Find out what your pianist does best, and work with it, because there may be things they simply can’t do well – like improvisation, jazz, reading complex music at sight, or playing virtuoso solos. Don’t show them up in front of students by asking for things that they may not be able to do, or look crestfallen when you find out that they’re not Ashkenazy, Art Tatum, Jamie Cullum and Prokofiev rolled into one person.
