Call us by our names

The difference between love and respect. Also, equal font size.

The collaborative pianists of the world are the wind beneath their colleagues’ wings. We make the machinery of our musical institutions run. Vocal and instrumental lessons in high schools, universities, conservatories, and private homes almost always have one of us sitting at the bench playing songs, arias, show tunes, sonatas, and concertos. Music theater and opera rehearsals have someone at the keys standing in for all of the absent instrumentalists who will join at the very end of the process, and sometimes that keyboardist is also barking out the vocal lines of absent singers. Choirs in churches and schools and concert halls everywhere have a pianist who does everything from reinforcing individual parts to skillful soloing. Right now I’m listening to a live streamed recital honoring a departed colleague, and along with the roster of guest performers is an incredible lineup of collab colleagues just slaying works from three centuries in myriad styles. We’re everywhere, from the very first steps of learning music to the crowning performances. 

It’s no surprise, then, that one beautiful feature of #collablyfe is consistent affirmation. Hardly a day goes by without our colleagues, students, and clients praising our skills and showing their gratitude. We get hugs and cards and surprise Starbucks. We get thanks for the successful audition, the clean recording, the competition win. And we get more work, re-chosen and recommended on the basis of all those things going right. In super glam moments, we get chosen to share stages in recital or to play on the album. We are told it couldn’t have happened without us. 

And that might come as a surprise to those outside of our profession, because even people who don’t know a thing about how our systems work will comment on our second class status.  Inequality, to be honest, is almost as common as praise, and unlike the praise, it happens in places where non-musicians can see it. Our names often get left off the recital posters, and sometimes off the programs. Our jobs often have badly managed or absent time boundaries. Our compensation is often shockingly low, even before you measure it against the demanded hours and required expertise. And although it’s true that we enjoy a lot of love and support from our colleagues, that approbation too rarely moves past the pleasure of individual thanks into the risk of professional advocacy. 

All of these topics are on my mind, and I’m not alone. I belong to several professional organizations dedicated to the support of collaborative pianists (that these organizations exist is incredibly important - links at the end of the essay - and it’s great that we have the chance to build each other up through them). Every time we meet, we speak about these things. We know that our work matters, that it contributes meaningfully to our colleagues’ musical trajectories, and we know that we are valued; at the same time, our institutions are slow to implement meaningful change, and both institutions and individuals often take our time and contributions for granted. 

We strategize with one another about how to make progress, yet the actual process of speaking up remains a frightening prospect, personally uncomfortable at best and professionally destabilizing at worst. That’s pretty understandable. Everyone’s career is predicated on some calculus of excellence and ease, so folks are reluctant to be the squeaky wheel - for pianists, even those at the top of the collab world are reticent, and for our colleagues, speaking up can also involve professional risk. Additionally, classical music culture is pretty toxic and gossipy, so it’s very tough to bring up systemic issues without people taking things personally. We rely on our partners’ goodwill and trust for our continued employment and advancement, so there you have the cycle. 

You might be thinking Is she talking about me?. Oh friends, we need each other. I need you. None of this is personal. It’s the systems around us - patriarchy, capitalism - that teach us messed up ideas about what is and isn’t valuable. So, I am talking about you, but only in the sense that I’m talking about all of us, pianists included. We are the system, but that’s good news. It means we know where to look, and where to get started. 

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So, capitalism and patriarchy (two great tastes that taste great together!): at the risk of clearing the room, I‘ll try and make this quick. 

When it comes to classical music, we’ve got all the patriarchal forms of the past - big church patronage practices, Napoleonic hierarchies - that still exist meaningfully in our financial and administrative structures, alongside the modern patriarchy we’re soaking in. I was at a conference last summer of only women pianists and one of our topics was the patriarchy we fight in our own mindsets. So there’s my viewpoint: we live in patriarchy, it’s in our heads, and we all have to work to see it and transform it. 

If you’re reading this, you probably live in a patriarchal society that has fairly consistent gender coding of various human behaviors. Here’s an example of how we used to talk about work in, say, the 1950s: dad goes to the office and mom stays in the house. Nowadays, there are lots of women in offices and - well, some dads taking care of houses. Progress, to a point. But the long-standing gendered coding of those activities and the qualities associated with them lives rent-free in our heads and flies freely through our daily discourse, and it’s all knit up with capitalism. Think about how often you hear or read discussions about whether women can have it all, or whether relationships can work if the man makes less money than a female partner. 

Now consider this: both the dad and the mom in the 1950s scenario are working, but who is getting paid, and how much? 

The gendered coding of the two types of work translates into massive inequalities under capitalism. Historically, capitalism led to the development of quite a few economy-changing processes, but process sure doesn‘t seem as shiny as product these days; we are not encouraged to think very hard about who makes our clothes or our iPhones, and how much they’re paid. Don‘t get me wrong, some people care a lot and are doing big work about it! But most of us can live with how the sausage is made. I‘m typing this on an iPad, case in point. 

Similarly, we‘re not encouraged to think much about the work behind the scenes that leads to our shiniest artistic achievements (here by “we“ I mean folks in general, not just the classical music world we). Artistic process and the expertise involved with it garner very little screen time compared to the performances. 

Here‘s where I think it gets confusing. Because almost every artist I‘ve ever known, whether they‘re in the orchestra pit, backstage, in the chorus, at the rehearsal piano, or bowing as a soloist, will say that the process is equally or more rewarding than the performance itself. We take enormous joy in the discoveries, the risks, the incredible moments in rehearsal that no one else will see. We love that we can make these moments happen for one another. 

I know this to be true. So why is our communal reliance on one another so rarely part of the stories that are told about the art? I think it might be because a lot of that process is essentially the domestic labor of our profession, which we’ve been taught to devalue. It happens in our house, our shared rehearsal spaces. It’s intimate and messy. What we show to the world - the stage, the office, the screen - is what our society values and compensates. But part of those transactions has always involved hiding or minimizing the labor behind the scenes.

The majority of collaborative pianists’ work is in spaces that feel more like home than office, more private than public. It‘s intimate and messy. It’s nurturing and supportive and teacherly. We are trusted to keep the roughest parts of this work to ourselves. We are loved and even revered. We are considered indispensable, yet we’re considered embarrassing when we demand too much public attention. And our work is considered less difficult and less important than the work the public sees (even though we have a big hand in the work they see) - so our systems are comfortable with undercompensating us for it. That last bit is so true that even our public performance is seen as less difficult than other piano performance, no matter how many notes are involved.

Is it a coincidence that the majority of collaborative pianists are women? Because the classical music world treats us kind of like our society treats moms.

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Collaborative pianists are not the only undervalued workers in artistic systems. There are many workers whose assisting contributions tend to be underrated and undercompensated - administrators, makeup artists, stage managers, just to name a few. Chorus and orchestra members can also fall into this category, and most singers with a “young artist“ or “resident artist“ designation in the US are also working at the extreme low end of compensation. One particular circumstance of collaborative pianists is that, as freelancers, we compete with one another; even many of our full-time jobs are low paying enough that we have to keep a robust freelance practice alongside. That’s made us reluctant to share information about the circumstances of our employment. The fact that we get most of our work through recommendation rather than audition adds to our reluctance to organize. Some other undervalued artists gain strength and solidarity through unionization, but pianists are rarely involved in unions and tend to be very leery of any discussion around them.

Now, in some ways, collaborative pianists are wonderful at sharing information. In my experience, today’s collaborative pianist colleagues share info with each other about music, or about how to teach or coach or practice, with energetic generosity. We’re second to none when it comes to helping each other manage stress. But we are as a group incredibly reluctant to address all of the inequities enumerated in this article. 

How reluctant? I talked to a lot of pianist colleagues while I was working on this piece. Each one is stably and significantly employed. And each one whose thoughts are part of this essay wished to remain anonymous.  

That‘s how reluctant. 

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Here are some of the things my colleagues wrote to me over the last few weeks. 

You probably don’t need to hear it from someone younger since you’ve seen more years of it, but the (industry) never seems to pass up a single opportunity to cast aside the name, value, artistic contribution, most basic kind of recognition one could imagine… of a pianist. Like clockwork.

Notice the “someone younger” part of that. In other words, it’s not just me, a cranky old, experiencing these things. There is good, meaningful work being done all over our business, but we are just at the beginning of trying to set things right. 

There is an overemphasis in the industry…of “being ready” and whatever baggage that entails. Many people…want the product to be there, but don’t want to invest in the beautiful work that is not-income generating: the rehearsal, the preparation time, the coaching.

Once, I was hired to assist on a pretty starry production in the city where I was living. When the GD called to offer me the contract, he said, “it’s a good thing you’re in town, because I sure wouldn’t pay to fly you in. I’m not spending any money I don’t have to on anything that happens behind the curtain.” Yes, this really happened. 

These little pieces of acknowledgement, including someone’s name on a poster or program, cost nothing. A plate of food at an event. Being included in a shot when one is actually performing. These things cost soo little, and they go so far in terms of showing care and equal consideration. Like such a high reward for so little cost.

This list of things might seem simple, but I know every pianist is nodding their head right now.

A very important mentor of mine…said to me: don’t do this profession because you want to be in the spotlight — almost no one does. Do it because you don’t mind not being acknowledged, because you don’t mind your font smaller on the program, because you don’t mind being left out of the review. I resonated so much with this. 

It is such a great point that not everyone who gets involved in music is an extrovert, and that collaborative piano (particularly for vocalists) can be a place to maximize involvement without maximizing performance. However, I don’t think that fair work acknowledgement is the same as being “in the spotlight.” Be a collaborative pianist because you’re okay with not being recognized? I can see how anyone who is regularly encouraged to be less in our systems could be both attracted and hurt by that kind of thinking. I hope we are changing it. 

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So while you are reaching across your institution’s departmental boundaries to your collaborative colleagues to ask how they’re doing and how you can support them, think about some good questions to ask yourselves and your institutions. 

Are their names where people can see them? Same size font? Is their bio in the program?

Do they eat with the soloists? Are they listed with the other performers? Do you talk about them in interviews? 

Are their loads calculated like the studio teachers' loads? If not, why not? Is preparation time calculated as part of the workload?

Do you get music to pianists in a timely fashion? Do your students? Are there deadlines in place at your institution and are they respected?

If you’re using an online program to quickly transpose a piece of music for a high-stakes performance, have you asked a pianist if it’s readable and playable? 

Pianists, my loves, here are some questions for you.

Do you set boundaries for receiving music and planning rehearsals? Does your employer back you up in doing so? 

Do you respect your own time boundaries? If you often agree to last minute work, do you feel pressure to do so? Is it coming from others? Is it coming from you? (I am the patriarchy, the patriarchy is me)

Have you ever considered working with pianists in your area to agree on some standards of pricing? What would be the advantages and disadvantages?

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There will be so much more to navigate. I wonder how AI is going to change our profession. I wonder what our systems will look like in ten years. I don’t have the expertise to go down those roads yet. But I do think we collabs don’t have a very good shot if we don’t continue to work hard for our professional standing to improve. And we can’t do it alone. So I’m not sure how it happens if we don’t ask for it. 

Here’s my voice, asking. Join me if you can. 

Inspired by the incredible work of:

Chanda VanderHart - https://chandavanderhart.com/

Elenora Pertz -  https://liedtheway.com/

Ana Maria Otamendi and Elena Lacheva - https://www.collaborativepianoinstitute.org/

Elvia Puccinelli - https://ikcas.org/

Thank you to Nate Malkow for the leftist chats :) - and thanks to every colleague who has advocated and who does advocate for equity. I thought about listing you, then thought about the sh*tstorm that would ensue, so I didn’t. What can you do to help change that?

More than anything, thank you to the pianists who chatted with me over the last few weeks. You know who you are. You inspire me and I’m proud to be part of our profession with you.