Do not try this at home.Robert Sage...

Do not try this at home.

Robert Sage and Rebecca Rollins are highly trained professionals who have spent many hours perfecting the techniques necessary to sit down together at one piano and safely play at the same time.

They will be demonstrating this advanced duet technique in a free recital Tuesday night at Azusa Pacific University.

“At one piano, you can get tied up if you don’t watch the choreography,” Sage said while explaining the intricacies involved in playing “Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear,” by French composer Erik Satie, one of the numbers that will be featured.

Rollins agreed.

“We usually have to work it out slowly and write in our parts ‘get off early,’ ‘move quickly.’ We have hit fingers. We haven’t hurt anybody, but you can certainly feel it.”

“When you have two people playing together, you have to have a good rhythmic sense and conduct each other and play razor-sharp ensemble,” Sage said.

“It’s practicing aspects of being together as we’re playing,” Rollins added. “The goal is to sound like we’re one.”

And you thought playing by yourself was tough.

This most dangerous feat is only one of several numbers--including works by Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Aaron Copland and Benjamin Britten--that will be featured. Sage and Rollins will play these at two pianos.

This is the third yearly recital of “two piano” music for Rollins and Sage, who are doctors of music arts. Rollins teaches piano and music classes at Saddleback College in Orange County; Sage teaches similar courses at Azusa Pacific.

The concert starts at 7:30 p.m. at the university’s Munson Chapel, 901 E. Alosta Ave., at the corner of Citrus Avenue.

The same program will be presented at 8 p.m. Thursday at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo.