Stop being a pianist.

How do you define a pianist?

Well... it's someone who plays the piano. Teach a monkey to play chopsticks and, technically, you've got a pianist. I was brought up by Russian teachers though and, for them, the word pianist is capitalized; the Pianist. You can't call yourself a Pianist in that sense unless you can really play; Rach 3, Tchaik 1, Prok 2 and all the other monosyllable + number combinations; play those, and then you are a Pianist.

[caption id="attachment_207" align="alignright" width="247" caption="Like it or not, this is a pianist."][/caption]

But, is being a pianist such a good thing? Arcadi Volodos always insists that he is a musician first and pianist last. No one can deny that he is an amazing Pianist in the technical sense, but he doesn't spend his day playing scales, he does an intellectual job. He thinks and imagines.

Having a solid technical foundation is very important, but I don't think it should be any person's goal to be a pianist, regardless of capitalization. The piano is a vehicle, a tool we use. In that sense, we are not pianists. We are artists. The piano is our medium. Music is the way we express our artistic ideas. We are also intellectuals, ever day we work with history and aesthetics. We make informed decisions constantly, weighing different points of view against our own emotions and intellectual understanding of a work of art.

"Just a pianist" is too little to strive for. It's the difference between craftsmanship and art. There is nothing wrong with craftsmanship, but for an artist, playing the piano well is a tool, not an objective. If your goal is to play faster, clearer and brighter than everyone else, you will be missing out on something greater, in my opinion you would be settling for too little. If you improvise a solo and all you are doing is showing off for applause, you probably won't accomplish much more than that. Wynton Marsallis had that insight when he was a teenager. Having just mastered circular respiration, he would play solos without stopping for a breath for five or six minutes at a time. In the end, the audience clapped, but he was little more than a trained monkey performing for them.

As an artist you can inspire your audience, communicate your love for music and share something with them that goes beyond our everyday lives. As a Pianist you can make them think "wow, he plays good". In the end, each of us decides what we want to be.

Stop being a pianist. Be an artist.