Courtesy of the Forward, always excellent reading, Opera Chic has learned that Murray Perahia is not the only star in the family, at least if you're a New Yorker or a commuter. Because his little brother Henry is the bridge and roadway officer of New York’s Department of Transportation, writes the Forward.
Henry Perahia tends to face only the audiences at the Concrete Industry Board. He worries not about Bach, but about too many SUVs crowding the Brooklyn Bridge. While Murray is frequently quoted in the media about the transcendent spirituality of music, Henry tends to focus on such subjects as marine borers — boring sponges, marine worms and bivalve mollusks — which gnaw away at timber pilings underneath Manhattan highways built above water. Yet Henry’s preoccupations have surprising parallels to those of his more internationally famous brother.
Both Perahia brothers see proficiency as
an ongoing process: Henry told The New York Times that repairing the
Williamsburg Bridge while keeping it open to traffic was “like
rebuilding a car’s engine while the car is still running.” Murray, on
the other hand, told Newsweek, “Music is always in motion.… A lot of
pianists practice away and stop searching. Why is that B-flat there?
Where is that F-sharp going? You see, it’s like an airplane — it’s
quite difficult to make the machinery take flight.”
Tangentially related, here's a video on how to inspect a piano bridge.