I love playing with other musicians. I have been in chamber groups like THUD (Contemporary Music Ensemble), violin-piano duo with Insun Jung (San Francisco Symphony) and recently Solace Ensemble. About  ten years ago, the passion/interest led me to go to the Juilliard for collaborative piano study. In order to play better with other people, you just need to get a proper training and play with as many great people as possible. It was an excellent place to learn how to collaborate with another musician; instrumentalists and vocalists. There are so many amazing musicians! I gained skills and repertoire for instrumental and vocal accompanying.

 

Having an experienced and capable accompanist provides a great musical support and many benefits to the soloists. I gained a great number of experiences playing for beginners and more advanced students as well as professionals. By having sat through numerous lessons at the Juilliard as well as renowned summer festivals, I learned a great deal of their technical and musical challenges and repertoire which gives me a tool to work with the students of those instruments. Unfortunately, this cannot be learned by simply being a solo pianist.

 

In our sessions, we can be working for:

• Recitals
• Auditions
• Competitions
• Recording

It is ideal that instrumentalists as well as singers have some time with the pianist/coach. I used to coach opera singers more often in the city. It requires the knowledge of the repertoire, language (diction) and style. In their vocal lessons, often they are so focused on the technical issues that they don’t get to work on the artistic side of the singing. So, we do work on things that are missed in the voice lessons. The same could be said for the instrumentalists. By the time you need to play with the piano, you are uncomfortable playing with it because all of a sudden you hear extra sound. If you are used to playing with the piano, it is like a second nature to hear sounds other than yourself. Piano also provides harmony and absolute/fixed pitches (meaning the tuning on the piano cannot be adjusted like violin), so it is easier to work on the pitches in the session. We could also talk about the style of the piece as well as the piano part that often provides answers for how to phrase a melody.