2 hours in a pot-smoke-filled practice room with a real piano reminds me of an obvious: piano performance is the only deicipline that i studied in school, and it is the discipline which has earned me the least money over time. Maybe it is not prudent to look at it that way. I do not doubt that the discipline and work-ethic developed in daily 10 hour practice sessions is reflected in other pursuits. It is not as simple as drawing a line from the $100k tuition to the insignificant amount of money earned as a result. More and more people are starting to believe that college is a waste of money, though, and I do not disagree. It can be useful, or it can be useless, no regard to prestige of the institution but much regard to market demand for specific specialties. A petroleum engineer from a community college would likely do better financially than a molecular biology master with multiple advanced degrees simply because the world needs more people with understanding of fossil fuels. As a classical musician I don’t know how the spoils are divvied, but as a pianist there seems to be a better chance than most instruments to pick up “compromise” work when cellists and oboists can’t be found.
Someone in the lobby of the rehearsal space saw that i had no musicla instrument on me and assumed i was a pianist. He has songs and tracks to fill, and would prefer celli and strings, but if a pianist is willing to fill in the chord patterns then it’s all good. He seemed genuine. For once i had a business card to hand out, but he did not. Not even any contact info on his web site. Sorta strange but people are just that: strange.
The Tchaikowsky Concerto sounded (and felt) better than I expected. I do not expect to do anything with that piece, but I used to be able to play it blindfolded and it’s good to get it back in the muscles again. Great piano writing, great humanity in the music. Overplayed but deservedly so. I needed to attacj the piece on a “real” piano, versus the digital I’ve been using for so many years. For the most part the digital is a perfectly fine substitute but with repoertoire like Tchaikowsky or Rachmaninoff you reach a point where you just need the real thing. The famous octave passages in Tchaik 1 just don’t go deep enouhg on a digital. It’s like an anecdote I heard once, possibly aopcryphal, about a guy who was dating a woman who had had a sex change. Having been a man it seemed her equipment could be swapped out but the internal characteristics remained male. So as the man was having sex with the transgendered woman he found that he just could not go deep enough. He complained about this to his friends. (this is where I start not to believe the story) Evidently all his friends knew that this woman had undergone a sex change, but the one guy dating and having sex with her was unaware. So as he complained to his friends about not being able to get in deep enough, about hitting a brick wall, his friends repressed laughter and discomfort in their unwillingness to break it to the guy that his girlfriend used to be a man. Such is the sense of playing virtuoso passages on a digital piano versus the real thing. It’s like the digital piano is a transgendered version of the real thing.
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That was weird. While typing this someone at the bar said that she used to live at Riverside and 72nd in Manhattan. That is where i lost my virginity. I did not volunteer this information, but i asked her which building she lived in. It was not the fabled corner house in which J rented (illegally, i think) a small loft. I just remembered her phone number: 496-0185. It’s weird the things you remember.
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