American pianist Howard Watkins is an experienced vocal coach and an assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera. As a frequent associate of some of the world’s leading musicians on the concert stage, he has collaborated with Joyce DiDonato, Diana Damrau, Anna Netrebko, and Matthew Polenzani. He has also worked on the music staff of Palm Beach Opera, the Washington National Opera, and the Los Angeles Opera. In this interview, he shared about his work as an opera coach, career journey, and advice for young pianists.

How would you prepare an opera score?

Howard Watkins: If you are preparing an opera, especially as a young pianist, you should not give yourself any less than two months to get it in your ears and your body comfortably. That way, when you walk in the door on the first day, you are confident that you know.

1. RESEARCH ABOUT THE OPERA: The first thing I do is to read the story of the opera. Next, I will get the libretto and read the text of the opera.

2. UNDERSTAND THE TEXT: We need to know the text of the aria. We need to know what every word means and to write the translation into the score.

3. LISTEN TO THE MUSIC: I will listen to it before I play on the piano, so I will have an idea of what it sounds like when the orchestra is playing it.
4. KNOW THE ORCHESTRATION: For the music part, I write in the orchestration when I don’t know which instruments are playing what. I have a full score with me so that I can refer to it.

5. SCORE EDITING: Playing orchestra music at the piano brings a whole other complication because we are playing something that was not written for the piano. We may not be able to play everything that is written in the reduction, or we may have to add things that are missing from the reduction.

6. SING & PLAY: I sing and play all the time. Of course, it takes a longer time to get all of these in your body. The more I study, the more I can hear what other people are doing when I am coaching.

What are the expectations for a pianist in an opera house?

Howard Watkins: You need to be able to play the score, everything up to tempo and to the speed that is required. Also, it is required that you can sing and play all the parts except for the singer who is singing at the moment.

At a house like the Metropolitan Opera, we usually start right away with staging. We do music rehearsals as we go or after a few days in. There may be two or three pianists assigned to a show, so one pianist will be playing the staging rehearsals: playing all the music on the piano, and another pianist may be in a room coaching with singers.

In coaching, we work with singers to help them prepare to get up on stage and be the best of themselves. It means that they are memorized, can sing the right notes, know all the right cuts that are being done in this production and have found all the parts of their roles. It can happen that someone is doing the role for the first time and may have overlooked places where they are supposed to sing. We have to be the authority that knows, “Oh, actually you forgot that little part, you need to know this too.” On the contrary, if a singer that I have worked with is forgetting things in a music rehearsal, I feel bad because I think that it is part of my responsibility to fix that. And that is part of the job, we want to help.

What aspects can a vocal coach comment on when working with singers?

Howard Watkins: This comes to the whole thing that I call ‘wisdom’. A pianist has to have wisdom and be smart about every situation.

So, what I mean by that is that the goal is to help singers to be the best they can be and help them to be fully prepared. But we have to talk about the things that they want to hear. If a singer is really fully ready to go and is a well-known seasoned singer who is in good shape, and just wants to be sure that they have it memorized, we need to help fulfill that role and just play, sing the cues, and that’s pretty much it. We can make language suggestions or suggest they work with a specific language coach. We certainly always want to correct wrong pitches in all situations. If there are matters of singing in tune, we need to address them.

We need to be smart and use language that is not offensive, or that does not upset the singer. It is important because if we offend the singer and they are not willing to work with us or hear what we say, then we have lost the opportunity to help them. We can’t help them if we turn them off. My goal in coaching is: when a singer stands up in the staging rehearsal after coaching with me, I want everyone to think ‘Oh that singer is excellent and is ready to go!’

“The coaching role that we pianists play is very important. We have a lot of responsibility and we have to take that seriously.”— Howard Watkins

Can you share your journey to the Metropolitan Opera?

Howard Watkins: I started playing the piano when I was eight years old. I studied solo piano in both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees. During my studies, I was playing with a lot of people because of my graduate assistantship and personal interests. I started to go to a summer program where I worked with string players for three years. It became something that I absolutely love to do. I liked playing solo piano less and less, sitting in a room by myself, or practicing at the level that is required for that became a big pain for me.

After I graduated, I worked in the dance departments with dancers at Michigan. I realized I love it and that this field exists. One of the greatest collaborative piano teachers is right here at my school, and I had a great relationship with him, the great Martin Katz. So, I went into the doctorate program at Michigan. At the end of that time, I was going to move to New York. I auditioned for the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera. I was one of the winners of that audition, so I started working consistently with lots of high-level singers. I received training with the fantastic staff there at the Met and many famous collaborators who came to work with all of us. The training with people who live and work in opera all the time in their lives was incredibly helpful as I was moving forward in my opera career.

How do you feel when you first started working at such a prestigious opera house?

Howard Watkins: First, I think that was part of the value of doing my doctorate with such a high-level teacher. I felt qualified and confident about my work. But arriving there, and seeing that as part of your daily work were scary because they were at a very high level. The good thing is getting to work with people at this level and getting to see that. You know what? They are people, the same as all of us. They also get nervous, have worries, and concerts. So that was very valuable for me as a young pianist to go from a worshipful attitude and a little bit of nervousness to a mindset of ‘I can fit in here, I can grow and thrive here.’

What advice will you give to young pianists who are building their careers in collaborative piano?

Howard Watkins: Part of what is tricky about collaborative piano is that we have to be mini experts in lots of things. Singing and playing at the same time is a whole different universe than what you usually do as a solo pianist. You have to learn how to play and listen critically at the same time. That also presumes that your technique is in very good shape. You also need to get familiar with many kinds of things: you need to listen to lots of operas, listen to different kinds of singers, and get to know different kinds of styles.

I think that it is unbelievably important to study languages. Diction is the beginning of things, like an entrée. You need to understand the structure of the language, and how people use that language. And I guarantee you, it is a different experience to play arias when you understand what’s being said from the inside. You don’t need to read the translation, and then remind yourself what it means. You understand what’s being said, and that’s so much fun!

I think of the work that we do as a continuous journey. It isn’t that we just get to a point and that we are finished. It is a journey of continuous study and exploration. I have been working at the Met for almost 25 years now, and I am always growing, learning, and refreshing myself. Hopefully, if you are in the collaborative piano field, you will find it fun.

What is the value of the art of collaborative piano to the music field?

Howard Watkins: The value of collaborative piano is that we have the gift of being able to make music with people.

A singer who sings alone only has one line. If you put a pianist there, especially a gifted collaborative pianist who can support the singer and make music together, the pianist can add harmony, feelings, and the ability to communicate emotions to people. I think of myself as a collaborative pianist, I am carrying, holding, supporting, and making them able to express themselves. It is always rewarding to talk to the singers afterward and find how appreciative and happy they are for what we do.

The better trained the collaborative pianists are, the more we can help in ways that they don't even know that they are being helped. Sometimes, they don't need to know all about the gears, and everything that is happening to make it, we just need to make their lives easier. It helps preserve the naturalness of things.

What does it do for society? It allows the transmission of emotions to happen, and society can react to that. The same thing also happens in pop music, the people who are playing along with the famous pop singers are like the collaborative pianists for that world. The orchestra that plays along in a Broadway theatre are the collaborative pianists for that world. We are the supporting staff for our world of music.

Interview with Howard Watkins in Opera Coaching and Working at the Met