USD grad finds success as dueling pianist

Though he considers his current occupational situation to be stable, Adam Nelson is quite aware of the stigma attached to his profession.

“I went to several fundraisers at USD when I was a member of the symphonic band and we would have to schmooze with business graduates,” Nelson said. “It would be typical to say, ‘I’m a music major’, and they react like, ‘Oh, what are you doing if that doesn’t work out?’ No one says that to someone who is a pre-med major.”

Despite being stereotyped as an undergraduate, Nelson has found plenty of musical performance opportunities as a dueling-piano player. Aside from the occasional request for a Taylor Swift song and an atypical work schedule, Nelson said he enjoys his current employment status, though piano performance was not his original emphasis for a musical career.

Nelson graduated from the University of South Dakota with a degree in horn performance in 2005 and obtained a master’s degree in horn performance at Arizona State University in 2007. Despite the educational emphasis in brass, Nelson has since found his niche in the music industry by pounding black and ivory keys.

He began his piano career six months after he finished graduate school in Arizona.

“There was a new bar opening in Glendale, Ariz. which was about a half-hour drive from Tempe, Ariz. where I was,” Nelson said. “I auditioned there and they offered me a job as a piano player.”

Nelson started out performing two to three nights per week but as time progressed, his workload increased.

“By the end of six months, I was playing four to five times a week,” he said. “It basically became a full-time job and that was when I stopped actively pursuing horn jobs and kept focusing on the piano thing.”

His start as a piano player has led to a multitude of jobs playing at venues in several different cities. After spending two years in Madison, Wisc., Nelson followed his girlfriend to Chicago last year and began playing piano in the Windy City.

“I play at Slugger’s Dueling Piano Bar across the street from Wrigley Field,” Nelson said. “We have shows every weekend and we also play at home Cubs games. I’m also a substitute piano player at the Redhead piano bar in downtown Chicago. That’s a solo piano bar, so it’s just me playing for a lot of international tourists.”

As a dueling-piano player, Nelson appreciates several aspects specific to his occupation. Dueling pianos often consist of two players on two different pianos who appear to play against each other and often end up playing in unison.

“I like abusing the piano in a showman sort of way like playing with something like my foot or my elbow,” Nelson said. “I do like that I can drink on the job, but you really have to be careful with that.”

Nelson also relishes the improvisatory nature of his act, which pushes him outside of his musical boundaries.

“I like playing songs by ear,” he said. “I know how to read music of course, but its fun when someone brings up a request that I half know and I’ll figure out how to play that on the fly. I like being challenged like that.”

Nelson values the experiences he gained at USD, as he was taught a variety of instruments and musical genres.

“I really got into learning a lot of music that I wouldn’t normally listen to and gained greater appreciation for it,” he said. “I like that I was able to learn other instruments at USD. I was a horn major of course but I also took piano lessons, I was in the steel drum band, I took percussion lessons and learned how to play trap set.”

Nelson said learning different instruments and genres firsthand from music professors was an important part of his education.

“At a smaller school like USD, you have the opportunity to learn a lot of other instruments and styles,” Nelson said. “At a bigger school or conservatory, you wouldn’t have the option of doing that. If you did, you would learn it from a teaching assistant or some grad student. At USD, I could learn (percussion) from the percussion instructor.”

Michael Bruning is a fourth-year student currently enrolled at USD. He has experienced the music department as an instrumental performance major and relates to the stigma attached to musicians like Nelson, though he believes the stereotype varies by age

demographic.

“It’s a generational thing,” Bruning said. “Every person I’ve talked to that’s older asked, ‘How are you going to get a job?’ There’s a negative connotation attached to it by people my parents’ age and older. However, very person in my generation and younger has been very supportive and intrigued by it. They’re the only people who I’ve received lots of support from.”

After finishing his undergraduate degree, Bruning said he will look to find a professional gig, possibly working as a cruise ship musician. However, he would like to attend graduate school at some point in his career, as he would like to teach music at a collegiate level.

While Nelson believes music education is important for a career, he said the intricacies of the performing business are learned on the job.

“You have to find out why people like a song and why they want to hear it,” Nelson said. “You have to figure out what an audience’s connection is to a certain song and that’s not something that they teach you in music school.”

Nelson also added self-promotion and business negotiations to a host of other skills that professional musicians must learn on their own. He said the key for current music performance students to gain employment after college — and respond to skeptics — is to come up with a career plan with clear achievement marks.

“We’re in a generation of overqualified people; a degree isn’t enough to do something. So when you hear, ‘What are you going to do with that?’ have a good idea of exactly what it is you want to do. You have to be pretty specific with what you want. You have to have all of your goals and all the ways you are going to achieve those goals carefully mapped.”

Nelson will be in Vermillion  Oct. 19 performing at the National Music Museum at noon. Nelson’s performance is a part of the Brown Bag Lunch Program sponsored by the museum. All Brown Bag performances are open to the general public and USD