Razor blades between the piano keys
 

Comment: I am a professional musician and was told a story numerous times
as a young musician about how rival students would put razor blades
between the piano keys at Juilliard to sabotage other students auditions.
I was told this so often I always accepted this as fact, but just thought
about it now and realized as an adult that it totally sounds like an urban
myth. I found a page on Juilliard's website which says this story is
debunked, but offers no evidence other than that the claim is ridiculous.
I couldn't find anything on Snopes other than a couple people commenting
on the message boards. So is this story about Juilliard a myth? If so, is
there any evidence this act of pianist sabotage has occurred at another
music school or anywhere for that matter?

I feel as if it would be hard to slip blades between the keys of a piano that were both down low enough that they wouldn't be obvious yet still high enough that someone would get seriously injured by them while trying to play the piano.

This reminds me of the ballet world legend of dancers putting ground glass in a rival's pointe shoes. The intense competition and pressure on professional artists to continue on with performances no matter what probably contributes to UL's like these, but in reality I can't imagine judges at an audition wouldn't stop it the moment they saw a student jerk back with a bloody finger. As for pointe shoes, most dancers protect their feet with tape and lambswool (or nowadays, gel pads) and IME the box of the shoe is so snug and the fit so specialized that a dancer would know something was off before she put any weight on it and caused herself serious injury.

That doesn't mean no one ever tried it, though.

As I recall, the British paranormal / tabloid book series, Out of this World, had an article about Grock, the Swiss performer, who's piano had been sabotaged with blades between the keys before a stage performance - wish I could find the book and verify.