Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Your occupation!

We have so many interesting people as members of this incredible forum, from all over the world. I've always wondered, where are all of you from, and what are your occupations? Do we have a lot of professional pianists/teachers/adjudicators? I'm curious as to how many of us actually play piano for a living and how many of us are amateurs who simply enjoy piano during spare time.

For me, I live in Winnipeg, MB, Canada (anyone else in this cold city?), and I'm currently a student. I've always believed that if you HAVE to play music (as you would if it's your job) it would take some of the pureness away from it, so I'm not sure if it will ever be more than a hobby (although a very beautiful one).

So what about you guys?

From Victoria, I can only offer you my condolences!

Cheers, and keep warm!

I don't have a life. I have a job and a piano. I'm a microscope jockey. I'm a cytotechnologist. That's a person who microscopically prescreens cellular samples for malignancy, weeds out the negatives, and sends any atypicalities on for a pathologist to review. I've been doing this for 26 years. Before that I taught high school math and English.

Starting my second semester at my University in Pennsylvania. Piano Performance major.

I have two jobs at my workplace, and I'm working on my Bachelor's Degree in Information Technology. At my job I am the resident geek, I mean network administrator/PC guy where I am responsible for Internet service, antivirus updates, server security, and end-user support.

My other job is customer administrator where I have to place orders for customers, and ship products all over the world.

For me these are just jobs, and don't represent any career path that I've decided to follow.

John

I have been IT manager for a large manufacturing company for about twenty-eight years. In fact it mostly boils down to having written enormous numbers of logically simple but sometimes very detailed programmes. The whole factory closed down last year and I am due for retirement anyway, but I shall keep going in a part-time capacity until the chop comes, which will certainly not be a negative event, I hasten to add.

I have never desired to be in the music business, although quite a few people, including my teacher thought I should be. I look forward to spending increasing time developing the plethora of strange musical ideas I cannot seem to stop coming.

Judging by the numbers and turnovers in the various Forums (Pianist Corner, Teachers and Beginners) the vast majority of the pianists are amateurs.

The PROFILES provide a fund of information to help put a handle on the poster ... from my corner ... "occupation, location and
interests" give a huge clue.

For instance ... we know that Classik15 is a wide-eyed student presently hibernating under ten foot of snow (Winnipeg) and wishing the spring would bring warmer weather ... the Forum is a newly found means of beating the isolation judging from 21 posts since registering on Xmas Eve 2007 ... interests limited to piano and reading
suggest a non-sporty type ... while the liking for classical music infers a novice party-line adherent still to be buffeted by the spice
of the many genres of music.

This is Sherlock Holmes from sunny South Africa ... now if I was marooned in Winnipeg I'd be out on the ski-slopes ... though, knowing how little snow falls in Pretoria (never)... and an aging awareness of my primitive skiing skills (picked up during a Norway jaunt)... the warning presents itself ... how on earth will I be able to play the piano with a broken arm!!

I used to be an IT professional, working for a Fortune-500 company - I got to do just about every aspect in the realm of "IT".

But that was a long time ago... For the past six years I've been a full-time musician, and I enjoy it very much.

It beats trying to do music AND another high-stress job (which I did for many years - it was crazy).

I accompany quite a few choirs, have a church job, and have a smattering of students.

Oh, and I also tune organs (once in a while).

London, but I'm Greek.

I'm a composer.

Public-school Choral Director by day

Private Piano Instructor by night

If it weren't for the medical/dental/vision benefit package, I'd given up on my day job a long time ago. That, plus the fact I need to make house payments. Teaching piano is not exactly a lucrative vocation.

how can you tune an organ? I thought the size of those pipes were unchangeable...

General and financial management for a 10 person company, (part of a group employing 150 worldwide), specialising in sale/rental of professional TV studio equipment. I've worked in that sector for the past 15 years, before that advertising/publishing sales and university.

classik51:
I've always believed that if you HAVE to play music (as you would if it's your job) it would take some of the pureness away from it, so I'm not sure if it will ever be more than a hobby (although a very beautiful one).

You sound exactly like me when I was 16-17 (flute was my main instrument, but I had similar capabilities/grades for piano.) I decided to study languages at university instead, though I did research a few music degrees and other musical further education options; I even visited some colleges/universities and had interviews with faculty members and admissions tutors.

Looking back from the age of 41, I do occasionally have a tinge of regret that I did not follow a musical career, as music is something that I love, rather than something that I "like a lot and find interesting." Then again, I have met lots of different people from various cultures and backgorunds, travelled to many marvellous parts of the world, have enjoyed reasonable financial comfort and security, and I do enjoy my day job, though perhaps more in the "like and find interesting way" than actually "love." I am toying with the idea of going 50% part-time (or even stopping completely) in 4-5 years time, and then teaching piano/accompanying for a living, and floating off into retirement on a wave of musical activity . It would be quite a pay cut compared to what I earn now, but by then some major financial hurdles will have been mostly overcome in terms of house and children, and our needs will be somewhat less substantial as well.

I have accompanied (on a professional basis) for churches/choral societies, recital soloists, etc, in the past, and even had a couple of late beginner piano students just before leaving England in the late 90s. Since passing my DipABRSM performance diploma last year, I am going to start research into teaching issues this year. My teacher is aware of my thoughts and is being very supportive and helpful. The fact that I could give lessons in English or French, which opens up quite a large market here in a francophone city with many international organisations and foreign company headquarters. I am mother tongue English, but have used French exclusively at work for the past 8 years. I have lessons with my current teacher (of Swiss-German origin, with whom I started in 2005) exclusively in French, with the odd bit of German thrown in if neither of us can think of the French word .

-Michael B.

Loads of people here in IT


Me however in school

Given that most of the area within a bird's eye view of Winnipeg is flatter than the proverbial pancake, you might have to go several leagues on your snowshoes - or in your dogsled - to even find a slope worthy of being called such. Cross-country, perhaps?

You could engage in the ultimate Canadian winter sport, however, outdoor ice hockey, something we can never do here in Victoria.

Regards,

Originally from NH, but have lived in NYC since 1978. Currently in Brooklyn.

Computer programmer, VFP for several years. Currently Ruby and Ruby on Rails, converting legacy progs into web apps for our clients.

I also have 4 young piano students at the moment.

Professional photographer for over forty years. Before that, and during part of that time, I was a semi-pro wannabe professional tenor about town. Along with singing goes acting, and I've done some semi-pro wannabe professional acting about town too.

Currently, I play piano a lot, with no ambition other than to get better and to please myself in the process. About a year and one half from now, I will enter deep retirement, and will no longer have to take photo assignments for money.

The next phase?: I am attempting to reposition myself as a serious fine art photorapher, having ressurected a photo book project I started more than twenty years ago on the Mississippi River, tentatively titled "Stream of Consciousness." As part of this project, I have recently spent a fair amount of time in New Orleans, photographing in the flood ravaged, post-Katrina, lower 9th ward.

I vow to not stop playing the piano during this next phase, but to enjoy music even more.

Tomasino.

You can tune an organ because the pipes have the horizontal slots where there is a piece of metal that can be adjusted, and therefore tuned. It's not only the length of the pipe that determines tuning - that's part of the reason why old organs can sound very bad.

I'm a high school senior, this is my second year working as a church organist.

To btb: yes, but looking at profiles is much less interesting than actually having people talk about themselves
Your description of me is very true. It actually would be exactly right except fortunately this year we didn't get much snow. (It's only -22 degrees celsius right now and it's JANUARY!)

To BruceD : I won't be jealous for long since I'm planning on moving to Vancouver in a couple of years to study law. Lots of rain there, though.

To Nikolas: I wish I could compose. However, I realized a long time ago that I'm not creative at all.

Now thanks to being non-sporty I'm not likely to break my arms (or fingers). Imagine breaking your fingers!

Auntie is in San Francisco. Work all day playing piano, in a wide variety of applications, for a first tier performing arts organization...dream job but very high energy...

Work with the absolute best in the business...

I'm a speech therapist in a hospital. I work mostly in an inpatient rehab unit with adults who have had strokes, head injuries, and the like. People come to our unit from the "regular" acute-care part of the hospital and stay for a few days to a few weeks. Patients work with me on regaining their speech and/or language abilities (speaking, listening, reading, and writing), swallowing abilities, and cognitive skills such as attention, memory, motivation, awareness, judgment, and processing. if it weren't for piano, this work could certainly absorb all my creative energies. As it is, I "like it a lot and find it interesting." I love having these two sides to my life--I go to work and interact intensely with people people people, then come home to solitude, using the discipline of practice to hammer out my own creative freedom. I love the way the two sides ground each other--working with people in crisis helps keep me from getting too artily high-minded and obscure, and the art keeps me aware of the other, more important, non-hospital parts of my patients' lives.