Adaptability

First published in Column 8 on the 21^st August, 1991

 [One of the few Columns to get an introduction from the editor: ‘If you are looking for a piano player, Mike Crowl is your man. Experienced with a variety of keyboards, he tells why he is so adaptable…on page 2.’ ]

 If you want an adaptable person, find a pianist.

Pianists acquire adaptability far more than any other kind of musicians because they work with a major disadvantage: they play an instrument that isn’t portable.

Yes, I know in these electronic days you can lug a piece of equipment round that when you plug it in pretends it’s a piano, but it ain’t. And I guess the day may come when musicians will arrive on your doorstep calling themselves pianists, while asking for a power-point.

Now that I’m on the subject of electronic pianos, I once performed at a country Gospel music festival in Cromwell. When we got there, after finding we were to play out in the open on the back of a couple of trucks – in a 30deg heatwave – they brought forth the piano. It had the distinction of being elderly.

When the bass player tuned to a bass note [on his instrument], he found he was in a different key to the saxophonist, who’d tuned to an octave above. (This may not have mattered. One country singer had each string on his guitar tuned to a different key. We decided not to accompany him.)

Anyway we had to abandon the piano, and I was offered a choice (choice?) of one of two assertive-looking synthesizers, both of which could supposedly produce a piano-like noise.

I had to play standing up – only Donny Osmond does that well – and my wrists were bent at right angles to my hands.

At first I thumped away with the rest of the Gospel crew and wondered why I couldn’t hear anything resembling a piano. Seems the sound man hadn’t plugged me in. Later in the day, just as we were about to start another bracket, the owner of the synth appeared and dismantled it while I was still trying to play.

I ask you: does a Steinway need plugging in, or is it likely someone will dismantle your Bechstein mid-performance?

You can see I don’t have much time for pretend pianos. But back to adaptability.

What other musician is expected to sit down at an instrument he’s never touched before and produce his best? More often that not, a pianist will find that the bass is heaver than he expects, or the treble more shrill, or the pedals too high, and he’ll have to spend most of the performance compensating.

That’s on the better instruments. I’ve played on ones that refused to give an inch. Each key was so sluggish it felt as though there was a lead weight strung on the hammer. Your fingers finished up stiff from the effort.

Some give more than an inch: in Milton, one piano decided it didn’t like the shape of my thumb and slammed the lid down on it. Like a real trouper I said to myself the show must go, but my smile was a little forced.

I’ve played on pianos where there was one note which refused to sound: usually right where you most needed it. At such times you sense the composer is in cahoots with the piano because he’s written the most effective part of the melody for that missing note. You scramble around trying to take the melody up or down an octave, hoping that nobody will notice what a hash you’re making of it all.

I once played in Ross, on the West Coast. We were supposed to go somewhere else [a few miles away], but they’d forgotten we were coming, so all 400 residents of Ross turned out to hear our travelling troupe perform the opera La bohème with eight soloists, no chorus, and a pianist.

The Ross piano had not just one note missing but several. And to add to my joys, a family of wasps danced to the jiggering of my piano-light. I spent the entire performance frantically substituting notes the piano could play for those it couldn’t, and trying to persuade the wasps not to sit on my pages and/or various visible parts of my anatomy.

Now do you see why I say, if you want an adaptable person, find a pianist?

The author playing for a rehearsal of Don Giovanni in 2016

The performance in Ross was part of a ‘piano tour’ put on by the New Zealand Opera Company. It was a much cut-down version of the opera, of course, and one or two people played more than one role. Still, all the big arias were there, along with some of the ensembles, and the cast were fully professional opera singers. We travelled around the South Island of New Zealand in a bus (which also carried our scenery) with a permanent bus driver, visiting a wide variety of smaller towns that would never see an opera performed live normally. And the stage manager did everything backstage: lighting, setting up the scenery (along with some help from the male singers – it often had to adapted to the size of the stage), and making sure everything kept going when something went wrong.

Once we’d finished our South Island tour, we worked our way through the North Island.