How to Get a Job as a Pianist

Matt from Florida emailed us a question this week:

I was curious how you sort of get off the ground with piano gigs?  I realize that possibly playing in a hotel lobby is a good route, but what is the best way to go about doing this?  Is it a matter of just knowing the people personally or do you recommend just walking up to the front desk and asking if you could play?

Thanks for your question, Matt. How to get a gig is a great topic. We could write article after article about getting gigs and we’d never exhaust the subject.

That said, we have two great articles on the site written by Craig Pilo, who is currently Frankie Valli’s drummer and has worked previously with Maynard Ferguson, Edgar Winter and others. Craig knows how to get a gig, and I suggest you start with reading everything he’s written for us on the subject. Then come back here and I’ll get more specific about piano jobs.

From Craig Pilo:
Getting Started as a Musician
The Next Level – Getting Started As a Musician, Part 2

Great advice, right? I learned a few tricks from him myself.

Now – specifically regarding piano gigs – there are a few angles to consider.

Why are pianists hired?

Let’s consider for a moment why pianists are hired. There are several different scenarios I can think of.

Background pianists are hired for ambiance. Pianists play cocktail parties, country clubs, receptions, hotel lobbies (as you mentioned), restaurants, department stores and many other places. It creates a wash of pleasing background noise to fill up the gaps in the patrons conversations. Silence, after all, is more manageable when it isn’t silent. Like all music, background piano music stimulates customers emotions – usually in a pleasing way – and makes them feel good about the room they are in. That’s good for business.

Pianists are hired for status. You don’t see pianists playing at McDonalds, right? No, you see pianists at fancy restaurants and private parties wearing tuxes and playing sophisticated, beautiful music. It gives people the impression of class. In fact, people feel classier just being in a room with a tuxedo’d pianist. It’s something that has been reinforced over and over again by Hollywood and the tourist industry. Having a pianist in a restaurant makes people more forgiving of an over-priced menu. That is also good for business.

Pianists are hired for entertainment. This is usually a different kind of pianist than a background pianist. For entertainment, people usually hire a piano bar entertainer, a classical concert pianist, or similar. These are pianists that perform in concert (or concert-like) settings where the audience is paying attention (not at all the case with background pianists). Think of the Howl At the Moon chain of bars, piano recitals – or even Ben Folds or Billy Joel. Rock stars are hired to provide entertainment just like the rest of us, they are just paid better.

Pianists are hired to accompany. Personally, I do a lot of these gigs. There are countless ensembles that need pianists to accompany them. Choirs, dance classes, musical theatre rehearsals, church services, cabaret singers, voice lessons, acting classes, comedy clubs, recitalists, students – I could go on and on. I’ve played them all. I enjoy doing it and it’s steady work. And it doesn’t require you to be entertaining or unobtrusive like the previous jobs – all you are required to be is good. I like that.

Pianists are hired to fill a required position. There are some situations that require a pianist. The Broadway pit of Jersey Boys, for examples, requires 3 keyboardists. Maybe Beyonce requires a keyboardist in the studio to lay down a synth track on her album. Maybe Elton John needs a second keys player to bang out the string parts on his next tour. In this situation, pianists are hired like skilled craftsmen to expertly perform the music that’s required of them. These are great gigs when you get them.

You could also add other things to this list – like pianists are hired to teach, arrange, orchestrate, program, etc., but I think that starts to get toward the peripheral gigs that a pianist might do, and that’s a different article altogether.

Who does the hiring?

For everyone of these gigs, there is (usually) one person that hires to the pianist to perform the function I described. I will tell you exactly who these people are for each situation. Then you need to find these people and get them to hire you. We’ll talk about that next.

Ambiance & Status – let’s combine these, because they usually go together. In restaurants you should begin by asking the restaurant manager. They may direct you to someone that does music booking for the restaurant. Or they may already have a pianist, in which case you’ll need to contact the pianist and ask if he/she needs a sub (if you want to take it that far). The same is true of hotels, country clubs, and department stores. Find the manager.

Entertainment – to get a gig at an piano bar place, you need to go and perform at their open mic nights. I know for a fact that in Chicago, the open mic night at Howl at the Moon is Sunday nights. Show up and play. If you do it enough and they like you, they will hire you. For concert pianists, you need to find representation – meaning a talent agent that finds you gigs. Usually you get representation by winning a competition (so stop reading and go back to practicing!). How to be a rock star is a topic of countless books and websites, and I won’t even get into that.

Accompanying – in the case of schools, lessons, churches, comedy clubs and dance classes, it would be the teacher/music director/casting director that would hire you. Essentially it is whoever is in charge of the situation. In the case of cabaret singers, recitalists and students, it would be the performer themselves that would hire you.

Required positions – for Broadway pits, the music directors and music contractors hire the original musicians. Once they are set, the individual musicians usually hire their own subs with the approval of the MD. For laying tracks in studios, it’s the producer or the recording artist that would hire you. For big tours with rock stars, it’s a contractor, a business manager or the star themselves that would hire you.

Do the hustle

Ok – now you know the different functions that pianists perform, and who would hire you to do it. Now how do you get these people to hire you?

Do you know anyone that they know? Maybe you have a mutual friend or they’ve worked with someone you’ve worked with before? This is the best way to get a gig. Mutual associates help to break the ice – but only if they are genuine. I say this over and over on this site – networking has to be genuine. Don’t be fake or awkward. Nobody digs that. The key is that you have to be liked by someone that they like.

Can you find their email address? Or phone number? Or is is a restaurant or hotel you can just walk into and start talking? Can you mail them a promotional postcard? In your correspondence, tell them who you are, what you do, what you’ve done before, drop the name of a mutual associate if you have one, and leave your contact info. Then follow up with them after an appropriate amount of time. This process can take awhile if you are starting from scratch and you have to be patient. This part of the hustle is always hard.

Again, the quickest way to get through this part is to have mutual associations. We are all taught at an early age that strangers are not to be trusted. When you try to get a gig with somebody that doesn’t know you from Adam, you can bet they have their old **STRANGER DANGER** alarm going off deep down in the back of their thoughts. The solution to this is to try to meet all the people you can and make lots of genuine friends. If you know everybody in your scene, you are bound to have mutual friends with the people that do the hiring.

I find one of the best ways to find mutual friends is to use Facebook. Go on Facebook and look up the person you are about to contact and see if the two of you have any mutual friends (but don’t add them as a friend, ’cause that’s just weird).

Reputation and recommendations

The first gigs are the hardest to get. After that it gets a lot easier because you build a reputation for quality and you become highly recommended. Once this happens it can really start to snowball and soon people you don’t know will be calling you, and not the other way around. This is the really fun part of the hustle – when you have steady work and positive feedback coming in, and you know it’s because you worked hard and give a good product. It’s a great feeling.

Other musicians

Before I wrap this up, I should mention one thing that I have so far neglected. Often the best way to get a gig in a new scene is through other musicians that are already in the scene.

For instance, I was once the conductor on a North American Broadway tour. During the course of the tour we had to replace our violinist, our cellist, our trombonist, our lead trumpet, our bassist, or keyboardist, and our drummer. These things happen on tours – things come up and people need to leave the road. Every time we had a position open on the road, the contractor would ask me who I wanted to hire as the replacement, and I would, in turn, go to the band and ask them who they wanted as the next player. The band, without exception, would end up picking someone that was not only a good player, but someone that was easy to get along with, easy to room with, and, always, someone they were already friends with. I remember once we had a particularly hard time finding a trombone player, and I ended up calling all of my friend back in Chicago for a recommendation.

(Just as as aside – note that I didn’t ever go to one of these websites that operate as a musician directory. In my opinion, those sites are a waste of time. Facebook, as I mentioned, works much better.)

Conclusion

So that’s it, Matt. Between Craig Pilo’s articles and this, that’s a lot of information about how to get a gig. At the very least, it’ll get you started. Best of luck to you!