Piano Collaborations

I am a vocal and choral accompanist, therefore everything on this site is directed specifically towards vocal and choral collaborators. 

I am not a voice teacher, but I have worked in many, many voice studios over the last 50 years, which gives me a unique vantage point from which to approach my collaborative work.  Because of my background, and because of the long-standing relationships I have with the vocal faculty at the university, I have been given the  freedom  to try different things in coaching to reinforce and clarify what the teachers are trying to accomplish.  What I have learned in the process is what I am sharing with you here. 

 I believe that being a collaborative pianist means more than playing for someone in their lessons and coaching with them one on one during the week to prepare for a recital. I take the full dictionary definition of collaborating quite literally : 

“To work together with another toward a common goal, especially in an intellectual endeavor.”

 I believe that my job as an accompanist is to collaborate with the teachers AND the students to reach a common goal…creating a well taught, prepared, whole, professional musician by the time of graduation.  

Over the last few years especially, I have begun to develop my own system for working with the students and the teachers because of how the students have changed post pandemic. It wasn’t until this past year that I started to come up with a four year plan of how to accomplish this. 

Now this puts me in a whole different realm of collaborative work. So if this is not the sort of thing you are interested in, I completely understand. But for me, it’s all about moving students through a series of steps that culminate in having mentored well prepared, professional musicians. 

Hopefully you will find a thing or two here that you might be able to apply to your work as well. Just know that much of what I am blogging about is in its infancy as far as seeing how it works. I am making things up as I go just to try and solve the relatively new issues coming into the vocal studio.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or if you would like a further explanation. I hope you enjoy this new perspective, and thanks for reading!