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Bruce Brubaker on all things piano

Screening

December 30, 2009 by Bruce Brubaker

In a large suitcase, I’m carrying most of the 400 prescreening CDs submitted by prospective students to New England Conservatory’s piano department this year. These recordings come from applicants to the school’s bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree programs, and from applicants to the joint degree program the conservatory has with Harvard University.

When I started teaching at NEC five years ago there was no “prescreening” in advance of the spring auditions at the school. Any pianist could apply and be heard by the faculty committee. Things have changed fast!

GradusAJ.jpgSeveral of the most selective schools now have prescreenings by recording. When we started the process I intended to use the recordings to eliminate the weakest ten or twenty per cent of applicants, reducing our total days of live auditions and giving more consistency to what we heard.

By now, the total number of applicants has grown so much, that in order to fit into the seven days of live auditions we have scheduled in 2010, I will need to eliminate fifty per cent of the total pianists applying. It’s not so easy to do.

Doctoral applicants are scrutinized most intensely. Their recordings will be heard by me and two other faculty pianists. In the end, we will eliminate many, many of them, inviting only four or five players to come to Boston for a live audition in February. Generally, we accept one pianist into the school’s doctoral program each year, possibly two.

The quality of the world’s piano playing is getting better fast. The scope of our applicant pool is also widening. This year, at my request, I have very little information about each student as I listen to their recordings. I do not know with whom they studied, or what teachers they are requesting. I don’t know if they won competitions or played major concerts. I don’t know where they live.

On each CD from bachelor’s and master’s degree applicants, there’s one movement from a Classical sonata and one “Romantic” work. I’m hearing dozens of recorded performances of Beethoven’s Opus 81a, this year’s most frequently chosen sonata. There are many, performances of Beethoven’s “Waldstein” Sonata, and Opus 109, and dozens of accounts of Chopin’s Third and First Ballades. (Each year brings slight shifts in the popularity of what must be the most classic of the classics.) Some of the CDs include recordings of extra unrequested pieces.

These piles of CDs are a “sample” — a cross-section of a tree trunk, a core sample, an air quality reading. My suitcase of recordings is a snapshot of the world’s piano playing aspiration. A lot of young people are studying and learning to play the piano well. This annual collection of CDs is itself an art work — an artifact of a large multilayered performance. By establishing our procedure and specifying repertory, we set up a frame for global action. All over the world, mostly during November (the prescreening recordings are due at New England Conservatory on December 1, as with most American conservatories that require them), aspiring pianists are playing for the microphone. Striving. Listening. Burning the CDs and labeling boxes and sleeves.

There’s monetary investment too. The stacks of discs represent a lot of resources. And the recordings are colored by money. Pianos are expensive, and the sound of poorly-regulated, poorly-voiced, inferior instruments is notable in some of the submissions. In contrast, a few recordings are finely crafted sonically and elegantly packaged (with photos).

This big suitcase of CDs is heavy. After the listening is finished, the discs will go to a recycling center. Next year, we’ll be accepting MP3s via the internet.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: artifact, audition, entance exam, entrance examination, New England Conservatory, pianists, prescreening

Bruce Brubaker

Recordings like the new American piano music albums I make for ECM, InFiné, Bedroom Community, and Arabesque reach millions of listeners, and break through some old divisions of high culture/pop, or art/entertainment. My fans are listening to Billie Eilish, The Weeknd — even the occasional Mozart track! Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube are allowing music lovers to discover music they could not have found so easily before. Live performances begin to reflect what’s happening online. My performances occur in classical venues like the Philharmonie in Paris, the Barbican in London, at La Roque d’Anthéron, at festivals such as Barcelona’s Sónar and Nuits Sonores in Brussels, and such nightclubs as New York’s (le) Poisson Rouge. Read More…

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PianoMorphosis

Music is changing. Society's changing. Pianists, and piano music, and piano playing are changing too. That's PianoMorphosis. But we're not only reacting... From the piano -- at the piano, around the piano -- we are agents of change. We affect … [Read More...]

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“Glassforms” with Max Cooper at Sónar

“Glass Etude” on YouTube

demi-cadratin review of Brubaker solo concert at La Roque d’Anthéron

“Classical music dead? Nico Muhly proves it isn’t” — The Telegraph‘s Lucy Jones on my Drones & Piano EP

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“Brubaker recital proves eclectic, hypnotic, and timeless” — Harlow Robinson’s Boston Globe review of my Jordan Hall recital

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Bruce Brubaker hosts 4 weeks of “Hammered!” on WQXR — “Something Borrowed,” “Drone,” “Portal,” “The Raw and the Cooked”

“Onstage, a grand piano and an iPod” — David Weininger’s story with video by Dina Rudick

“Bruce Brubaker on Breaking Down Boundaries” — extensive audio interview at PittsburghNewMusicNet.com

“Heavy on the Ivories” — Andrea Shea’s story for WBUR about Bruce Brubaker’s performances and recording of “The Time Curve Preludes” by William Duckworth

“Feeding Those Young and Curious Listeners” — Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times on the first anniversary of the Poisson Rouge

“The Jewel in the Fish” — Harry Rolnick on Bruce Brubaker at the Poisson Rouge

“The Post-Postmodern Pianist” — Damian Da Costa profiles Bruce Brubaker in The New York Observer

Bruce Brubaker questioned at NewYorkPianist.net

“Finding the keys to the heart of Jordan Hall” — Joan Anderman in the Boston Globe on the search for a new concert grand piano

“Hearing and Seeing” — Philip Glass speaks with Bruce Brubaker and Jon Magnussen, Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study

Bruce Brubaker about Messiaen’s bird music, NPR, “Here and Now”

“I Hear America: Gunther Schuller at 80” — notes and programs for concert series, New England Conservatory, Harvard University, Boston Symphony Orchestra

“A Conversation That Never Occurred About the Irene Diamond Concert,” Juilliard Journal

Bruce Brubaker plays music by Alvin Curran at (le) Poisson Rouge

Bruce Brubaker

Recordings such the new American piano music albums I make for ECM, InFiné, and Arabesque reach many listeners, and seem to break through some old divisions of high culture/pop, or art/entertainment. My fans are listening to Cardi B, Childish Gambino, Ariana Grande — even the occasional Mozart track! Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube are allowing music lovers to discover music they could not have encountered so easily in the past. Live performances begin to reflect what’s happening online: this year I play at the International Piano Festival at La Roque d’Anthéron, traditional concert venues in Los Angeles, and Boston — as well as nightclubs in Berlin, Hamburg, Paris, Lyon, Geneva, and New York’s (le) Poisson Rouge.

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