How Can a Musician Get a Great Write-Up?

A pianist put an ad on Craigslist today.  Here it is, in part,

Thanks for taking time to read. Im looking to hire an experience and affordable bio writer. Im a pianist who is completely redoing my website, recording a new album, and I just completed another person's album. Im looking for a writer that can use descriptive language that will: focus on what im working on now (and make it sound sexy) and talk about my music and history without using any hyperbole or boring language. The goal is to sound interesting, captivating while being informative.

Writing about a pianist is not hard.  

Writing sans hyperbole or boring language is not hard.

But the pianist needs to be outstanding.

One can describe Artur Schnabel's silences between the notes because they are there.

Or the incomparable precision of variation within one trill by Horowitz because, well, it is there.  Or of his reweighting of Scriabin's chords.

Vince Guaraldi's playing of his own Linus and Lucy can be carefully compared with George Winston's Linus and Lucy, as they both have qualities which lend to descriptions beyond hyperbole.

The same can be said of the differences in Bartok's own playing of his sonatina versus Zoltan Koksis'.

But the best part of praise lies not the wording, but in the speaker.  When Elisha Abas, the great-great grandson of Scriabin, was praised by Arthur Rubinstein as a child, it mattered.  Not the words, but the fact that it was Rubinstein who spoke.

And the best way to get a great write up is to follow the example of the great Bach performer, Edward Aldwell.  He was given a substantial monetary award when he won a major competition, so he dropped out of performing for a while.  He wanted to hone his Bach.  

Play extraordinary, that is how to get a a great write-up.  Sure, there are more cynical ways of looking at things.  "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" Every Juilliard musician learns the answer. . . "Connections, connections, connections."  But I prefer Aldwell's way.  I think I'll go listen to a CD of his right now.