They need to have their own musical voice, not in contradiction to their colleague, but in union.” “‘If you can’t play, you can always teach, and if you can’t do either, you can accompany.’ So it is important that the pianist must play with conviction and imagination and individual expression. Jean Barr, the director of the piano accompanying and chamber music program at the Eastman School of Music, says that accompanists must be clear that they don’t exist as a rental service to other artists. Sometimes accompanists act as repertoire coaches for on-the-go singers, researching and proposing songs or programs. Offstage working relationships vary considerably. Those two places kind of sound alike.” Katz quickly found her place and seamlessly covered up the error. “She skipped from the third bar to the 38th bar. “The song is about 41 bars long,” he said. Katz remembers rescuing a famous soprano who became lost in a Strauss song. They need to have their own musical voice, not in contradiction to their colleague, but in union.’īesides technical skills, great accompanists possess a kind of sixth sense when it comes to anticipating collaborators’ on-stage tendencies. ‘he pianist must play with conviction and imagination and individual expression. I don’t know how else I can make sure I know that piece inside and out, every nook and cranny.” Because a portion of collaborative piano students are from Asia, they must not only adapt to English but also learn art song languages of French, German and Italian. “Some students hate it, some of them adore it. “I’ve never performed anything that I can’t sing and play simultaneously,” said Katz, who requires the same skill from his accompanying students at the University of Michigan. The accompanist must also be able to transpose a song into several keys, and know where, and for how long, a singer needs to breathe. The pianist is responsible, in some cases, to be a kind of gentle prompter,” especially when a singer is performing from memory. “You have to be ready for anything - a singer’s personal health, their level of fatigue, their level of concentration. “The pianist, I feel, has to be the rock,” said Brian Zeger, a collaborative pianist and the artistic director of vocal arts at Juilliard. And superstar pianists including Yuja Wang, Lang Lang and Leif Ove Andsnes frequently tour as duo partners to singers or violinists.Ībove all, accompanists are commanding respect in a field that values the hustle, learning several languages and being able to sightread on moment’s notice. In November, the inaugural Art of Duo competition in Boulder, Colorado, attracted twenty-four semifinalists, including violin–piano and clarinet–piano teams. Typically, these programs are offered at a graduate level, for pianists uninterested in a full-blown solo career.Ī growing number of song competitions - including the Wigmore Hall Song Competition and the Montreal International Musical Competition - have added prizes for accompanists or duos. More than a hundred colleges and conservatories worldwide offer training programs in accompanying, according to a recent tally by the Collaborative Piano Blog, a website that covers the field. Others have seen their names relegated to small typeface on programs and advertisements, somewhere beneath the boldfaced star.īut the tables are turning. Some have been asked to tone down their attire because they’re upstaging a singer. “You’re playing too loud” is a common complaint, say accompanists. But the episode underscores a hard-to-shake notion that accompanists toil at the low end of the musical totem pole, underappreciated, underpaid and lurking in the shadows while soloists bask in the adulation of their fans. Katz, who has worked with everyone from Marilyn Horne and Cecilia Bartoli to José Carreras and Frederica von Stade, admits that there are divas in every profession and says he’s rarely the recipient of overt condescension. I never heard from him again and he never heard from me. “I played the first concert and cancelled the other eleven,” said Katz. I’ll handle the expression,” the violinist said. Hours before the start of a twelve-concert tour, a violinist whom he was accompanying stopped to berate Katz for his interpretation. THE PIANIST MARTIN Katz remembers a particularly stinging comment at a dress rehearsal several years ago. Listen Magazine Feature Revenge of the Collaborative Pianists
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