[Perform-Talk] Blind Collaborative Pianists

Mon Feb 5 22:15:37 UTC 2024

Hi Melissa. Long time no talk. Thank you for these insightful comments. This is exactly along the lines of what I would say. To the person who has the questions about collaborative accompanying. I think it can be done with some extra planning. Of course, you will have to find what tips and tricks work for you by doing trial and error. If you know braille music, it might even be helpful to get a transcriber in your corner. That's what I do for the pieces I need to learn for Elmhurst symphony. I do have a friend who I went to leader dogs with when I did orientation and mobility who is a phenomenal pianist. She majored in piano performance and is teaching and she has accompanied  church choir sbefore. Perhaps she would be a good resource to you as well. Let me know and good luck with all this. Please feel free to reach out to me off list. She even accompanied me and cello and we did a concert together during the week I was there.
Leslie Hamric
Cello and Braille Music Teacher

> On Feb 5, 2024, at 3:38 PM, Melissa Riccobono via Perform-Talk <perform-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Hello.
> I think there are a lot of things you could do, though I am not a pianist,
> so take what I say for what it's worth, which might not be too much! 
> If you are providing a service, you can set your own working conditions.
> Therefore, you can say, "I only want to accompany three or four people" and
> those hiring can take it or leave it. Also, you can look for opportunities
> where you will have enough time to learn the music, and also for
> opportunities where you have learned music in the past, and might just need
> to have a refresher in order to be ready. I would probably record all of the
> pieces I learned, and have them available so I could revisit them if I
> needed to learn them again. And, of course, keeping any braille music, if
> you read braille music, would be helpful as well. Then you will not have to
> hunt if you need it again. Even if you are accompanying only three or four
> people, that is still taking those pieces away from someone else who may
> really appreciate not having to do as much work. So you would be providing a
> valuable service.
> Also, I know when I was in school, I participated in a contest each year
> called Solo Ensemble. We could choose a piece of music to sing, and we would
> need a piano player to accompany us. There was a list of only so many pieces
> we could choose from however, and this list stayed fairly similar throughout
> the years. Because of this, many of my friends ended up performing the same
> pieces, so we often had the same piano player. This way, the piano player
> only needed to learn a piece or two for the contest, but he or she was still
> providing an extremely valuable service. I'm not sure if this contest is
> offered where you live, but it might be worth checking with music
> departments at local high schools and even middle schools to see if it is,
> and if you could begin to learn some of the music so you could play for the
> next upcoming contest. We always had a couple of months, at least, to
> practice and polish our pieces. So you would have at least a month to learn
> the pieces, and, if many are used year after year, you could play them again
> when needed.
> The same might be true for high school, middle school, and maybe even
> elementary school concerts in your area. I know my choir directors always
> hired a different piano player to play for us during our concerts so he or
> she could conduct instead of having to conduct and play. Again, the piano
> player had time to learn the music because he or she usually didn't come in
> to rehearse with us until perhaps a week or so before the concert. Often our
> directors knew what pieces they wanted to do during the entire year as well,
> so you could possibly start practicing pieces for an upcoming spring concert
> in the fall.
> And, I would think at least some churches would be similar. Sometimes choirs
> learn music from week to week, but sometimes, particularly around the
> holidays, they work on a few pieces for weeks before performing them. This
> would give you the chance to learn them as well.
> I really hope some of these thoughts are helpful! Just because there are
> some people who learn and/or sight read 40 pieces at a time in two days does
> not mean you have to! In fact, as a singer, I would much rather have someone
> who has spent more time learning and perfecting the music, and some time
> with me to cement a good rapport, so I would definitely love to use your
> services! I am quite sure I am not alone. I imagine great opportunities
> exist for you.
> The best of luck,
> Melissa 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Perform-Talk <perform-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Ella Yu
> via Perform-Talk
> Sent: Sunday, February 4, 2024 2:57 AM
> To: NFB Performing Arts Mailing List <perform-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: Ella Yu <ellaxyu at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Perform-Talk] Blind Collaborative Pianists
> 
> 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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