This good news is that I felt pretty rested yesterday. Rested from vacationing I guess. The bad news (?) is that Cecchetti has indeed scheduled many hours for me as a ballet accompanist during the next two weeks. On two days they have even scheduled me for four classes. That’s six hours. I don’t think they usually do that to their accompanists. At any rate, I can use the money and I do enjoy the work.

I fell back easily into doing this work. It’s basically careful improvising. I need to be sure to keep my phrases even. If the class is struggling, I make the melodies very simple and clear. If not, I take more liberties with melody and rhythm. But always keeping the phrases four and eight measures long.

I worked with a new instructor yesterday who complimented me after the class. He said something like he appreciated my rhythmic playing instead of the usual blah blah blah that he found accompanists played. It’s tricky because you don’t really want to distract the teacher or the players. At the same time, the fun for me is the music, so if I can vary it, I have more fun.

My solution to this is to be a bit adventurous with my rhythms. I also use a lot of different kinds of chordal harmony: some jazz and even dissonances, as long as it’s clear, it’s okay.

Anyway, I probably won’t have time for long blogs this week.

Last night, instead of treadmilling, I sat around with Mark and Leigh sipping drinks and chatting. They are planning to take off today so I wanted to spend time with them. Also I was a bit tired for exercising. Hopefully today I will have energy, even though I have four and a half hours of class scheduled.