Susie works at the Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne, and in Salzburg, and is increasingly in demand as an accompanist, working with Bryn Terfel, Jose Cura, Christine Rice, Sir John Tomlinson and Kurt Streit on the stage, in recordings and on radio.You can follow Susie and Alice's travels on their blog Song-Cycling, as well as on their Facebook Page. And if you feel moved to give, you can do so for both Alzheimer's and Multiple Sclerosis.
You can see that in 2008 I was working nearly full-time as a music director for regional theaters and tours. When I wasn’t working as an MD I was playing 2nd keyboards somewhere else. I made a little money from blogging, a little from copyist work and very little from selling albums.How has the nature of your work changed over the last three tumultuous years?
I experienced a sharp decline in music directing jobs in the 2nd half of 2008. Regional theaters had been hard hit by the recession, and many were not hiring or closing their doors. It was clear that I would need to fill in the income gap with other work.
As you can see from the chart, I tried a lot of different gigs and had the most success with accompanying and church organ gigs. I started my church gig in spring of 2009. Around the same time I found a job as an accompanist at college.
SL: You’ve done work as a page turner. Is that the stressiest job ever?
LP: It depends on who I’m turning for, and the repertoire. I usually turn for one of my brothers (Jon Kimura Parker or Jamie Parker) so it’s pretty relaxed, and both of them mark their music clearly so I know what’s going on. But yes, it’s stressful, because while you can’t add to the performance (unless you’re really hot) you can certainly detract by screwing up. The last time I turned for Jamie was a couple of weeks ago at Lula Lounge and the music had a ridiculous number of turn-backs, flip-aheads, etc. I didn’t turn all the way back like I was supposed to, but Jamie quickly turned to the right place. Fortunately, the violinist let out a whopper of a wrong note, so nobody really notice how flustered I was. You also have to make sure you don’t wear a plunging neckline, of course.
There are lots of ways you can use our MP3s: familiarisation on-the-go, in a singing lesson, preparing for a choir try-out, in an audition, at home, in the car, in the bath, it's up to you. The tracks enable singing practice in situations where live piano accompaniment is not readily available.
Singers know that nothing can ever replace the collaborative experience of working with an experienced accompanist. Preparing for performances means building an artistic relationship and developing interpretations together. Our tracks enable you to learn the piece before you start rehearsing, allowing you to save valuable rehearsal time for interpretation.The cost for tracks is quite reasonable, priced at £0.99 (roughly equivalent to USD$1.47 and CDN$1.52 at today's exchange rates) and the quality of playing in the samples I heard was quite high (and sensitive too!).
Named after cognitive psychologist Roger Shepard, a Shepard scale is an audio illusion in which a scale seems to rise endlessly, without getting higher. The constituent pitches consist of several simultaneous octaves, which fade out at the top of the scale and fade in at the bottom. Taken out of the moving context, the actual octave register of a note is ambiguous to the ear. A toy piano displays similar ambiguity: as the length of the sounding rods at lowest keys is too short to produce a true bass note, its overtones are louder than its fundamental pitch. Taken out of context the lowest F can sound more like its C overtone, an octave and a fifth higher. This ambiguity is part of the charm of the toy piano, and Shepards Pi enjoys playing with that charm, with lots of scales that seem not to get higher, sonorities whose octave register is ambiguous, and moments where the meter and tempo could be heard in several different ways.
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| Photo of Marcus Nance by Brian Mosoff |
I know that you don't always take notice of me since I generally sit behind you, but that does not mean that my participation in the recital is less important that yours. Realize that my colleagues and I no longer refer to ourselves by the condescending term of "accompanist"; instead, we refer to ourselves as "collaborative pianists" for two basic reasons. First and foremost, we are pianists. We are not defined by the vocalists and instrumentalists that we support in recital; we have spent countless hours developing our skills and mastering piano technique and deserve to be recognized as skilled performers. The adjective "collaborative" suggests that we are equal partners in the musical process. Without sounding overly arrogant, it is important that you realize that without our assistance, many of your most important works could not be performed. Since these master composers saw the inclusion of the piano as essential to the work they created, it is imperative that you also recognize our importance and stop treating us as a necessary evil.In fact, you should check out more articles from Kennith's blog Collaborations, which shall forthwith take its place as required reading for all collaborative pianists.
This exciting new program will be an unique opportunity for six Associate Managing Artistic Directors to train under one of Canada’s most important opera leaders, Wayne Strongman. Over a period of three years six Artistic Administrators will train to become Managing Artistic Directors through the Leadership Legacy Programme, one of the first of its kind in the arts sector. The $250,000 donation which will fund this program is the largest single donation in Tapestry new opera’s history.
Tapestry occupies a unique position as the leader of new work development in the Canadian opera sector and centers its operations on a philosophy of collaboration with its internationally renowned Composer‐Librettist Laboratory and New Work Studio Company.
As a 30 year company with a Founding Artistic Director/Conductor who has always been intimately involved with the operational side of the company’s $1.2 million business, and who has occupied the unique role of Managing Artistic Director for the past 5 years, Tapestry is reasonably concerned with leadership succession planning. With the assistance of this major donation Tapestry will engage a series of mid‐career arts professionals to assist the company in creating the appropriate job description for an eventual successor and a strong future for the leading Canadian company dedicated to the creation, development and performance of new opera works.In total, there will be six people appointed to this position over the next three years and I'm honored to be the first. I'll be working at the AMAD position this summer in addition to teaching probably a single day of students at the Royal Conservatory. When September rolls around, I'm back to my regular duties at the RCM, albeit with a highly expanded toolkit. Wish me luck tomorrow!
Commercial photographer Sid Tabak, 59, started taking lessons with Pengelly 16 years ago and was so nervous performing in front of others, he took beta blockers to ease his anxiety.I had to chuckle when I read the passage about how adult pianists swear when they make mistakes in lessons - I often see the same thing.
Eventually he figured out a few survival techniques, like don’t talk to yourself when you make a mistake — just keep playing because the real victory is having the guts to sit on the bench.
“It takes awhile to realize that your self-worth as a human being has nothing to do with how well or how poorly you play the piano.”
