Here's a great way to start the new year:
Happy New Year everyone! Thanks for supporting the Collaborative Piano Blog in 2008 and best of luck to everyone for a healthy and prosperous 2009.
The ideals of flexibility, collegiality and communication skills, added to musicality, pretty much define what a collaborative pianist should be about. You communicate with your instrument; you communicate by asking things of your students, and you communicate with faculty colleagues when you want their support providing players/singers for your students' degree recitals.Effective communication is an essential ability for anyone who aspires to make music with others. Collaborative musicians must be able to communicate both musically and verbally. They also should be open-minded, flexible in attitude and in action, willing to compromise when necessary and able to accommodate differing opinions. Above all, collegiality is an extremely important attribute--both for performing artists and for university faculty members.
Degree Programs in Collaborative Piano
Degree Programs in Piano Pedagogy
Career Options in Collaborative Piano
Required and Preferred Skills for the Collaborative Pianist
on DVD (VAI)
with David Palmer and the London Symphony Orchestra
with the London Symphony Orchestra
with David Palmer and the London Symphony Orchestra
with the London Symphony Orchestra
with the Son Sonora String Quartet, James Martin, baritone, and Frederick Moyer, piano (Albany Records)
People sometimes search for the strangest things. Now that the Collaborative Piano Blog has been active for over three years, it has a wealth of content both new and old, steady traffic, rising subscriber numbers, good search engine ranking, and a huge number of searchable entry points into past articles. Here are just a few keywords in the last month whose results landed the searchers on the Collaborative Piano Blog, with some possible answers to their queries in parentheses:Dan: When did accompanists become "collaborative pianists"?
Liz: Nobody called it that in the old days when there wasn't a department yet at CIM. In the early 80s, there was a program at the University of Michigan run by Eugene Bossert, a wonderful coach and teacher. You could actually get a degree in accompanying. When CIM established its program in 1983 or 1984, perhaps they already called it "collaborative piano". But John Mack said to anybody of my generation, it sounded like the collaborators of World War II. We don't have that association, but the older I get, the less I care what it's called!
Dan: What's a typical week like for you at CIM?
Liz: There is no typical week. Regularly, I work with a lot of people, helping prepare programs. I work almost exclusively with instrumentalists, and I've been lucky to be able to concentrate on a couple of different instruments - I'm drawn to the cello and the oboe, I get to work with a lot of those players and I know the repertory, which is sometimes really difficult, like the Dvorak concerto which has a big hairy orchestral reduction to play.
Here's an interesting resource for those interested in the depiction of the piano in art: Bruno Dillen has compiled an eclectic collection of paintings featuring pianos and pianists among the huge number paintings that can be viewed on Art in the Picture. The painting on the left is Gustave Caillebotte's Young Man Playing the Piano. Other painters featured in the piano gallery include Salvador Dali, Liubov Popova, James Whistler, James Tissot, and Marcel Duchamp.
Merry Christmas from the Collaborative Piano Blog! Best wishes for a memorable time spent with family and friends. I'll be back in a few days...
My latest blog article for Music Teacher's Helper is now up, entitled The Complete Professional Musician on MTH Part 1: More Than Just a Student List. I use MTH to organize both my teaching and performing, and have found that utilizing its functionality to keep track of all my musical activities requires a few hacks, but is well worth the investment of time.
Just over a year ago, I gave myself the onerous task of mapping the entire classical music blogosphere. By starting The Classical Music Blogs Pagecast on the start page service Pageflakes, I was able to create a bookmark widget containing listings of all that I could find in the niche, as well as put up feed widgets for selected classical music blogs. It was also fortuitous that Pageflakes decided to use the pagecast as one of their default Entertainment pages a few weeks later.Krainev listens to long takes (an entire movement and more) before making his comments. And he does not mince words or pull punches, which are not lost in translation either. “You play too many wrong notes!” Ouch. “It is marked Vivace, but you play Allegretto, so it sounds very boring. Do you know what boring means?” Double ouch.(Via WTB)
He is firm but not cruel. His remarks are pointed but are not meant to destroy. And there is something avuncular about his overall style of tutoring. He does demonstrate on the piano, but very briefly. Instead he prefers a pianist to reach his own conclusion on how a passage should go, rather than to slavishly imitate. Every pointer he gives is to be taken in the larger context of a piece and not merely at that point of instruction. In the Liszt, he accompanies on a second piano, and quite perceptively so despite some trouble turning the pages of a new and untouched score. He later remarked that it was his first time playing the second part! Despite the morass of notes, he listens intently to the pianist’s notes and nuances. Capitalising on a passage marked dolcissimo, he asks the young man what it means. His translator says “beautifully” or “refined” (you mei in Putonghua), but nyet, Krainev gives this analogy instead. “Do you drink coffee or tea? Add seven spoonsful of sugar and you get dolcissimo. Very sweetly!” As they play that passage again, he emphasises, “Dolcissimo! Dolcissimo! Make me sound like Cassius Clay!”
Do you have any suggestions for how a college student can get work as an accompanist? I was doing some accompanying earlier this semester but had to pass off those students to the person who is now the full-time accompanist. I will not be needed for accompanying at school in the future and I'm not sure how to go about finding other work as an accompanist. I know some of your suggestions apply to students, but others are only for those who are making a full-time career as a collaborative pianists. Do you have any other tips specific to students?Thanks for the great comment, Lauren. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that the issue for you is that the work you had previously done had been handed off to someone else (which is often the case at schools with graduate assistantships and staff accompanists) and you're looking for collaborative piano work while you continue as a student.
for the full list):
by All Angels (Universal)
with various artists (Sony/BMG)
with Gilad Karni and the Budapest Chamber Orchestra cond. by Mariusz Smolij (Naxos)
performed by Sonia Rubinsky (Naxos)
conducted by Gustavo Dudamel (Polydor Japan)
with Antoni Wit and the Bilkend Symphony Orchestra (Naxos)
with Pietari Inkinen and the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra (Naxos)
with Ian Brown, piano, Sir Andrew Davis and the Philharmonia Orchestra (Sony/BMG)
with Ida Bieler, violin, and Nina Tichman, piano (Naxos)Working with the Boston Pops, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, and LA Philharmonic, this program creates a unique educational opportunity that spans the school year and provides students with new opportunities to explore and expand their interest in music.This Christmas, you have a unique chance to both connect with friends and family and support FutureStage's music education programs. Here's how it works: choose, customize, and send an ecard featuring music from either the Boston Pops, LA Philharmonic, Houston Symphony, or Chicago Symphony Orchestra. For each ecard you send, Fidelity Investments will donate $1 towards purchasing new instruments at participating schools in the city of the orchestra whose music was played in the ecard. So start circulating those ecards right away and help a young musician find their muse...
Students have an opportunity to participate in in-school and out-of-school activities, including:
- instrument donations
- field trips to symphony performances
- mentoring by professionals
- symphony musician demonstrations and performances
- music composition instruction
- opportunities for student ensembles to play in public forums
As 2008 draws to a close, I'm thankful to all my readers for supporting this blog, now into its fourth year of publication, whether you've been reading since the beginning or are a recent visitor. There are more ways than ever to keep in touch with the CPB, whether it be via website, Facebook, Twitter, or RSS feed.The Canadian Music Centre (CMC) is pleased to announce the launch of its newest online initiative – CentreStreams. Designed to provide music enthusiasts across Canada (and abroad) with online streaming access to a catalog of over 8,000 contemporary classical works by Canadian composers, CentreStreams once again positions the CMC as a leader among international music information centres.
Prior to the launch of this initiative, performers, conductors, researchers, teachers and students were required to visit one of the CMC’s five regional offices to access the extensive collection in its Ann Southam Audio Archive. CentreStreams will now provide countless more Canadians with access to this material – which truly is a national treasure.
CMC is especially proud of the timing of this launch as it serves as a kick-off to the organization’s 50th Anniversary celebrations which begin in January 2009.
