and some of the cook and helpers have come to like what I do.  
So all I have to do is tune a beat up looking Howard in the fellowship hall by the last week of the month, with no tuning reference available except the Korg keyboard with the **** Yammy PA speakers (which I will not touch).  I'll take my tuning fork - maybe both of them, the C and the G.