Next Monday will be my first collaborative piano gig of the semester. Well, "gig". Now's a good time to introduce my favorite tenor and collaborative artist, my loving boyfriend Steve. He's a music ed/voice major at the university from which I just graduated, so we've been working together for a few years now, but next Monday's master class is the first time we'll actually perform together. (Previous choir directors/vocal instructors weren't all that supportive of non-piano majors accompanying, but Dr. Boyle has been great about it so far.)
Next Monday he'll be singing in the vocal studio's master class; usually the staff accompanist takes care of that, but I'll get to play. We'll be performing the piece that I translated in my first blog post, L'Heure Exquise(text by Paul Verlaine, music by Reynaldo Hahn). We've been working on this piece since last semester, so it should go pretty well.
Not to say collaborating has been all sunshine and roses. Yesterday we were rehearsing Robert Schumann's Dichterliebe and we both ended up getting completely irritated; partly at each other's mistakes and partly because we've been doing the same music since last August, so we're, quite frankly, kind of over it. Maintaining some sense of professionalism and musicianship is sometimes a challenge. We want each other to succeed, and sometimes it's hard to not get to personal or be too harsh about it. I ended up telling him yesterday, "Look, you can find another accompanist, but you can't find someone else to sing properly in German for you." We ended up in mutual agreement that a week of separation from Dichterliebe would be healthy for both of us.
So far, our musical collaboration has been fun, but hasn't been without its challenges. I'm looking forward to our future collaborations; hopefully, a recital in April and who knows, maybe even grad school auditions.
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