He’s a 10 but he believes in Schenkerian analysis 🚩🚩🚩🚩

8. They’re great sight readers, meaning you can have sight reading date nights 9. Calm under pressure 10. They’re just the best!

4. They know how to take your tempo without asking, so to speak 5. They use both hands equally well 6. Emotionally mature enough to be diplomatic with opera singers without going berserk for a living 7. Will always have a job, even if it’s playing the same seven concerto reductions all the time

10 Reasons why you should date a collaborative pianist: 1. You always have a built-in accompanist who may even be willing to learn monstrously difficult pieces out of love 2. They’re a great listener 3. They’ll save your ass when you make a fool of yourself in public

Reality show idea: Survivor but it’s a bunch of 20-something classical musicians at a chamber music festival getting increasingly annoyed with one another. People getting voted off because who really needs two violists anyway

Orchestras should program an entire concert of works by Strauss and Feldman. Then they could advertise it as “Rick and Morty”

My harmless conspiracy theory is that there are exactly two reasons people repeated the exposition back in the day: -you fucked up the first time and want a second chance -someone arrived late to the concert and you don’t want them to be confused or feel left out And now we all suffer as a result

Pre-performance talking to the audience starter pack: -clearly more nervous to speak than for the performance itself -joke about how many notes the pianist has -biographical fact nobody asked for -pianist in background staring off into the distance -“anywayyyyy hope you enjoy!” *awkward bow*

"Do unto others as Henri would Dutilleux." - @collabpnomemes.bsky.social

*knock *knock* Who’s there?

If you could only change one letter of the title of any piece of classical music, what would it be? I’ll start: Beach’s Garlic Symphony

What is it about trills that suddenly cause people to stop counting and lose their pulse? I swear 99% of all rhythmic errors with my collaborators are due to 1) trills, 2) ties, or 3) rests

Recently started my doctoral thesis, I really hope my advisor loves it

You’re telling me a gae licked this symphony?

Not sure why everyone always needs to be accompanied by a pianist. I want to hear Sibelius concerto with bagpipes, Erklönig with electric guitar, Schwanendreher with accordion, or Franck with cowbell - you get the idea

We all know most social media is a cesspool of horrible takes these days, but there’s truly nothing more toxic than the live chat during the Chopin competition. People be airing out their piano lesson trauma and casual racism and sexism and suddenly, bam, the world’s armchair rubato expert shows up

This is a very unfortunate time in history to be teaching students the difference between natural, harmonic, and melodic minor. Any hint of mentioning scale degrees 6 and 7 and all hope is lost

So I’m teaching a section of class piano for music major non-pianists, and they have to pick a repertoire piece from a list of five that I gave them. And I kid you not, literally every she/they and they/them picked the Florence Price. Iconic

There’s no feeling quite like accidentally running into one of your students in public. Like what tf you doing at the grocery store, you just failed your class piano midterm, go practice

Commenting “but how will this affect Lebrun’s legacy?” under every classicfm post (referring, of course, to German 18th-century female composer Francesca Lebrun)

Early-career classical musician bio starter pack: -starts with loosely attributed quote that makes you seem important -“innovative programming" -“dynamic performer” -lists competition from high school (without the year, of course) -way-too-long paragraph 1/

“We should start a piano trio!” feels like a classical musician’s version of “let’s start a podcast”, except upstart chamber groups don’t usually last quite as long

No one: Cliburn competition semifinalists choosing their “free choice” concerto:

Literally what the fuck is this

Alternative date idea: we read all of the Cliburn competitors’ cheesy quotes and laugh at them (we’re really just envious and wish we were that good)

Date idea: we look through the Cliburn competition semi-finalists’ programs and take a shot for every composer who’s not a dead white male (we’ll still be sober at the end of the night)

When you attend a piano trio concert and the program is the two Schubert trios:

When you’re playing with una corda and need to turn the page and can’t decide between temporarily forgoing soft pedal and sacrificing notes to turn the page with your hand:

Obsessed with forScore links. Need a portal to every movement on page 1? No problem. Need to make a cut in a concerto reduction? Absolutely. A button back to the beginning to repeat the exposition that I know full well I will never use? Hell yeah.

The forScore generation will never know the struggle of three hole punching and taping your music to dilligently avoid page turns, only for the page turner to find a way to fuck it up anyway

POV: you’re a pianist finally getting to take a bow all to yourself at the end of a recital, 513,407 notes later:

Pieces collaborative pianists want cancelled this year: -Every Hindemith sonata (except viola op 11 no 4) -Tchaikovsky violin concerto and also Rococo variations -Saint-Saens Introduction & Rondo Capriccioso -Fin ch’hal dal vino from Don Giovanni -Every poorly made baroque oratorio reduction

Composers getting cancelled this year: -Paul Hindemith -Richard Wagner -Louis Moreau Gottschalk -Camille Saint-Saens

Composers about to be making a big comeback in 2025: -Joseph Marx -Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari -Mel Bonis -Henriette Bosmans -Louis Vierne -Alice Tegner -Sergei Bortkiewicz -Maurice Ravel (it’s his 150th birthday year)

When you show up to your Messiah gig and the church proudly shows you their beautiful harpsichord (it hasn’t been tuned since the 1970s):

Collaborative pianists finally wrapping up a December full of Messiah harpsichord gigs and Nutcracker celesta gigs:

No feeling in the world better as a celesta player than being told by the conductor that you’re too loud. Or, rather, I’d imagine that’s the case, as it’s never happened in recorded human history

You haven’t been truly alone with your thoughts until you’ve played the celesta for the Nutcracker and have to just sit there quietly like an NPC 95% of the time

New drinking game idea: Kapustin or jazz? In which you shuffle a playlist with half Kapustin and half real jazz, and every wrong guess takes a drink

Nobody: Classical musicians trying to reach a younger, more hip audience by programming more Kapustin:

Health insurance CEOs be like:

No Spotify wrapped for me this year. I, a person of culture, listen to music exclusively through youtube score-videos