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I don't remember how I found the job. It was probably just a classified ad in the
Well, I thought, I can do that. I'd done it in other places we'd lived. I played a little electric organ at the Lutheran church in
So I called about the ad. Well, this was something different. It was an AME Zion church. A black church. After my phone call I figured I wouldn't get the gig. Some much more appropriate black musician would want it.
But no one else called them. I was it. I was the new pianist/accompanist at the AME Zion church in
In order to understand my apprehension, you have to know that I approach the piano with a straight back, playing from music that sits firmly in front of me on the music stand. I read the music as it is written, and that's what I play. I knew, at some level, that more would be called for at the AME Zion church. And I was right.
The first rehearsal was wary on both sides. I was very conscious of being a blue-eyed dishwater blonde, with all the lack of soul that might imply. The choir members were reluctant to greet me. After all, they hadn't hired me. The minister and the choir director had.
We came to an edgy truce. With my ingrained desire to please and to be liked, I was determined to do whatever it took to succeed at this job.
The hymns were standard southern Protestant hymns. The two I remember best were "There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood" (and isn't THAT a cheery thought?) and "Precious Lord."
When we first worked on "Precious Lord," the director asked me to play through it once before they sang. I played the music in front of me, at a standard hymn tempo, a walking tempo, andante.
There was silence when I finished. The director then said, "We sing it a little slower than that." She gave me a sample.
Yes, quite a bit slower. Quite a bit of rubato. A free-style version of "Precious Lord" that allowed for solo melisma at the ends of the phrases, long drawn-out personal vocal statements about the hymn. It bore very little resemblance to the version I had presented.
Okay. I got it. They take it very very slowly. I can follow the director's lead.
But no. There's more. She asked if I could fancy it up a bit. Fancy it up? Does she not know that I read the music and that's all I do? Apparently not. Fancy it up.
I'm the one who can't improvise, remember? But it was clear that they expected more flourishes than the written music provided, and it was up to me to figure out how to produce those flourishes.
Overcoming my acute embarrassment, faute de mieux I came up with arpeggios. Even I could do that, thanks to years of classical piano exercises. At the end of each phrase (and even in the middle, if there was time—and there usually was, given the ambling tempo), I would run my hands up the keys in three-octave arpeggios of whatever chord we were on. It certainly fancied up the piece. It seemed to make them happy. It was quite a stretch for me, but it was manageable.
So whenever a hymn called for fancying-up, that's what I did. E-flat major arpeggios. F major arpeggios. I floated those two-handed arpeggios up the keyboard just like a pro.
Other pianists might have used such a job as an opportunity to expand their style, to find a gospel-sounding beat and to begin a really appropriate use of the whole piano, the entire eighty-eight.
But I didn't. I gussied it up when I had to, and otherwise, I played the hymns as written. Apparently, I wasn't yet ready to change my approach to anything.
I'm sure there were times when the choir would have loved to hear a real key-thumping rendition of one hymn or another, but they had to settle for me. I played what was written, and not a note more, except for those rolling arpeggios.
You get what you pay for, they say. The AME Zion church in
Copyright 2008 Ann Tudor
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