The life of a musi­cian is a great sub­ject for sto­ry­telling. There’s dra­ma in know­ing that any per­for­mance, or any col­lab­o­ra­tion, could be a suc­cess or a fail­ure — not to men­tion the ups and downs in the subject’s per­son­al life. This absorb­ing mem­oir by the pianist Steven Bli­er, one of America’s most high­ly prized accom­pa­nists, shows him to be a won­der­ful sto­ry­teller as well as musician.

Bli­er writes about his life with the easy infor­mal­i­ty of some­one talk­ing to a friend. He also relates the dis­tinc­tive qual­i­ties of friends and col­leagues with insight, sym­pa­thy, and gen­eros­i­ty. Reflect­ing on his deep friend­ship with the Vien­na-born Jew­ish singer/​actor Martha Schlamme — near­ly thir­ty years his senior — he sees her sen­si­tiv­i­ty and icon­o­clasm as mod­els of the essen­tial ele­ments in per­form­ing concerts.

As an accom­pa­nist, Bli­er has worked with many of the great singers of our time, includ­ing June Ander­son, Cecil­ia Bar­toli, Jessye Nor­man, Susan Gra­ham, and Renée Flem­ing. Anoth­er was Rober­ta Peters, a child­hood idol of his and an audi­ence favorite for decades. His descrip­tion of how he and she nego­ti­at­ed the details of a per­for­mance shows the extent of the deft diplo­ma­cy she (and oth­ers) required. Some­times there can be con­fu­sion with a col­league, such as when Pat­ti LuPone spot­ted Bli­er back­stage and blurt­ed, ​“Who’s he? The page turn­er?” And there can be hap­py end­ings: the harsh behav­ior of the Ger­man bari­tone Wolf­gang Holz­mair yields to a moment of grace as he final­ly finds com­mon ground with his accompanist.

Steven Blier’s can­dor extends to his per­son­al life. As a boy he was ​“bad at sports, good at danc­ing; hat­ed the Rolling Stones, loved Rena­ta Tebal­di.” At the age of fif­teen he learned that he was afflict­ed with a form of mus­cu­lar dys­tro­phy. That has meant a con­tin­u­al dete­ri­o­ra­tion in his legs, and it poten­tial­ly threat­ened his abil­i­ty to play the piano. Yet in this forth­right account of how he adapt­ed to the result­ing changes, includ­ing pro­longed phys­i­cal ther­a­py, he nev­er los­es his wry perspective. 

Despite the phys­i­o­log­i­cal changes, Bli­er remains very active as an accom­pa­nist. And the New York Fes­ti­val of Song — of which he is Artis­tic Direc­tor, and which he cofound­ed in 1988 — con­tin­ues to thrive. What’s more, in 2012 he mar­ried his boyfriend, James Rus­sell. This admirable and inspir­ing sto­ry has a very hap­py end­ing. It’s a true pro­file in courage and determination.