The Audition Room: Your Pianist is Your Friend

A pianist friend posted a great photo on Facebook last week that serves as a reminder to treat your pianist friends right:

Multi-colored markings? Carrots everywhere? Multi-word instructions mid-score that may or may not be intended for the pianist (how are they to know?). If thoughts of singing Queen of the Night make you palpitate, imagine playing the score with one eye blindfolded!

Obscuring the notes and distracting your pianist is probably not the best strategy for letting your presentation shine at an audition. A working score can certainly be helpful when getting a new piece into your body, but you don't want your annotation to cause your pianist to wish for an out of body experience!

Along that same topic, the Collaborative Piano Blog expanded on a recent post from The Young Person's Guide to the Opera Audition blog to provide guidance on what is essential to include in your audition binder.  On behalf of the aforementioned vocal accompanist and pianists everywhere, may we humbly recommend that your music not only be sleeve, staple and stain free but clean of unnecessary markings.  Though truly, Der Hölle Rache does deserve at least one red circle and an angry carrot or two.

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