Soaking or not soaking, that is the question. Some pianists use to soak their arms into hot water before playing. Does it have any tangible benefit? Is it just a whim? I tried for you and here is my report. Obviously I found the technique very interesting and the experience positive. Let’s see why.

Time flies when you have a an album on its way… We all know how much every new experience can change the way you see (or think about) things. If I still believe in these thoughts written a few months ago, this recording sessions for my first album really modified my perception of studio work.

Today, we’ll speak about another track of my upcoming album: Ravel’s Le gibet. Le gibet, second movement of Gaspard de la nuit, put the audience in a sort of cataleptic state. Ravel really challenged himself and the output is fantastic: a very slow and mesmerizing piece completely fitting Bertrand’s poem.

People usually don’t believe me when I say I spend much more time finding a suitable sitting than a piano before a performance. However, this is perfectly true. But that said, I’m not the only pianist claiming the bench is more important than the piano. When I was 14, I heard Samson François saying “I’d rather sit well at a bad piano, than sit poorly at a good one.” Of course he said this in a documentary film, I’m not old enough to have known him. I share his point of view now, but at this time, I just said to myself “What is this crazy guy talking about?”. Well, 16 years later, I deeply apologize to Samson Francois : he was not crazy, just much more experienced than me. What a surprise, isn’t it? But we all know how teenagers are, and I was not an exception!

Over this week-end, I had time to rest a bit and think. About what? About me, of course, and what I experienced during the last six months. For those who followed the story, I was wondering how to publish my first CD and wrote this post, and after friends made me change my mind a bit, I looked for and found several record labels happy to release this project. Hurray I said to myself, people to help me! But the artist-label relationship is much more complex than this.

Programming is a vast topic and lots of people wrote about it. Truth is I’m still experimenting, that’s not an easy task and there is no ready-made recipe. Over the years, I learnt a few things from my mistakes, and here are my 5 top advices about programming.

In my last post, I discussed about the top 5 improvements Internet brought to the musician’s life. But nothing is ever totally black or white and Internet has some negative effects too. Today, let’s review 5 of the top reasons why internet doesn’t help Classical musicians.

Every day I receive dozen of articles about how internet is great for classical musicians. It’s true and we can’t deny it: Internet changed a lot of things in our lives : you can purchase music from your home and listen to it instantly, you now have virtual friends, you can share your experience with people, the list could be very very long… But what did it change in my professional life? Does internet improve my professional life? Let’s first see the top 5 reasons why internet makes things easier for me.

First post of the year : 2010 just ended and 2011 shows the tip of his nose. My best wishes for a prosperous 2011! I do not know about you, but for me, 2011 will be full of great events. A lot of work ahead and the joy of seeing that the 2010 work really paid off.

In the previous post about my past year, I mostly wrote about changes in my piano technique and the pianist’s loneliness. In one year, my perspective of the pianist’s job has tremendously evolved and my working life has changed drastically. Let me talk about four aspects of my work I had to improve and which have helped me a lot to develop my professional activities.