100 tips for working with ballet pianists #20: Respond to music with your class
Teach by example and show your response to the music that is played. Think of class as a kind of ‘guided discovery’ of music for your students. Staying unmoved and…
100 tips for working with ballet pianists #19: Talk about music you like
One of the hardest things for new ballet pianists to know is what sort of music you want. Talk about your favourite songs, ballets, composers, film music and singers with…
100 tips for working with ballet pianists #18: Ask your pianist for help
Pianists are music specialists, that’s why you hired them, so use this to your advantage (why buy a dog and bark yourself?). e.g. “I want something like this…how do I…
100 tips for working with ballet pianists #17: Finish on time
If you want the pianist to stay on for a bit at the end of class as a favour, the diplomatic way is to say to the students “We’ll do…
100 tips for working with ballet pianists #16: Know your pianist’s limits
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,…
100 tips for working with pianists #15: Don’t make faces!
Trying to control a class and music that is suddenly too fast or too slow can make you anxious. An anxious facial expression can often be misread, and understood as…