Dear Musicians,

Memorizing repertoire is an important part of your performance and can be the deciding factor for cruise lines to, or not to, hire you. This affects literally all lounge entertainers, whether you’re a classical ensemble, cover band, cocktail pianist, piano vocalist, guitar vocalist etc.

Now, for some of the above-mentioned entertainers this has been a given. Cover bands, for example, rarely read music while they play and it would be pretty funny to see them read “Stairway to heaven”…But it’s not as obvious for some other entertainers like classical ensembles, for example.

There is much more to memorizing a long classical piece than there is to memorizing “Rocket Man” by Elton John. Thus, most classical ensembles still sit there, noses buried in lengthy manuscripts, barely coming up for air. As a result, the entertainment value goes down. A classical quartet that reads most of their music almost always creates a stale recital-like atmosphere. Imagine, on the other hand, an ensemble that has their repertoire memorized and is thus not restricted to sitting on a chair staring at their music stand. Now a violinist may move around guests’ tables to serenade them, make eye contact with people and, in general, be much more animated. This, in return, makes for a much more entertaining experience.

The same goes for a piano/vocalist, who will be able to create a much more pleasant experience if she knows the songs that are being requested, instead of having to dig through several large fakebooks to find a particular song, only to find out that she’s not all that familiar with it and proceeds to butcher it.

In my experience evaluating many audition demos, I’ve found that a lot of entertainers put more importance on the quality of the performance of the couple of tunes that are on their audition demo, and neglect choice of repertoire, not to mention that they plan to read a lot, if not all, of the music they’re planning to present. Don’t get me wrong, the quality of your performance is really important, but that doesn’t mean that repertoire, and/or memorizing repertoire should be neglected.

Thanks to the struggling economy, it has been a lot tougher to get jobs in general, and it is thus more important than ever to have an edge over your competitors. Memorizing repertoire is probably one of the best and surest ways to set yourself apart.