A Brighter Note

A QUICK NOTE

My last post was a bit on the negative side, and I wanted to counter that by saying that I truly love everything I do. The past week has been filled with many exciting and musically rewarding experiences, from another performance with the fabulous clarinetist Alcides Rodriguez from Atlanta, to being rehearsal pianist for two of my Dallas Symphony colleagues for their upcoming performance of the Brahms Double Concerto, to playing keyboard in the over-the-top Video Games Live with the DSO. I also should include the wonderful privilege of coaching two UNT students on the magnificent Brahms Sonata in G for violin and piano. The life of the collaborative pianist is never boring. I am gradually adding things to my site, stay tuned!

Time Management

TIME MANAGEMENT

This is one of my big issues, and I know there are others who face the same challenges. Most of the successful collaborative pianists I know are always busy. This may be the reason that there are not already hundreds of collaborative piano blogs out there. I have plans to add content to this site as time permits, which means that it won’t happen overnight.

Since I am on the topic, I must confess that I have had this problem ever since my college days. I take on too many commitments, then switch to survival mode. This year was unbelievably full, and I am still not through.

Before the Oklahoma Clarinet Symposium, I was asked rather late to accompany bassist Gottfried Engels, a guest artist at my school (University of North Texas). I ended up having to learn two programs (including the Hindemith Bass Sonata) in one week. He was very nice and was understanding of my dire situation, so he tried to help me along by not insisting that we rehearse up to tempo. I always try to be more prepared for these guest artists, but sometimes it doesn’t work out that way.

All I can say is that I got through Gottfried. As Stephen Covey puts it:

“Integrity in the Moment of Choice” (First Things First)

Hello world!

Hello, reader. My name is Steve Harlos, and I am a collaborative pianist. In case you are wondering what that is, it means that most of my work at the piano is with other people. I am starting a blogsite here devoted mainly to the art of piano collaboration, but I have other thoughts of a more general nature which I want to share as we get further into the discussions. This could become a network of collaborators which could be very informative and entertaining.

WHAT GOT ME GOING ON THIS PAGE

I have been thinking about doing a weblog for some time, but this week I am working as a collaborative pianist for the University of Oklahoma Clarinet Symposium, an annual affair which brings together some of the top clarinet artists in the world for an orgy of concerts, workshops, exhibitors, networking, etc. Yesterday I had a coffee break with an old friend from my college days at IU. His name is Gary Kosloski, and he’s a wonderful violinist.

He was commenting on the difficulty of finding pianists to work with his students on serious repertoire. I was thinking about that comment and it made me realize that things are different where I teach at the University of North Texas. There we have a hard working bunch of terrific pianists who enjoy collaborating and will play the most challenging repertoire (usually for a fee, but our time is valuable). I am the coordinator of collaborative piano at UNT, and right now we have a Masters degree and are working toward a DMA in Collaborative Piano.

The other collaborative pianist here doing the same thing as I am doing is Gail Novak, who I met at the International ClarinetFest in Ostende, Belgium. She is a wonderful collaborative pianist and knows the clarinet repertoire intimately.   We had a chance to catch up on things and that also got me thinking about this blogsite.

WHAT I AM HOPING TO ACHIEVE

I would like for this to be a forum for collaborative pianists. I have ideas and experiences to share, and if you do as well, feel free to comment on this site and together we can develop a resource for like-minded musicians.