Subbing with the Baltimore Symphony
This week I'm subbing with the Baltimore Symphony at Meyerhoff Hall, playing piano and celeste parts in a tribute program for African American achievements.
Lots of fun playing works by Duke Ellington, Scott Joplin, and George Gershwin! I personally hate counting rests, so I show how I use my iPad and my AirTurn to read the full score (instead of just my piano/celeste parts) while turning pages hands-free.
Inspired by my interview with Newzik co-founder Aurélia Azoulay-Guetta, I’ve been trying to put this sheet music reading app through its paces. As I said in the interview, the ability for me to be able to mark up the music with my Apple Pen while turning pages hands-free with my AirTurn is an absolute game-changer, making my rehearsals so much more efficient! But as I was rehearsing with my Philadelphia Orchestra friends for a Sound All Around concert for little kids, I found myself resorting to paper copies of the script to keep track of all the musical cues next to my iPad Pro displaying the sheet music. That’s when an “aha” moment struck me: what if I could ask the Newzik developers to come up with a way to show two different PDF files on a single iPad screen? One PDF could be the written script, the other PDF would be the sheet music. What a great feature that would be for musicians working off of a detailed theatrical cue sheet!
Then during the bus ride home from the rehearsal, I realized that i was a total idiot!! The latest iPad OS already provides a fantastic new feature for opening two different apps at the same time!! Problem solved - thank you, Apple!!