Sharing the Accompanist Love on Twitter

This is the time of year when collaborative pianists across the planet go out of their way to bring that extra level of commitment to concerts, operas, recitals, auditions, rehearsals, recording sessions and juries. Following are some tweeted acknowledgements of pianists, anonymous or otherwise, who have gone beyond the call of duty in the last while....

• frlady is thrilled with rehearsals for La Boheme chorus. Excellent singers.. great choir director and superb accompanist. (@NYinCALI)
  
• @kikimikkelsen wouldn't it be great to just sit and drink straight whisky and chain smoke with that accompanist debra and watch it? (@heardintheatrium)
  
• I'm so excited. today is my first day playing my violin concerto with an accompanist. It took a long time to get to this point! (@SoNotPatty)
  
• I need to go to bed! Late rehearsal but always great convo with my buddy/musician accompanist @garyarthuryoung (@KhadijahOnline)
  
• Just got done with the accompanist. Went fairly well, she said she adores my playing and loves the vast improvements each year. (@Bretticus2424)
  
• i feel so relieved! i have an accompanist for the trumpet recital! yay! (@chrkuhl28)
  
• Fingers crossed for a good last rehearsal w/ our accompanist today. (@EBHChorus)
  
• I just had my first "Defying Gravity" rehearsal with my accompanist. I feel like I've been doing sit ups. @ChrisColfer makes it look easy. (@shannancy)
  
• Note to self: 'quite spiffy' is not a very helpful description of tempo for an accompanist. (@jodiekearns)
  
• You must love a staff accompanist who is so willing to stretch her own playing to help me stretch a student's playing. Yay courage! (@lhbflute)
  
• Thank god. My accompanist is fantastic. (@spamelson)
  
• Thomas our accompanist JUST MADE MY LIFE. (@CaitlinMalmedal)
  

(Via the dreaded accompanist search on Twitter)

BTW you can follow me on Twitter here.

More About Social Media, Trust Economies, and Classical Music

Grace Nikae has just written a long response to some of the questions I posed regarding Chris Brogan and Julien Smith's ebook manifesto on emerging trust economies on the web. Grace's article is required reading for anyone in classical music that is the least bit interested in the redoubtable field and its encounter with technology. I couldn't agree more with the heart of her argument, which is that the underlying motivation for engaging with people through technology should be a personal and artistic vision rather than a desire to get more engagements or fill seats:

The death of any artist is the day they stop growing - the search should continue to the last day of your life, until the last breath you take. And of course, I don’t mean simply locking yourself up in a practice room and looking only at scores for the rest of your life - although there are many people who believe this is what is meant by growing and improving. One has to grow consistently as a human being, in all facets - emotionally, mentally, spiritually - because this is what will always color the lens through which one can perceive and understand humanity, and thereby deepen one’s relationship and understanding to the nature of music and art itself.