Sunday, September 14, 2008

Playing blindfolded

So I finally did the blindfolded performance. It was a benefit for the blind administered by the local Lion's Club. My dueling partner dreamed this up. He would play onstage for 24 hours with a blindfold on. There were 3 other pianists that rotated through the opposite piano for the entire 24 hours, also with blindfolds so that my partner was never up there alone. It was quite an experience to do a dueling show blindfolded. You can't see the audience, and therefore the interaction with them is difficult. We had spotters behind us that would read us the requests and tell us when someone tipped or when someone donated to the Lion's fund. In general, once I had my finger positioning I was fine as long as i didn't try to jump more than one octave. Sometimes I would loose your spot on the keyboard, thinking I was playing a G chord when I was actually playing a C chord. The few times that this happened I was able to stop playing completely and luckily my partner was playing correctly, and I'd continue singing while trying to locate my correct finger positioning. It was also tricky when my partner began a song in a key I didn't know. I would first have to locate the key by finding the root note on my keyboard by sound, and then using my fingers to discern which note/key I was playing. All in all it was a challenging task but the crowd gave us such love and all 4 pianists (and one drummer) had such a great attitude that it was great fun. All in all we raised over $5,000. And now I know i can do this shit blindfolded. I'm back in NYC for 3 days before headed back south for another 2 weeks.

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