Accompanists
An accompanist is a musician — typically a pianist — who supports a student during a performance or exam. In Octavia, accompanists are members of your studio staff. You set them up as teacher records with an accompanist
How Accompanists Work in Octavia
Accompanists are not a separate contact type. They are staff members — set up as teacher records with the accompanist flag enabled. This means:
- No duplicate person records or separate onboarding flow
- They work with or without their own login
- They appear in accompanist dropdowns across performances and exams
If a musician in your studio plays both a teaching role and an accompanying role, they can hold both — the accompanist flag is simply an additional attribute on their teacher record.
Setting Up an Accompanist
To make a person available as an accompanist in Octavia, you need a teacher record for them with the accompanist option turned on. This is done from the staff/teacher management area of your studio settings.
Assigning an Accompanist to a Student in a Performance
Accompanists are assigned at the individual student level within a performance — not to the performance as a whole. This reflects the reality that different students in the same concert may have different accompanists, or some students may need no accompanist at all.
To assign an accompanist:
- Open the performance detail view
- Find the student in the programme table
- Use the Accompanist dropdown in that student's row to select the accompanist
The selection saves immediately. You can change it at any time, or clear it by selecting the blank option at the top of the dropdown.
Where Accompanist Information Appears
Once assigned, the accompanist name surfaces in a few places:
In the performance table: the accompanist column shows the assigned name for each student row.
In the rehearsal panel: when you open the rehearsal panel for a student, the header shows the student's name and their assigned accompanist side by side. This makes it clear who should be present at each rehearsal session.
In the All Rehearsals overview: the performance-wide rehearsal overview shows each student with their instrument and accompanist name, so you can see the full picture of who is accompanying whom across the event.
Accompanists and the Calendar
Rehearsal sessions scheduled against a student's performance entry appear in the teacher calendar. The teacher who owns the student sees the rehearsal in their calendar. The accompanist's assignment is also stored on the rehearsal event, making it available for calendar filtering and visibility — if your studio uses a shared calendar approach, accompanist rehearsals can be surfaced for the accompanist too.
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