The Accompanist Dilemma

Seasoned singers will tell you that a good accompanist is worth their weight in gold. Ideally they work with you as a member of your two person ensemble. They breathe with you, follow your cues, feel rests the same, ebb and flow with you, and they understand your music. This isn't always easy to achieve, and it's especially difficult with young singers.

In college I paid $20 a week to have an accompanist come play for half my lesson. This is pretty typical of most college music programs. It isn't unreasonable to require students to invest a great deal of money into their singing if it is their chosen college major and career path. So as a younger teacher working with high school students I have to be the bridge between my level of expertise and experience and the wallets of my student's parents. This isn't always easy.

I took years of piano lessons up through high school, but I still don't consider my playing acceptable for performances. I count myself fortunate that I play at all. Many voice performance majors never have piano lessons and are limited to what they learn in a group piano class in their undergrad which doesn't really promote the motor memory that years of lessons at a young age would yield. I can pretty easily "autopilot" my students scales and warmups. I play their vocal lines pretty easily, and even play the accompaniment to some of their less difficult pieces well. But if you were to put a piece like Faure's "Nell" in front of me, I'm a deer in the headlights.

Without a regular accompanist for their lessons, singing competitions turn into a mad dash to secure a good accompanist for my students at a price they can afford. I have been fortunate enough to have an accompanist  but now I have a student singing for her state solo competition and he's unavailable as are many of the accompanists on my long list.

So then the dilemma arises, do I try to convince my student to pay more or do I try to ask an accompanist to charge less? I hope to find someone that will charge within a range that my student is comfortable with because I certainly do not want to insult a good accompanist by suggesting they are not worth what they are asking! When availability becomes such an issue this is quite the challenge.