The Accompanist
Musical thoughts on the role of the accompanist in choral rehearsal/performance
It all started when Gloria Wan was doing some guerrilla marketing for her brand CallTime Clothing at National ACDA. We invited her to set up shop in the MusicSpoke booth, and in little time, I found myself a passionate advocate of her product. Here I am with Grammy award winning conductor, Charles Bruffy, donning her wares.
The word “accompanist” is like kryptonite for musicians. No one can seem to say it correctly. When I play a gig and people pay me with a check, I always check the memo line which has included gems like: accompanimist, accompananist, and everyone’s favorite superlative, accompaniest. There is also my favorite neologism: pianoist. I quite like that one. It affords us the opportunity to contemplate whether the theoretical ophelcleideist believes in a distant demiurge who created the serpent instruments long ago but never interfere in their actual daily activities.
Nebraska ACDA asked me to be their commissioned composer for their 2024 summer convention. I decided to write something fun for the occasion. Sometimes it seems that the dearth of silliness and simple fun of music gets lost in the preponderance of self-aggrandizing in the compositional world. The “muse” part of the “music” gets portrayed as a weighty and dourly old matron who is too busy making points to be mischievous and playful. That’s an odd caricature given some of the muses I have known. I wrote a silly piece about being an accompanist. NCDA made a recording for me, and I am so very grateful for Dr. Matt Hill for commissioning, conducting, and putting this whole project together. Here is the video they made. You can follow the text below the video.
We love our choir director
*She simply is the best,
here is our little secret
that we now confess.
Although *she shows us all the cues
and when to take our breaths,
our choir would simply fall apart
Without our accompanymist…our accompananist…our collaborative pianoist
When basses start to drag behind,
Who keeps them all in perfect time?
When heedless altos start to croon,
who keeps them all in perfect tune?
When tenors start their note transposing,
who keeps them all from “decomposing?”
If Sopranos start to act like divas,
who fixes all their pitch amnesia?
When the conductor has lost the beat,
Who makes the role seem obsolete,
while being discrete,
without conceit?
(Well, with quite a lot of conceit to be honest, but it rhymed so we had to sing it.)
*She can play Rachmaninov,
until you cut *her off.
Give her Sebastian Bach,
and *she can make it rock.
If you need a thing where the
music’s gotta swing,
*she can bring that thing
*She will play anything to please ya,
except “Piano man” and Für Elise
So here’s to our rock.
We all sing *her praise
This organization
should give *her a raise.
*She’s the best of the best,
well, you get the gist
Hat’s off for our glorious
Accompanyest?
Accompianoist?
Aponcanist?
Our piano player.
Purchase the score on MusicSpoke. If you want one of the accompanist shirts from CallTime Clothing, you can get a 10% discount by entering the promo code: CHOIR.
I love that you give us accompany-mists a shout-out ! The T-shirt will come in handy for me with TX All-State Choir next year! 👍