Piano Guidance
Piano Guidance
Photo: Metehan Arın
If by 'concert pianist' you mean someone who earns a living as a solo piano performer, the odds are very, very slim. My estimate is that the world market for full-time solo pianists is about 4 or 5 a year. WORLD market. So yes, the is competition, big time.
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Read More »Before I started out taking piano as a professional I wanted to rely completely on a performance career path. After having the privilege to gain personal insight into a full time international concerting pianists life I started to change my mind about full time performance. Ignoring all of the music ability you need and management connections you need to make I would like to explore the emotional issues and non piano skills you would need to deal with which I think separate people from choosing to be full time concerting pianists many more times than any other issue.If you are a nomadic person who never likes to stay in one place then a full time concerting life is for you. You simply cannot do concerts in one place for your whole life you need to travel and visit many different places if you want to have a constant income and hit larger concert venues. Often you will need to live out of your suitcase as you travel and stay in places often only for a brief moment before many hours travel to another destination. Relationship wise this separates you from your family and friends, you can't have your loved ones travel around with you (or even ask that of them!). This also means that you may only have a couple of months or so at home to spend with your family each year.The physical toll that intense concerting can cause is quite frightening. You push your body/mind to its limitations dealing with concert preparation (management/marketing and playing practice/presentation) You need to wake up early and sleep late to get everything done and this is constant throughout your career. It is a high stress level job full time concerting, to get your playing practice in you need to wake up early as soon as you are done with your practice you need to get all the aspects of concert preparations sorted out. Things like, you may have to prepare a full concerto within a few weeks, or technical staff have quit or certain gear have malfunctioned, certain vips can't make it to a dinner etc need to fit that into your schedule, unexpected requirements constantly add to your work load.Full time concerting work is pretty much 24 7 work. You are constantly on call music wise and concert management wise. You need to ensure yourself that everything is managed correctly relying on a manager is quite risky since if you have a lesser manager you will never get anywhere, it is simply essential that you have a top class manager that works well with you if you are a full time concert pianist (you just wont have the time personally to do the much of the "behind the scenes" work of concert preparations and will rely on this person to solve that for you).All concerting pianists should make a strong effort to have good relations with important people (concert staff, media, local government, head of different social groups etc) and this means taking them for lunch or dinner or something away from the work scene to build a good relation with them. When you build a strong team that you know your concerts will work a lot more easily, more opportunities open up to make things better. For example I took the manager of the concert hall out for a coffee and we discussed about other events that where on at the concert hall and she mentioned to me about how she does a talk on the local radio station about local events. I asked her if she thought if it would be a good idea if during her radio time I talk on there as well and she thought it was a great idea. This is one example from a horde, small things like that can make your path a lot easier.If you start concerting in multiple venues you will find out that you will always need to "get to know" the stage management and staff (technicians, publication, box office etc). You need to have a vision as to what you want your concerts to look like, you have a new team at your disposal at each new location and believe me it is not always a professional one! You need to ensure that you get what you want without stepping on toes, angry team members are not a good thing. I befriended a lot of stage staff and many of them told me stories about some famous concert pianists they dealt with and how they can be so "up themselves" and peculiar sometimes. Always show your gratitude to your stage staff after a show (a carton of beer or whatever) if they did their job well, they will never forget you and the next time you return setting up the concert will be a breeze.I can go on and on about what happens for concert preparations but what you see is that you really have to be a part of the creation of a concert, every aspect of it. You should have a personal interested in concert creation and be interested in how it works and how you can control parts of it. You cannot just simply hope to set up a repertoire, hire a hall and expect it to fill up. How you play means nothing to the public, you need to draw them to your event, thus marketing skills are essential. You cannot pay a manager and a horde of other people to do it all for you because of the money side to things.You also need to work out a yearly travel route and then hit those spots again the following year with new repertoire. Sure you can be a world famous concert pianist and get concerts given to you all over the place for the rest of your life, but this represents such a microscopic % of professional pianists it is almost irrelevant to speak about it even on a piano forum! And you even see the great stars rise up have a few years of concerts then sink back into obscurity, that is not to say they invested their money well and are now living happily, but the point remains they no longer really make a living off concerting (even though their assets and interest gain from them came from that). To have a lifetime of concerting you really need to set a travel route yourself, who is to say you cannot make different routes, but you will find out if you return to places you have been to, selling tickets is a whole lot easier especially if your product impressed them the first time.This brings up another point about your "product". What is your concert presentation like? These days you need to speak to your audience so an importance is placed on a soloist these days to have good public speaking/relation skills. Through your words, piano works and stage presentation you need to impress your audience and entertain them. You really need to give your audience knowledge about piano music, empower them, talk about interesting stories about the composer you are playing, something relevant about the piece, images about the piece etc. Piano music is unspoken with words so it is our responsibility to make the audience understand what they are listening to.How you package all of this is very important. I am sure you have listened to some people speak in public and fallen asleep where some just grab your attention and never let go. You want to learn how to speak well in public and this may be an impossible task for most pianists but certainly not something you cannot go and learn and craft if you totally fail at it.I can personally attest to the importance of speaking to your audience as I have had countless people who come up and tell me how much more they enjoy a concert once they are given more knowledge about the piece and composer. It even went so far in one concert which I thought I didn't play my best in, numerous people said they enjoyed it more so than a famous pianist who had visited months before because I spoke to the audience and told them something that empowered them to give new meaning to the pieces they observed. They had a look of excitement in their eyes as the music meant something new to them, really special stuff which makes me think that how you actually play is not always so important for the audience (but of course for us performers it is of utmost importance!) so long you pull it off and do a good job.There is a 100% chance of you making a partial living off concerting but if you can market yourself effectively and have a good product you could make a more steady income. Who is to say that you couldn't make a living generally playing simple piano pieces? There are certainly one world famous pianist I can think of who plays quite simple music! Who is to say you need to play mostly complicated pieces to draw people to listen to you? In fact if you play predominantly overly complex music often the concert hall will may be quite bare with your 2nd concert even with good marketing.People do not go to concerts to listen to the most difficult piece or the best interpretation of a piece they have ever heard, they are after being entertained, being taken away from the world for a moment and drawn into a world of music and indeed the world of music is a vast place. As performers we must package only snippets of the musical world into a nice neat tight package which entertains the audience and empowers them with knowledge and elevated appreciation to music (of course if you are a highly experienced music buff you may not learn anything new but at least you will confirm some wonderful ideas which should be pleasing to be reminded of). You need to play your instrument well of course but this is only one part, what is more important is how well you connect with your audience and how well you deal with concert preparations and concert staff/public relations and these things are most at failure with the aspiring concerting musician.
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