July 2, 2025

Living on the edge

it’s precarious by design

July’s coming in hot, and not just because I’m in Houston. Although, damn, Sam. On my morning walk through the tony neighborhoods behind the huge hospitals and ten-lane freeway, I’m damp with perspiration at 6:45 am, sweating under the protective limbs of giant live oaks, surrounded by stunning crape myrtles and tragic McMansions. H-town, our former home, impossibly big and beautiful and ridiculous and unnavigable: it’s good to see you again.

Emily and I are here to record our second album in the stunning sanctuary at Chapelwood UMC, and we are two days in, good work done despite a few unexpected thunderstorms and leaf blowers (there are tradeoffs for using a great live acoustic). I have to shout out Cody and Cameron, the Chapelwood musicians who are helping us with schedule, and Kris the piano tech and Brad our unbelievably chill recording engineer (IYKYK). The vibes are quite immaculate, even if we have to take a break at about 3 pm when the roof expands in the afternoon heat, sounding like a few hundred raccoons running through the rafters.

The music is technically challenging for us both, and I’m always struck by Emily’s ability to shift calmly from live performance mode to recording brain. I’ve learned a lot from her and am grateful to follow her example again. Musicians practice not just to learn hard music, but to routine it, just like pitchers or golfers or gymnasts do. We try to dial in precise moves so we don’t have to think about them in the heat of the moment. Small details missed or marred might not stand out in the flow of a live performance, especially when our audience is also listening in real time. But a recording - ach, the sudden need to nail it! Even with everything technicians can do to fix our flaws, there’s no avoiding the anxious rush that comes with this increased precarity.

So hey there July, your hot winds are blowing from a few directions. Here in the church, heat’s in the pressure of the next take (also, the AC has to be turned off when we record). But in the writing part of my practice, aka wordland (yes, that is in my head to the tune of Birdland, have you met me?), things are a-sizzlin’ as well. And I’m as nervous as I am chuffed, palms all sweaty at the moment of several debuts.

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First, as of tomorrow, July 2, you can pre-order our book, Accompaniment in America: Contextualizing Collaborative Piano. I am so proud of this book! Lead author Chanda VanderHart, about whom I can hardly begin to say enough good things, has artfully brought together an enormous, vibrant community to limn the profession of accompaniment, aka collaborative piano. I was lucky to have a part in writing one of the chapters, and continue to be floored by the depth of experience, skill, and care brought to bear in this volume’s storytelling.

As the book makes its way into the world, I wonder how it will be read. Gerald Moore, one of our profession’s iconic grandpas, once posited that academic degrees in accompaniment would raise the status of the profession. Our book shows that the profession’s status is, well, complicated, its available positions precarious. I know that my fellow collabs will recognize and resonate with that fact, but I wonder how our colleagues - singers, instrumentalists, “solo” pianists - will receive our stories.

Together with the book’s launch, I’ve got two other projects dropping, both hitting on the theme of precarity. Both have to do with American opera young artist programs. YAPs were the center of my professional life for a long time, and while I’m inspired to be a part of these projects I’m also a bit scared of how people will receive them. More about that in a bit.

The first is Miriam Gordon-Stewart’s moving new documentary “YAPs.” It’s streaming now for a limited time on a pay-what-you-can basis, and I truly hope you’ll watch whether or not you are part of the opera cult. I talk in it a little bit, along with a bunch of other people.

The second is my first collaborative piece in a non-music journal (it feels soooo legit y’all): Tracking YAP: Professionalism, amateurism and exploitation of emerging opera singers (Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy).

There’s a lot to chew on in both pieces, but the chunk I hope stands out and stays with viewers/readers is this: these entry-level professional positions are precarious by design. I don’t mean that the artists, musicians, and administrators working to choose and foster opera young artists are cheering the precarity of their job structures. But our profession is designed along the same lines as so many others in our neoliberal landscape, in which the greatest risks are shouldered by those least able to withstand them. It’s happening with increasing impact at every level of our society. We artists would do well to see how we are part of this whole. Our culture paints us as self-absorbed gamblers, taking on the risk of huge investment in talent to see if we’ll win the payoff of a performing career. That’s an individual’s business, right? Except that America is increasingly like a casino at every level, each individual jerking at the lever to see what their reward might be.

I hope you’ll give some of your brain and eye space to all of these projects, and that you’ll become part of the conversation about how to do better, be more inclusive, and demand, envision, and create structures not centered on individual risk. If you’re a musician, talk to the collaborative pianists in your system, or reach out to others (you know where to find me!). Join your union. Join a committee. Do some of the work. You probably need this, and you’re certainly needed.

Tomorrow I’ll head back to Chapelwood for one last day with Emily and Brad. I already know the places in our music where I want another shot. As I obsess over fingering, accuracy, and tone, I’m saved by remembering that I am not alone, that I can’t achieve any gorgeous word or breathtaking phrase by myself.

We’re all in this together. Life on the edge. Hands are outstretched all around you. Reach out, grab hold.

Thanks to Emily, Brad, Cody, Kris, Chanda, Emily, Elvia - and HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO JEAN BARR!!!

thanks for reading.