Glass Armonicas and Pianos
Obviously I’m making a switch from doing nothing but the glass armonica to including the piano also. I should say something about that.
A constant challenge for me and the glass armonica is that folks have no basis of comparison for knowing whether I’m any good at what I’m doing or not. How many other glass armonica players do folks know? (Um, zero?)Â Now I don’t care about that personally, but it is definitely a problem in terms of marketing myself. For example, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people come up after a performance and say: “That looks easy. Let me try.” Sometimes I let them try (…”oh, it’s a lot harder than it looks!”) but that is a dangerous path: it’s too easy for things to degenerate into what I call the ‘glass armonica petting zoo’ where everyone wants to try it and things too easily can get out of hand–with my $20,000 instrument made of glass. It’s just a bad idea.
So I’ve decided to incorporate the piano. EVERYONE can recognize a capable pianist in about 10 seconds. Maybe even start concerts with piano–”ah, this guy really IS a musician.” THEN, having established my musicianship, I can do things on the armonica as well.
To paraphrase the immortal words of Bill Clinton, “It’s the music, stupid.” Ultimately the whole point is to get past the novelty, and even “me William”, to get to a musical experience that moves people. Which is the whole point in doing all of this. Getting stuck on issues like “that’s novel” or “anyone could do that”–those are impediments to The Music. When it’s easy to dispose of those issues, why not?
Plus, I’m a capable pianist. No reason not to share that too!
