It's time to turn the page
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Hysterical.
Being a page-turner can be stressful.
I commented on this in the old forum.
My former piano teacher recruited me to turn pages for him when he recorded a student's audition for a spot at (I think) Julliard. The student played a viola sonata by Rebecca Clarke
Anyhow, during the first couple of run-throughs, I was constantly getting lost because the piano part was so non-linear.
I finally gave up and just started following the viola part (written above the piano part) and it went fine.
Student got in, by the way.
And then, a couple of years later, my teacher was going to perform the Hammerklavier sonata, live, on WFMT as part of the Beethoven celebration they were having - one Beethoven sonata per day. I showed up to hear it live, and he approached me, asking if I'd turn pages for him.
Oh...crap.
Fortunately, one of the people who works at the venue (Piano Forte) volunteered.
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Technology has rendered that job obsolete. Another 5-7 years and you won’t see them anymore.
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Technology has rendered that job obsolete. Another 5-7 years and you won’t see them anymore.
@LuFins-Dad said in It's time to turn the page:
Technology has rendered that job obsolete. Another 5-7 years and you won’t see them anymore.
Years ago, I bought an "Air Turn." It's a pedal that hooks up to your iPad which will turn pages for you. I think PDFs will work and most musical notation software will work as well.
Two problems for me:
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Any score on the iPad is just too freaking small for me. Yes, I know I can make it larger but that makes page-turns more frequent - which leads to problem #2.
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It's a huge distraction keeping your left foot on that pedal. At least it was for me.
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I had a friend giving a recital where I turned pages for him. Every piece of music presented a different challenge. I remember one piece of music consisted of photocopies of pages back-to-back. Turning pages involved staples getting caught on the page behind it.
The most egregious music was tissue thing (no lie). One would turn the page and watch it fold down onto itself. I found myself hovering over the music to hold it upright.
Another time, I had musicians from the Chicago Symphony performing a trio. The pianist asked for a page turner. I asked the audience if anyone would turn pages as I was making a recording and needed to monitor that equipment. A woman volunteered. Her husband explained to me that the page turner volunteer had competed in the International Chopin competition in Warsaw back in the 1980s. "Yeah, she can probably handle it."
I once had the Chicago Symphony's chief pianist accompanying a violinist in our living room. I realized at the last second that she hadn't asked anyone to turn pages during the Beethoven Kreutzer. What was most amazing to me was how good she was at turning the pages on her own. I think Bruce Lee would have been impressed by the speed of her hand. I'd seen her turn pages for Daniel Barenboim - but her turning her own pages was spectacular.
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One trick I learned, that I always forget, is to "dog-ear" every other page. That way, when you want to turn the page, the ear is sticking up, making it easy to grab. If you've done it right, the uncreased page is being held away from the following page by the dog-ear that that one has.
