Morning manifesto

Where my advocates at?

I’ve been writing about this very small and specialized thing: pianists who mainly make music with others, and how those pianists are the invisible labor holding classical music together. The pianist part is niche, the invisible labor part is not. The words below could apply to so many specialized, necessary professional positions, often occupied primarily by women, almost always poorly supported.

Here at Overcoached, I’ve been posting essays about issues pianists face in their workplaces, particular vulnerabilities in the structure and status of their jobs, for a little over a year. In August, I started a Instagram account called Music Minus None, attempting to use social media to bring our vocal and instrumental colleagues in on the conversation. MMN’s first day of recognition for pianists in September got very decent buy-in, with lots of individuals and institutions across the country shouting out the pianists on their teams. It was super fun and positive, exactly what I hoped for. I thought that maybe someone posting about a great accompanist or buying them a coffee might open the door to deeper and more challenging advocacy, like talking to colleagues or administrations about unfair workloads and wages.

Every time one of our partner colleagues writes their approbation, it’s meaningful. But when they step further forward to acknowledge our unequal status in the business, it’s much more meaningful. And it’s…rare.

Look, appreciation is wonderful! Humans treasure expressions of gratitude! But those expressions cost people nothing. How often do the colleagues who rely on us go to bat for us in harder, riskier conversations?

The answer that’s taking shape in my research is: sometimes, in a relatively small cohort of our profession. We deserve more.

Here’s what I’ve learned through working on our book (Accompaniment in America: Contextualizing Collaborative Piano, by Chanda VanderHart with Elvia Puccinelli and me - coming from Routledge in 2025, so expect at least another six months of me hyping it):

Everybody knows pianists are working too hard.

Everybody knows pianists are underpaid.

Everybody knows that the systems in place that offload costs onto students raise serious issues of equity and access.

Not one person I’ve talked to yet is surprised by any of this. Many, many people are working hard on solving these problems. Many, many people are not. That’s why it is so powerful when a musician who works with pianists speaks up not only about their gratitude, but about the institutional inequities which hamper pianists.

You might say that people have a choice about entering low-paying professions, and that’s true. People will often say something like this about under-compensated but essential helping professions, emphasizing the devotion or passion that draws practitioners to them. What happens when devotion isn’t enough? In my industry, the whispers are getting louder: there are not enough pianists to support the industry.

So, this morning, a lil manifesto, a manifestino, if you will. A call for y’all to step up.

I love this profession with my whole heart and soul. When I was in school, vocal and instrumental teachers made space for me to clunkily, cluelessly learn how to do it during their students’ lessons. Maybe they were connected to the idea of co-teaching a young pianist, but I suspect it was just Tempe, Arizona in the eighties and they couldn’t afford to be choosy. Either way, lucky me. Without their patience at minimum and their advice at best, I never would have stuck with it to figure it out. I had good piano teachers, but that was maybe not even the half of what I needed.

Musicians: how robust is that kind of ecosystem where you are?

Soprano Twyla Robinson wrote this a few days ago in response to a post I made (on LinkedIn! Say what you will!) and I’m reprinting it here with her permission. Since starting this newsletter, I get messages like this, and they give me so much hope and energy to keep writing about and working for fairness inside and outside of my own profession. I asked to print Twyla’s message because it’s so stunningly thought and written, and I hope it stops you in your tracks like it did me.

Honestly, as I get ready to post this, there’s a small part of me that worries that maybe people will find me…ungrateful.

Solidarity :) so much of this conversation stays in the realm of the personal. We forget that the personal is political. Let’s take care of our big ecosystem.

It’s a place to start.

Here’s Twyla.

"Holding Higher Music Ed together" may be the understatement of the year. With the exception of a few bastions of forward thinking, Collaborative Piano is historically an afterthought in many music schools, particularly for vocal music.

The people who hold these positions in the vocal world are working from a knowledge base exponentially larger and more varied than any that surround them. More training, endless study, more expertise.

Underfunded, understaffed, overworked, outsourced to much inferior technology, a career path with one of the highest potentials for being fully employed as a musician, but often denigrated by some faculty; and yet without them in the vocal world at least (often the most populated division in a school of music!) there is...nothing. Nothing, for any of us.

The talent pool is getting more shallow by the day for those who can play masterfully, keep a VAST catalog of repertoire at hand, understand the needs of multiple genres, be fluent in languages and diction, and have the mindset of eternal growth necessary to adapt to the needs of each generation of singer. The people who can do this are eaten alive in every situation they exist due to pure need, and yet...where is the funding to support them?

As a result, more and more overly simple repertoire is being assigned to singers that requires less from the pianist (if a living pianist is used at all), which results in under-trained singers. Newly composed music is being neglected due to difficulty, and the skills needed to perform that kind of repertoire are desperately needed to keep up with what is being presented on today's stages.

What kind of model is being provided to students with potential for this deep-knowledge, high-expertise track, when they see those currently in it being crushed by the load for little return?

This is the result of decades of devaluing this crucial role in the musician's pantheon. Why would anyone want to enter this career track when their contributions are not seen as important enough to fully fund, at a level where loads can be reasonable? Gratitude and acknowledgements do not keep the lights on, nor do they keep a person healthy enough to carry on with excellence and willingness. For a person to have the expertise and skills to perform this role, and then to have them simply give up on their excellence or even their entire career due to exhaustion and lack of support, is criminal. That is happening. It's happening right now.

Twyla Robinson

Thanks for this one to Twyla and all advocates, and always always to Chanda and Elvia. To Sylvia Debenport, Jerry Doan, Darlene Kliewer, Douglas McEwen, and Joseph Wytko, who explained so many things to me and made me think I was good at accompanying years before I actually was.