[Perform-Talk] Blind Collaborative Pianists

[Cindy Ray]

I don’t know the answer. If you need a repertoire of accompaniments, you would have to not only learn the music, you would have to continue practicing it. The blind organists in France were dedicated. They did little else. I accompany where I can play popular music by ear. It doesn’t seem practical to do it. I will be interested in other opinions.
Cindy Lou Ray
Sent from my iPhone

> On Feb 4, 2024, at 1:58 AM, Ella Yu via Perform-Talk <perform-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I am a dedicated blind amateur musician who has a fairly wide range of
> musical interests, one of them being collaborative piano and accompanying.
> I grew up taking both piano and violin lessons for years, so I am acutely
> aware of the need for piano accompanists. I am not pursuing music as my
> main career, though I'd certainly like to do it as a side career.
> 
> My question is, to those of you pros who must learn large volumes of music
> at a time, what do you do? I have accompanied my younger sibling and a few
> friends on and off since age 9, and in all those situations, I have only
> needed to learn a small number of pieces at a time, which is not a big
> deal. However, as you all know, blind musicians can't sight read and play,
> even with braille music. I've done a lot of reading and have heard about
> the long line of blind church organists in France, for instance. How do
> those types of musicians deal with, say, learning 40 pieces on 2 days
> notice? The only solution I see is to practice for hours on end, which is
> just mentally exhausting. I have spoken to my piano teacher about doing
> accompanying/collaborative piano as a side gig, and I mentioned that my
> inability to sight read would make it difficult to learn the required
> volume of music quickly enough. He basically told me that a lot of people
> suck at sight reading, that I'll always have time to prepare my music ahead
> of time, but in reality, I see the accompanists for my violin recitals
> having to know 40 pieces at a time, and they likely had to learn them on
> short notice. What would a blind musician do? I guess this is just
> something that is very difficult to work around as a blind instrumentalist,
> so we just can't take on anything that requires learning 40 pieces in 2
> days. Any thoughts? By the way, yes, I do have lots of experience learning
> ensemble music for orchestra/chamber music as a violinist, but in those
> cases, I always have at least a few weeks to learn all the music for a
> concert, so it's not an issue.
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