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So A Seat at the Piano is essentially a platform to raise the voices of a lot of composers

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who have been less heard or historically excluded or underrepresented. It is a database,

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it is a resource, it's a blog, it's kind of a lot of different things that we've combined into one

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kind of a one-stop shop for a lot of pianists, teachers, students to go to if they're seeking

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different kinds of repertoire that are outside of the normal kind of canon. During the summer of 2020

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our whole nation was dealing with solitude and also racial reckoning, social reckoning, a lot of the

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disparities that are within our society and I think there was a big call to action. I feel like as

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musicians even within our silo, within our bubble, in our sphere we can still do a lot of influence.

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I come at it from a pretty different background than a lot of people. I grew up in Canada,

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there is an organization, the Royal Conservatory of Music that I grew up playing their syllabus from.

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They actually have always included a lot of composers, usually Canadian composers, and Canada

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is a pretty new place so we've always had female composers and people of color and everything in

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that syllabus. I actually didn't realize till I moved to the U.S. that that gap was there and so

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for me part of wanting to do A Seat at the Piano was to sort of give people the experiences that

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I was lucky enough to have. So growing up I certainly was introduced to certain Black composers,

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however as a pianist growing up I certainly found myself making it a point to prove as a Black

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pianist that I could play Bach, I could play the Mozart, I could play the Chauvinet too as well as

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anybody else. I wasn't necessarily rejecting learning about more Black composers because it

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was still a part of my upbringing to a certain extent but I certainly wasn't going out of my way

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to necessarily make it a part of how I programmed so I was really excited to put a lot of effort

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into just expanding my knowledge of not only Black composers but of course that's where it started.

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Through this project I'm finding a part of my own identity because I from day one until I graduated

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with my DMA I've been playing Beethoven sonatas, Czerny etudes. The more I got to work with an ASAP

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the more I found all these cool composers that you know I almost feel like I was robbed of

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like learning this in my primary education. I guess working on ASAP has been really empowering.

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Come visit us at acetatthepiano.com or visit us on social media. I can promise you that you will

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find something that interests you. Tune in tomorrow night Tuesday September 19th at 8 p.m eastern on

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the Pianopod's YouTube channel for a fascinating conversation with the team of Acet at the Piano.

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The audio episode will be divided into two segments with part one launching simultaneously on your

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preferred podcast platform during the video premiere. Make sure to hit subscribe or follow

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the Pianopod. Find all the necessary links in the description. Catch you this Tuesday!