From Bach to Billy Joel: What a Modern Pianist Is Expected to Play

I trained as a classical pianist. Properly trained, in the traditional sense. Scales, arpeggios, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, the usual suspects, all approached with the solemn implication that one day I might be called upon to perform something substantial in a room full of attentive people who had deliberately bought tickets to hear it. That sort of training teaches you a great deal: technique, discipline, phrasing, sight-reading, harmony, structure and, perhaps most importantly, the ability to keep going when something has gone slightly wrong and nobody else appears to have noticed. What it does not necessarily prepare you for is the reality of being a working pianist, where sooner or later someone will ask whether you can play a song that was released last Thursday, transpose it down a tone, extend the middle section because the bridesmaids are walking more slowly than expected and somehow finish at precisely the moment the bride reaches the front of the room.

In truth, I have spent a surprisingly large part of my musical life playing contemporary music. Classical training gave me the foundations, but the actual work has frequently involved everything from pop songs and jazz standards to musical theatre, film themes and music which, strictly speaking, was never intended to go anywhere near a piano in the first place. This is not a recent development either. Long before streaming services, downloadable sheet music and the modern expectation that every song ever written should be available instantly, musicians were already being asked to turn popular music into something suitable for weddings, churches and assorted family occasions. The difference was that in the 1990s there was considerably less technology available to help you do it.

I remember being asked, many years ago, to arrange The Bangles’ Eternal Flame for the organ for a church wedding. Today, this would be a relatively straightforward request. You could listen to the song online, find several arrangements, locate a chord sequence, perhaps buy a transcription, and within a few minutes have enough material to begin constructing something appropriate. Back then, things were rather different. I ended up creating my own synthesised arrangement using a keyboard, working out the structure and harmony and then adapting the result into something that would function on the organ. This was no mean feat in an age when keyboards did not quietly connect themselves to everything else in the house while an app politely offered to identify the chords for you. Technology existed, certainly, but you very much knew you were using it.

The more interesting part, though, was not the technical process. It was the fact that somebody wanted Eternal Flame at a church wedding in the first place. That was a glimpse of what was to come. Couples were beginning to think beyond the traditional handful of wedding marches and organ voluntaries and instead ask for music that actually meant something to them. The pianist or organist was no longer simply there to provide a suitable piece by Handel before everyone went outside for photographs. Increasingly, the musician was expected to make almost anything work.

And this is perhaps the defining feature of being a modern pianist. You are expected to play everything.

Not literally everything, of course, although some clients appear willing to test the theory. But there is now very little sense that particular styles of music belong exclusively to particular instruments. A pianist might be asked to play Bach one moment and Billy Joel the next. At a wedding, that might be followed by Taylor Swift, Elton John, Coldplay, a theme from a film, something from a Disney soundtrack, a jazz standard and a song by an obscure indie band which has amassed precisely seven hundred and forty-three listens online but happens to be enormously important to the couple getting married.

I rather like this.

There was once a tendency to think of classical musicians as inhabiting one musical world and popular musicians another. In practice, working musicians have always crossed between them rather more freely than people imagine. A good pianist needs an understanding of harmony, rhythm, voicing and structure regardless of what happens to be printed at the top of the page. The notes themselves do not become less musical because the composer happens to be alive and has a Spotify account.

What does change is the way you approach the music. Playing a Bach prelude and playing a contemporary song are not the same task. With Bach, the music is already there in extraordinary detail and much of your work involves understanding and communicating what has been written. With a pop song, you may begin with a melody, a chord progression, a bass line and several layers of studio production involving guitars, synthesizers, drums and backing vocals, none of which fit neatly beneath ten fingers. The job is to decide which elements actually matter and then persuade the piano to suggest the rest.

This is where arranging becomes important. A piano version of a contemporary song should not simply be a sequence of chords underneath the melody. It needs shape. The original recording may build through percussion, production effects and additional instruments, whereas the pianist has only dynamics, register, rhythm, texture and the occasional look of intense concentration to achieve the same result. You have to create the impression of an arrangement rather than merely reproducing the harmony.

At weddings, this becomes even more interesting because the music has another job to do. It has to fit what is actually happening in the room.

The bridal entrance is the obvious example. A recorded track lasts exactly as long as the recorded track lasts. This presents a problem because brides, bridesmaids, flower girls, page boys and assorted relatives have not traditionally been known for walking at exactly the speed required by a three-minute-and-forty-two-second audio file. A live pianist, on the other hand, can adapt. We can repeat a section, extend an introduction, slow a phrase slightly or move towards an ending when it becomes clear that everyone who needs to arrive has arrived.

This sounds simple until you are actually doing it.

You may be halfway through what you believe is the final repeat when another bridesmaid appears at the back of the room. You adjust. She walks forward. You prepare to finish. Then there is a pause. Someone appears to have forgotten the flowers. There is movement near the door. The bride is now apparently ready, except she isn’t. At this point the pianist develops a sudden and extremely detailed interest in the middle eight.

Eventually the bride enters, the music swells, everybody turns around and the pianist attempts to land the final cadence at precisely the right moment while looking as though this had been the plan all along.

This ability to improvise around real life is one of the things that separates live music from a playlist. It also explains why years spent accompanying singers and choirs are unexpectedly useful when playing weddings. Accompanists become very good at watching other people. You learn to notice breathing, movement, body language and the tiny visual clues which indicate that something is about to happen. A conductor lifts an eyebrow; a singer takes an unexpected breath; a registrar starts shuffling papers. These things matter.

The same applies during drinks receptions and events, although in a rather different way. Here the pianist is often responsible for creating an atmosphere without turning the occasion into a recital. This is a peculiar art. If you play too quietly, you become expensive furniture. If you play too loudly, eighty people who have not seen each other since university are forced to shout over your interpretation of New York State of Mind. Somewhere in between lies the correct balance.

Repertoire matters enormously in these situations. A room rarely wants ninety minutes of one thing. Classical music can be beautiful, but an entire drinks reception of solemn nineteenth-century repertoire can begin to suggest that somebody has died. Equally, ninety minutes of relentlessly upbeat pop can make it feel as though everyone has accidentally wandered into a branch of a fashionable restaurant chain. The answer is usually variety.

This is where the modern pianist earns their keep. A bit of classical music can sit very comfortably alongside jazz, film music and contemporary songs. Debussy can lead into Billy Joel without civilisation collapsing. A jazz standard can be followed by something from Coldplay. A piece of film music can unexpectedly become the thing that causes someone across the room to stop talking and say, “I love this.”

Those moments are often more rewarding than playing the obvious choices.

People sometimes assume that a pianist working at weddings simply arrives with a large folder of familiar music and plays through it from beginning to end. In reality, the job involves rather more improvisation, adaptation and musical problem-solving. Some venues have beautiful grand pianos. Others have an instrument which has apparently spent the previous forty years being used to support a vase. Sometimes there is no piano at all and you bring your own stage piano. Sometimes the performance area is elegant and spacious. Sometimes someone has allocated you a corner which would be generous accommodation for a medium-sized lamp.

And then there are requests.

Most requests are perfectly reasonable, and many are a pleasure to arrange. Occasionally, though, somebody will ask for a piece which presents certain logistical challenges. The original may contain almost no piano, have a melody spanning several octaves, rely heavily on electronic production and feature a rhythmic pattern that requires more limbs than the average pianist possesses. The response, naturally, is usually, “Yes, that should be fine.”

Because, generally, it is.

That is what training is ultimately for. Not simply to play the repertoire you studied, but to give you the tools to deal with music you have never encountered before. Classical training teaches you how harmony works, how voices move, how phrases are shaped and how to understand a score quickly. Those skills are every bit as useful when someone hands you a contemporary song as they are when you open a Beethoven sonata.

Over the years I have accompanied singers in churches, jazz singers at events, choral societies, community choirs, chamber groups and countless other combinations of musicians. I have played organs, acoustic pianos, digital pianos, keyboards and instruments whose manufacturers presumably never imagined they would still be working several decades later. Through it all, the basic skill has remained the same: listen, adapt and make the music work.

That is why I find the idea of being described simply as either a “classical pianist” or a “wedding pianist” slightly restrictive. I am a pianist. The instrument is the constant. What happens around it changes.

And perhaps that is why I still enjoy the variety. There is something satisfying about spending years learning Bach and then discovering that the same musical instincts can help turn an eighties pop song into an organ voluntary, accompany a singer through a jazz standard or create the soundtrack to somebody walking down the aisle.

The modern pianist is expected to be flexible. We are expected to sight-read, transpose, improvise, accompany, arrange, follow, lead, fill time, lose time and occasionally pretend not to notice when a small child has started pressing keys at the opposite end of the piano.

We are expected to move from Bach to Billy Joel without complaint.

Fortunately, I wouldn’t really want it any other way.