This post was updated Jan. 26 at 8:40 p.m.

A priceless piece of Frank Sinatra’s personal instrument collection has found a new home at UCLA.

A 92-key historic Bösendorfer piano was unloaded at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music last month following a donation of the instrument by Frank Sinatra’s daughters, Nancy Sinatra and Tina Sinatra. The piano was owned for several decades by the nine-time Grammy winner, whose involvement at UCLA dates back to his establishment of the Sinatra Performance Award. Frank Sinatra’s younger daughter, Tina Sinatra, said the piano has sat in storage for more than 26 years since her father’s death in 1998.

“It’s the top stone in the crown. … We have nothing better,” Tina Sinatra said. “What we have from Pop were things given to us, nothing that would compare. … I’m sad to say that a lot of what he had owned and touched and cared for, and collected and curated himself and lived with all his life, were all sold away.”

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Tina Sinatra said she sometimes personifies inanimate objects and imagined the Bösendorfer piano as a turtle on its back while it was in storage. She said she first saw the piano in a picture many years ago before it was delivered to her sister’s home and was surprised by the piano’s magnitude, especially relative to seeing a piano from a distance on a stage. The piano is too large for most living rooms and belongs in a recording studio, Tina Sinatra said, but in her opinion, the Bösendorfer is a finer instrument than a concert Steinway piano.

Tina Sinatra said it was a conversation with Laura Lefkowitz that prompted the final coordination of the piano’s transfer to UCLA, since Lefkowitz’s husband – David Lefkowitz, a professor at the School of Music – was able to help with logistical planning for bringing the piano to Westwood. After a trip to New York, Tina Sinatra said she returned to Los Angeles to participate in the unveiling and delivery of the instrument to its new home. She said it has always been memorable to see the piano because of its combination of beauty, size and craftsmanship.

“When people go to see it, … it’s not clunk,” Tina Sinatra said. “It’s sort of feline and elongated and very beautiful.”

The intended final destination of the Bösendorfer piano has always been UCLA, Tina Sinatra said. Other people had suggested giving the piano to Carnegie Hall or placing it in the bar of an elegant restaurant to maintain a direct association with the Sinatra family, she said. Rather than place the piano in one of these locations, it was decided to send the piano to UCLA because Frank Sinatra was a proponent of universities, and Tina Sinatra said she believes he liked UCLA in particular because it was a public institution. It was fitting for the piano to be placed in the Evelyn & Mo Ostin Music Center because the Ostin family were longtime friends of the Sinatra family, she added.

“If it was going to happen anywhere, first it was going to happen at UCLA, because of his affinity for it,” Tina Sinatra said.

Professor David Kaplan, who teaches piano, was one of the first people to play the donated piano after its arrival at UCLA and said prior to the unveiling, the condition of the instrument was uncertain considering the length of time it had spent in storage. He said the piano has a sticker from the New York City restoration location Klavierhaus, which has an extensive reputation for restoring several kinds of pianos. Kaplan added that he felt cautiously optimistic about the quality of the piano before he played it, and his fears were alleviated by the piano’s pristine condition.

“The piano has the beautiful, rich, refined and very singular tone that one associates with Bösendorfer pianos from that time period,” Kaplan said. “It’s a very special, mellow, rich, … rare, a distinctive tone.”

In a press release from the School of Music, Tina Sinatra said the stories of the piano are not limited to when Frank Sinatra was playing the keys. After the piano was purchased by Oscar-winning composer Jimmy Van Heusen – a frequent collaborator of Frank Sinatra – and later gifted to Nancy Sinatra, it rotated through Frank Sinatra’s homes in Palm Springs and Beverly Hills. Other celebrities who played on the piano during social events over the years include stars such as Judy Garland, Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin.

Eileen Strempel, the inaugural dean of the School of Music, said the Bösendorfer model was the most opulent piano of its era, but the Sinatra piano’s lineage of people who have played it imbues the instrument with even greater character. She said her hope for the piano is to foster student success by expanding students’ creativity, as learning how to play the Bösendorfer and adapt to its unique range of sound has the potential to open students’ minds. Providing the School of Music with a combination of dynamic students and dedicated professors can make it possible for UCLA’s programs to continue to be world-class, she added.

“As a public institution, UCLA is committed to making sure that these priceless instruments are not held like a museum, but instead for our very top students, the winners of our All-Star concerts, to actually be able to play these instruments,” Strempel said. “They’re meant to be used by students, and I think that’s really critical. … I’ve heard time and time again from students when they play instruments of world class, … it really changes their whole concept of what they can do on the instrument.”

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Strempel also said she hopes students will approach the piano and other esteemed instruments in the School of Music’s collection with playfulness and self-confidence to prompt further musical and self-discovery. Looking back on the delivery of the piano and Tina Sinatra’s emotional reaction to seeing it safely arrive at UCLA, Strempel said she felt moved by the Sinatra sisters’ decision to donate the piano and was humbled on behalf of the School of Music.

“It was just one of these moments where you realize, ‘Here is arguably one of the most famous musicians of the century, and donating his instrument somehow, feeling that it’s with students that that legacy lives on,’” Strempel said. “Any philanthropic gesture like that is truly humbling to witness, but this was something special, because you almost felt like this was a cultural legacy that was being gifted to students in hopes that it would really inspire them for generations to come.”