 |
| (This is actually Bussotti, not Zapata. You'll have to wait.) |
It's always an exciting moment to hold a new score in your hand for the first time. Especially when it's a piece you've never heard, and especially when you really, really want it to be learnable in three months.
Last week I had first rehearsals with Anna-Maija and Milla, and we all were curious and nervous. Itzam had given us the third and fourth scenes (of the five in total), and we didn't really know what they were about until we tried them out together. Well, as it turns out, they're really good. But it took a while to establish that.
As a pianist playing for singers, sometimes it's not obvious what you should be playing - the actual music written in your part, the singer's part, just the basic pulse, some chords, or some creative combination of these. It changes with every piece and every singer, as they need different things from you. The rehearsal process also changes the needs - first you do one thing, then you should gradually change to something else. The final result, obviously (or hopefully) would be the stuff exactly as written. (Though I have to say that when playing more traditional works like Mozart or Wagner, I mostly play around 65 percent of the stuff that's there. But that's not really my fault, that's the piano transcript's maker's fault. I only have two hands, and they only stretch so wide.)
ANYWAY. So we started working and I tried my best to guess what Milla and Anna-Maija wanted from me, and in that hurdle it took a while for me to really start paying attention to the music. When I did, I loved it: it's contemporary alright, but suddenly it turns to smooth jazz and suddenly you've got a poprock duet that you catch yourself humming on the way home. It's got swing. You will want to hear this.
So now we practice this stuff until everyone goes Christmas. I came to the conclusion that for now I'm mostly playing rhythm and some harmonies, and some of the singers' lines. I tried to play what's written, but what happened was this: I had a complete rhythmic blackout. You try: tap a certain beat with both hands. Now start dividing that beat in two with your left hand, and then to three with your right. Change hands. Try different divisions of the three: short-short-short; loooong-short; short-looooong. For a pianist this is quite basic stuff, so I should be able to do this, but for now I mostly bang the piano for a while, swear, and return to the basic beat. I will conquer this by March, though.
(If you see a person in a tram/cafe/shop tapping both hands in a confused rhythm and occasionally swearing, come say hi. Probably it's me.)
