Information for Substitute Church Pianist Positions

Since 2019, I've enjoyed substituting as a church service pianist for numerous congregations in southern Indiana, Cleveland/Akron/Canton, and now, Nashville. I created this informational page for anyone interested in seeking me out as a substitute or interim church pianist, either to substitute for themselves or while churches are conducting searches for a permanent pianist/organist, and this also serves as a handy guide for any church staff members looking to hire substitutes for the first time or after a long period of not needing to hire any. Just contact me at ndipaolo + at + umich + dot + edu to get started.

Additionally, stay tuned for the rollout of an online course, targeted toward the needs of pastoral staff, full-time church keyboardists, and church office employees, on what to do when seeking and hiring substitute pianists for traditional Protestant churches. It will cover all of the below topics in much greater depth and will be an indispensable part of your church's employee training regimen.

Here's what I can bring to your service:

• Experience working with both Protestant and Catholic churches, as well as other denominations like UU
• Strong sightreading skills - having stepped in for a Dvorak cello concerto movement on perhaps an hour's notice one summer, a contemporary horn concerto excerpt on 6 days' notice, and a full voice recital on 4 days' notice back in Indiana, I'm accustomed to receiving last-minute engagements and making them musically successful, even when it requires some reworking on the fly.
• The ability to connect with all types of congregants - I was a cruise ship pianist for a year, touring internationally, and performed for a huge array of audiences, some of whom returned nightly for an entire 42-night trans-Atlantic cruise. My duo partner and I were particularly praised for our friendliness and stage presence, and guest surveys deemed us the most accomplished duo on the entire HAL fleet.
• Absolute reliability - as an independent studio instructor and freelance collaborator active since 2010, and a cruise ship pianist where the motto among employees is "early is on time and on time is late!", I know I need to be on time for my students and my performing commitments.
• A professional emphasis on vocal repertoire accompaniment and the ability to rehearse choirs when needed - my experience as an aural skills instructor at Indiana University translates well into coaching singers and choral groups with limited experience. I can do some limited leading from the keyboard if a conductor is absent.
• The ability to bring my large classical and sacred music library with me to services on my 12.9" iPad Pro (does not require wifi) and choose freely among these selections as service needs require - this allows me to adapt when service lengths and musical selections need to be adjusted on the fly.
• Flexibility and quick reflexes - I was once asked to prepare a particular set of SATB choral anthems for the first day of a new interim position and, upon arriving, found out that no tenors had shown up - requiring us to throw out those anthems and play something new with an SAB configuration. I had to both sightread the new piece and "catch" the singers as they made errors in relearning the piece that was rusty for them, and the result was very successful.
• The ability to choose tasteful preludes, offertories, communion selections, and postludes from the classical piano literature, sacred arrangements if desired, light classical/crossover lit, and my own internationally acclaimed classical compositions
• The ability to improvise in classical style when "fillers" of various lengths are needed - I have been known to improvise fugues at services before!
• Saturday and occasional weekday availability for weddings, memorial services, and other engagements your regular pianist may be unable to fulfill
• The ability to recruit other musicians from my circle to join the service on occasion, depending on the location and ensemble needs

• Fees should be commensurate with my experience and any notable driving distance (typical sub rates run around $150+ in the Cleveland area; I'll only accept $125 if it's a very short drive and I have an odd free day) and paid the day of the service, due to recent issues with the USPS losing checks in the mail. Under no circumstances will I play a service on a volunteer basis, and when churches ask for this, it devalues the work of all the highly trained professional pianists in our area.
• Last-minute substitute requests (generally 48 hrs or less depending on travel required) are subject to additional fees at my discretion if not already offered by the church.
• I'll need a piano or 88-key keyboard in good repair - I do not play organ and cannot take lessons on the instrument or sit at the console due to preexisting orthopedic issues.
• Scores for each musical selection should be either situated at the piano in a flat-laying, spiral or 3-ring-bound Accompanist Edition or scanned as a high-quality PDF in the same key in which you want them played and emailed to me so I may pull them up on the iPad. Please make sure the needed selections are still intact in the Accompanist Edition and weren't removed previously. If you only have pew copies available, I will need those either scanned and emailed as PDFs or scanned into a paper printout. Pew copies simply do not stay open on the rack and having a page-turner holding the book open for me in close proximity is both a health hazard and a musical accident waiting to happen. I do not recommend using paper copies for outdoor services and would strongly prefer PDFs in that case. Please scan PDFs in a one-musical-page-per-page format and not 2-up, which is too small for me to see. The Accompanist Editions are sometimes 2-up to begin with, which means you'll need to scan half a page at a time to create a full 8.5x11 hymnal page scan.
• To that end: don't assume that a pianist has your specific Doxology memorized, and you absolutely must provide sheet music for your Doxology as well. Congregants who have not attended a variety of churches tend not to realize that there are at least 5 common Doxology settings used in the Cleveland area alone, and theirs is not the only one that exists.
• If your church is liturgy-heavy, please scan and order the selections in service order as one PDF. Having to toggle between liturgy PDFs and hymn PDFs is sometimes impossible in services that flow seamlessly between selections.
• I'll need any musical selections that are in "lead sheet" format several days in advance so that I may annotate and translate them into classical chord notation - I will not be able to play lead sheets accurately at sight due to the "upside down" layout of the guitar chords, which do not place the bass line below the melody where it belongs. I may also determine that certain more elaborate chord charts require more jazz expertise than I have to translate them, or that my schedule at the moment does not allow the time needed to translate them; in such cases I'll ask for a fully notated edition. I cannot play from charts that simply contain the lyrics and the chord symbols, with no melody. For those, you need someone who has the repertoire memorized, which a classical musician who's a good reader usually won't.
• I will need all 4-part hymns to be provided with all 4 parts present and in the same key they will sing in: having the melody only, as is often displayed in church bulletins, is not sufficient, nor am I able to transpose at sight or play effectively using the keyboard transpose button (try reading the word "red" printed in blue typeface and you'll see what I mean!). I play for too many diverse denominations to begin to build a memorized hymn repository, and like most strong sightreaders and accompanists, I do not memorize. If there's any chance that the congregation may wish to sing in parts, they need to hear all those parts as they're written in the hymnal, too.
• I'll need all required choir/soloist rehearsals or meetings to happen the day of the service: my studio teaching schedule prevents me from having time for weeknight rehearsals. Special services like Christmas Eve are an exception to this, or other circumstances in which we've made prior arrangements. If a weekday rehearsal or meeting cannot be avoided, I may request access to your wifi and piano so that I may teach my online students from the church building when I would not have sufficient drive time to get home and teach before or after the meeting/rehearsal. My online teaching days sometimes span up to 12 hours without sufficient drive time in between, so this option is not ideal (or would require a very empty building use schedule).
• Any pre-service discussions should happen over email: my schedule as an internationally regarded piano, composition, partimento, and theory instructor doesn't allow for phone chats or in-person meetings about the service order, and with my wide-ranging church pianist experience, I can anticipate and immediately adapt to anything that may happen in a service. It's also handy to have written records to check up on when one of us may need to revisit a question right before the service.
• I'll need a separate singer/cantor/song leader provided if you want to feature solo vocal selections.
• Finally, I like to be made aware in advance if the postlude is integrated into the service (that is, congregants are not dismissed until after the postlude has been played, and it's sometimes called "sending music") or if it is played as congregants are leaving and chatting. This will help me select appropriate music.