Jonathan Breit
HEY, KEEP IT DOWN! Joseph Nedlin in his co-op, where he says he’s tormented by the piano plinking of Jonathan Breit (inset) downstairs. (
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Can you PLEASE stop playing that damn piano!
A Central Park West resident slapped his downstairs neighbor with a $30,000 lawsuit for driving him to distraction with his round-the-clock piano playing.
International business consultant Joseph Nedlin works from home in Unit 21D and has been battling off-Broadway composer Jonathan Breit of 20D for the past four years, pleading with him to keep the racket down at the posh 80 Central Park West co-op.
“He practices scales for an hour and a half,” Nedlin, an Army veteran, griped to The Post. “He has no concern for anyone else.”
And the worst part, Nedlin says, is he doesn’t like the music.
“He never gets better. If he got better, I might say, ‘OK, it’s not that bad,’ ” Nedlin said.
Breit, a Yale grad who scored music for a theatrical version of “Jurassic Park” and “The Oregon Trail,” tickles the ivories on his Steinway so loudly, at all hours of the day and night, that he disrupts Nedlin’s “daily living and business affairs,” the Manhattan Supreme Court suit alleges.
Breit insists he abides by co-op rules and doesn’t play between 11 p.m. and 8 a.m. He said he even installed acoustic panels to dampen the sound.
But Nedlin says he has to use $100 noise-canceling headphones at home and listen to his TV through a Bluetooth earpiece because of the piano noise.
“At first, Joe went down and said, ‘Look, I know you love to play piano, but it’s interfering with me conducting my life,’ ” Nedlin’s son, Richard, a lawyer, told The Post. “And he basically said f–k you.”
Joseph Nedlin was also rebuffed when he offered to buy Breit “a full-size electric keyboard that could be used with headphones,” the suit claims.
Breit “scoffed at the idea with a profound rejection,” even though David Letterman’s drummer lives in the building and practices on a quiet electric drum set.
At one point, Breit agreed to come up to Nedlin’s apartment while a friend played downstairs so he could hear the noise. But Breit was unmoved.
“He said, ‘Yes, I can hear it. I can see how it could be repetitive.’ But there was a caveat. He said, ‘It’s a New York sound.’ I said, ‘Opening a window and hearing a cab outside is a New York sound,’ ” Nedlin recounted.
Nedlin, who has lived in the $1.5 million one-bedroom with sweeping Central Park views for 25 years, is suing Breit, the building’s board and its management company for breaking building rules that prohibit “any unreasonable noises.”
Breit, who moved into his unit five years ago, is optimistic he’ll be able to reconcile with his neighbor.
“I hope we can resolve the situation amicably,” he said. “This is definitely an Upper West Side problem.”