State Solo & Ensemble is coming up on May first, and I know it will be an incredibly busy day- which is exactly as I like it. By my rough estimate, I anticipate playing for at least a dozen singers from Tremper, three from Case, 1 from Prairie, 2 from Union Grove,  2 home-schooled students, 4 flutists, 2 trumpeters,  2 saxophonists, 1 clarinetist,  and a partridge in a pear tree.

And I like it that way.  It makes for a full and exhilarating day which leaves me feeling happily exhausted and impossibly pumped.

Cut to this past Thursday and to an email I received from a band director  who has an amazing  student I accompanied for district and who I look forward to playing for at state.  She got an email from the folks who run the state competition,  basically saying that she needed to find a different accompanist for this young man because I was too busy playing for other musicians-  an email not prompted by concern for me but rather for the schedule.  (They want to schedule the day in such a way that pianists aren’t double booked in two different rooms at the same time . . . and obviously that’s a little trickier when pianists are as busy as I am – but by no means impossible. After all, the competition begins at 8 in the morning and lasts until 4 in the afternoon- so there’s clearly plenty of time to play with.)

Anyway, the email left me completely flabbergasted,  and for many reasons.  First of all, I’ve been playing for tons of people at State for a good ten years now and never once has an email like this been sent by the powers that be.   But more importantly,  I find it outrageous that such an email would be sent out a mere three weeks before State, as if finding an another accompanist and preparing a piece with them from scratch would be no big deal.  What makes the scenario absolutely absurd is that they singled out what is without a doubt the hardest accompaniment I’m playing in the competition- and one of the hardest I’ve ever played.   The thought of inflicting it on someone else,  or of them being able to put it together in three short weeks,  is the nuttiest idea since New Coke.

So here’s what we’re going to do.   This particular teacher is going to list the name of a colleague of mine as this young man’s new accompanist.  (The colleague is a friend of mine and I asked him for permission, which he happily and sympathetically granted.)   And then on May 1st, my colleague and friend is going to wake up with a terrible case of the “flu” –  and I will step in as his “substitute”.   And of course,  I will have been the real accompanist all along.   That’s the little “fib” mentioned at the top of the page, although for a law & order type like me it feels like a Gigantic Deception.   But I do not feel one iota of guilt about this- and if I did,  I wouldn’t be blogging about it to the world.  (By the way,  you may have noticed that I have withheld pretty much any information that would identify who this person is….his city, his school,  his age,  his instrument, his name.  I may not be Mister Street Savvy,  but I guess I can be sneaky when I have to be.)   This is about an accompanist doing what he believes he’s got to do.

Forgive me for couching this in such grandiose terms, as if I’d just decided to harbor Jewish refugees in my basement at the risk of being arrested or decided to blow the whistle on my boss’s embezzlement at the risk of losing my job.   All we’re talking about here is playing the piano for someone.

No big deal.

Scarcely worth mentioning.

Nevertheless,  shhhhhhhhhh.  .  .

pictured above:  playing piano for Pastor Jeff’s installation service as bishop.