So A Seat at the Piano is essentially a platform to raise the voices of a lot of composers
who have been less heard or historically excluded or underrepresented. It is a database,
it is a resource, it's a blog, it's kind of a lot of different things that we've combined into one
kind of a one-stop shop for a lot of pianists, teachers, students to go to if they're seeking
different kinds of repertoire that are outside of the normal kind of canon. During the summer of 2020
our whole nation was dealing with solitude and also racial reckoning, social reckoning, a lot of the
disparities that are within our society and I think there was a big call to action. I feel like as
musicians even within our silo, within our bubble, in our sphere we can still do a lot of influence.
I come at it from a pretty different background than a lot of people. I grew up in Canada,
there is an organization, the Royal Conservatory of Music that I grew up playing their syllabus from.
They actually have always included a lot of composers, usually Canadian composers, and Canada
is a pretty new place so we've always had female composers and people of color and everything in
that syllabus. I actually didn't realize till I moved to the U.S. that that gap was there and so
for me part of wanting to do A Seat at the Piano was to sort of give people the experiences that
I was lucky enough to have. So growing up I certainly was introduced to certain Black composers,
however as a pianist growing up I certainly found myself making it a point to prove as a Black
pianist that I could play Bach, I could play the Mozart, I could play the Chauvinet too as well as
anybody else. I wasn't necessarily rejecting learning about more Black composers because it
was still a part of my upbringing to a certain extent but I certainly wasn't going out of my way
to necessarily make it a part of how I programmed so I was really excited to put a lot of effort
into just expanding my knowledge of not only Black composers but of course that's where it started.
Through this project I'm finding a part of my own identity because I from day one until I graduated
with my DMA I've been playing Beethoven sonatas, Czerny etudes. The more I got to work with an ASAP
the more I found all these cool composers that you know I almost feel like I was robbed of
like learning this in my primary education. I guess working on ASAP has been really empowering.
Come visit us at acetatthepiano.com or visit us on social media. I can promise you that you will
find something that interests you. Tune in tomorrow night Tuesday September 19th at 8 p.m eastern on
the Pianopod's YouTube channel for a fascinating conversation with the team of Acet at the Piano.
The audio episode will be divided into two segments with part one launching simultaneously on your
preferred podcast platform during the video premiere. Make sure to hit subscribe or follow
the Pianopod. Find all the necessary links in the description. Catch you this Tuesday!