Because you can’t play jazz all the time

Not long ago, I happened across the works of Frederic Burgmuller. I was looking for some piano pieces that would provide me with some direction as far as improving my chops, but I didn’t want anything that would be too much work because I didn't want to spend a lot of time playing something that wasn't jazz. I’m not sure how I “discovered” Burgmuller, but it was exactly what I looking for. Here’s what I said for the benefit of people shopping on Amazon:

Deceptively easy and enjoyable way to improve piano skills

I don’t remember what it was that first led me to discover these pieces. All I remember is, I had downloaded the sheet music to “L’Arabesque” and after about thirty minutes, I was playing it start to finish, not at tempo, but with very few mistakes and a reasonable amount of musicality. (So you know where I’m coming from, I've been playing organ and electronic keyboards since I was twelve (I’m 50 now), but have only been studying piano seriously for seven years, playing mostly jazz.) I took the sheet music to my regular lesson and played it, and my instructor said, that’s excellent, here’s all the stuff you’re doing wrong, and he proceeded to set me straight on playing these classical period etudes. We decided these could be beneficial to my playing, so I bought this book and then began in earnest to learn the pieces. Since then, I've learned about one piece a week. I’m finding them incredibly valuable in filling in a number of gaps in my piano technique that were created in my rush to abandon the organ, flee from church music and dive headlong into piano and jazz.

 

Sure you can download the lot for free, somewhere, in a goofy font, without correct fingerings, and you'll have to bind it, somehow, after you research the correct order, then pencil in the correct fingerings, then start learning the pieces. Or, you can buy this for five bucks then start learning the pieces. (It was an easy choice for me.)

What makes these pieces so useful is that they are approachable and relatively easy, but they still require diligence and proper attention to execute well. Most of them are played at tempos which I consider to be borderline preposterous, but even at slower tempos, they are musical enough that they can be enjoyed at a slower pace as well. They are all also different from each other in mood and tonality, so the skill sets required to perform any given song is slightly different from piece to piece. Although they are pretty easy, I think most serious students will want to  work on these under the guidance of a piano instructor, because the tendency will always be that because they sound pretty and pretty “complete”, you will think you have it down, but I've found that my instructor can always find one or two things that can be done better or more easily or efficiently, and often enough, he will also find something I’m playing out-and-out incorrectly. Once I've looked at a piece, had my instructor listen and instruct, then spent another week on it, I pretty much have the piece down. I must say that, especially for me (the king of piano books), actually working through a book page by page and being able to play the pieces has been tremendously satisfying. They also provide a good break from playing jazz all the time, and correspondingly, my usual jazz tunes and exercises are better attenuated to my ears after I've played these classical style pieces for a while.

If you are an advanced pianist, I would venture to guess that you've already been through your share of Burgmuller pieces at some point in your learning. If you are, however, a beginner or intermediate player who hasn't yet set about practicing and playing these pieces, I recommend you give them a try and it’s worth five bucks to pick up this book rather than scrounge for them on the Internet. (Internet downloads often do not include the proper fingering, whereas Schirmer’s nearly always does.) The pieces are fun, highly musical, very instructive, and eminently learn-able, and playing these pieces has been one of my best musical experiences in seven years of learning piano. That’s why I give it five stars.

The best thing about these pieces is that they are all self-contained, but if you work through them, they develop different skills that every pianist needs. The other thing is what I mentioned in my review: they function well as nifty little songs and they dispel boredom, unlike drills and some other etudes. My playing has noticeably improved since I started working with Burgmuller, and I enjoy the twenty or thirty minutes I spend every day playing these song. For five bucks, this book is a bargain at twice the price.

Next: A look at another book on jazz in general, From Birdland to Broadway.

Some encouragement from a famous concert pianist and international recording star

Last week, Mrs. S suggested I accompany her to the Huntsville Chamber Music Guild’s penultimate concert of the year, featuring pianist Emanuel Ax. Interestingly enough, I had never heard of the guy until a few weeks before, when Mrs. S was telling me about Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music having over 200 Steinway grand pianos. I didn't think that was possible, so I did what any normal person would do. I Googled it. It turned out to be true, but then I thought, well, if Jacobs has that many, I wonder how many Juilliard has. Turns out they have over 250 Steinway grands (and 6 full time piano technicians). While “researching” that, I happened to glance at the Juilliard piano faculty listing, and that’s where I saw Emanuel Ax’s name. So, when the missus invited me to his concert, I was in.

The concert was quite good. As you would expect of an old Polish guy, he played a lot of old Euopean (German) music:  Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, but also some modern pieces, including a suite of pieces written to be played in between some Brahms pieces. He was signing CD’s after the concert, and Mrs. S, who is usually replete with the concert star’s CD’s in the event there is an autograph session was fresh out of Emanuel Ax CD’s. (Most of the ones she had were concertos with Yo Yo Ma, anyway, so he might not have been so thrilled to sign those in the first place.) 

Grammy winner Emanuel Ax signs a pair of CDs for me.

So we bought two CD’s to have signed. Mr. Ax was very pleasant and cordial. When I asked for a photo because I am a budding pianist, he said, “Oh, sure! Of course. That’s great. That’s great.” We took the photo and I shook his hand, and even with a line of people still behind me and my shared moment with him over, he took the time to add, “You should continue to pursue the piano by all means and I wish you well!” 

Would you take advice from this man? Of course you would! 

I’m pretty sure I've never heard any such words of encouragement that were more sincere. The look in his eyes was unwavering and clear: Playing the piano is a thing worth doing. You may think you are old and you may have a long way to go, but you should do it, … by all means.

Thank you very much Mr. Ax. I think I will.

Yakov “Don’t play jazz!”

As a sort of concession to Mrs. S and because I had some other chores that required my presence at home, I decided to take the day off last Friday and see if I couldn't get some stuff done, and then end the day at a chamber music concert featuring the pianist Yakov Kasman. We saw Kasman with the Huntsville Symphony some years back and got a CD signed by him, and since Mrs. S spent the whole year going to chamber music concerts by herself, except when it was Joshua Bell, I agreed to accompany her. I had been fence sitting, but then we learned that Kasman was going to have an “educational event”, and after the valuable master class we had with Gary Burton, I decided that was worth making Kasman’s lecture and concert part of my free day.

At the educational event, Yakov talked about how he developed his affinity for Alabama and ended up artist in residence at UAB. He didn't talk much about pianos or technique or anything like that, instead dragging his daughter on stage to play some of the four-handed pieces that were going to be featured at that night’s concert. It was a bit of a letdown.

Yakov's signature on our Moussorgsky CD. Or did Mrs. S drop the Sharpie on it? I'm not sure.

Finally, after the music history lesson, he agreed to take questions. It was a lot of the usual: how much do you practice (“a lot”), how many pianos do you have (“three”), and (from Mrs. S) what kind of pianos do you have (“a Steinway, a Yamaha, and a Kawai”), blah, blah, blah. Since his daughter had mentioned that he starts playing as soon as he wakes up and doesn't stop practicing until he goes to bed, I thought I had a question that was intelligent and the most probing of the bunch: Do you play just classical music or do you play other things? Turned out to be not so probing: “Just classic.” He seemed to suggest that was a stupid thing to ask. His tone and facial expression were all “OF COURSE a classical pianist only plays classical music, nincompoop!” Since I had the floor and his attention, I pushed ahead, but I made the fatal mistake of leading the interrogation by suggesting what he could play. I asked: “You don’t play jazz or something to break it up?” He smiled a plastic smile like a politician talking about a master’s degree from the Cayman Islands or the mysterious disappearance of his last two female interns, and then Professor Kasman crisply pronounced, “No, I don’t play...jazz!”

The word "jazz" rang out in hissing, sardonic tones. You could substitute just about any word for jazz and it couldn't have sounded more incredulous: jazz, hip-hop, badminton, trash can lids, marimbas, Parcheesi,  Texas hold'em, no, NO, I don't play those!!!!

I could comment here about not being able to grow musically or a missing dimension to one’s playing by stifling oneself in one genre of music, but what do I know? Kasman won the silver medal at a Van Cliburn competition, and I’m struggling with “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in a broken intervallic mode. He performed in front of a thousand people on Friday night, as did his17-year old daughter and his 12 (10? 8?) -year old daughter. I'm lucky if Mrs. S pauses for twenty seconds as she wanders through the dining room while I'm pounding on my forlorn Yamaha digital.

No. Yakov don’t play jazz.

I do. And that's good enough for me. 

Slight change of pace for jazz and piano fans

This is the kind of thing that happens to me when I’m not getting run over by unusual episodes of serendipity or attending awesome jazz concerts:  people send me music to review. A marketer in New York happened to read one of my Amazon reviews (yes, some people actually do read my reviews) about pianist Brad Mehldau, and he asked me to review a new recording by an artist he represents. It’s called “A Single Noon” by composer and pianist Gregg Kallor (rhymes with ‘valor’), and it’s due to be released on April 30. I’m always up for a new listening experience, so I was glad to accept the gratis CD in exchange for a review.

 

Looks like Gregg could spare a piano. Maybe if I ask nice...

Let me start by saying that, I assumed it would be a jazz work (especially with one of my favorite jazz pianists, Fred Hersch, assisting in the producer’s chair on this recording), but Mr. Kallor’s music (the recording is all original compositions in a suite format) tends more toward the classical side. The song titles are evocative of themes that you might expect could be either classical or jazz, like “Broken Sentences” and “Espresso Nirvana”, but Kallor takes the proposed themes a lot farther and deeper than the typical listener probably expects. They end up being far more dramatic and classical sounding, with movements and themes being presented within the songs themselves, but also propping up the “Homage to New York” theme of the entire work. I found some of the songs, “Straphanger’s Lurch” and “Giants” for example, are like mini-concerts themselves, with multiple movements, intertwining themes, tension building and resolution, all in neat, small packages.

As for the piano side, I honestly felt Mr. Kallor is about as technically brilliant as any modern pianist I've heard lately. While he’s nowhere near as bluesy as Keith Jarrett or Chick Corea, he does exhibit some of the fluid “moodiness” of Jarrett’s earlier solo work. Not surprisingly, the overall sound and temperament of the Kallor’s playing was very similar to Mehldau’s trio work (although I don’t think it compares well to his more recent work, even if it is less jazzy). Still, Kallor does easily demonstrate the same control of dynamics and timing that Mehldau is becoming more and more known for. Many of the songs as played by Kallor also have variations in tonality that require a certain sensibility and attention to overall effect that contemporary pianists do not always actively foster these days, but Kallor transitions easily from speedy-soft, to slow-soft, to slow-loud, to speedy loud, or whatever is required. I found his phrasing during these transitions to be slightly on the exotic side, not unlike Gonzalo Rubalcaba’s Cuban influenced solo work. The sound of the work is crisp and clear, never muddied or vague, no doubt one of the big advantages of having a fellow pianist as producer.

A Single Noon is an interesting piece of music. Since I skew to jazz pretty much all the time, I must confess this classic-leaning recording wasn't exactly to my taste, but Mrs. S drags me to just enough classical concerts (usually with a “But there’s a piano” interjected in the argument) that I could appreciate and enjoy what I was listening to. The songs are original and interesting, and Kallor’s playing is stunning at times and always proficient, so when it comes time to post my review on Amazon, I’ll have no problem giving it four stars. Excellent stuff. I was definitely privileged to receive an advance copy, so thank you Andrew and Gregg wherever you are!

Saving jazz

There was an interesting article in The Wall Street Journal yesterday, about how jazz appears to be dying and what might be needed to “save” it. The basic crux of the argument is that the clientele which listens to live jazz is not only shrinking, but also growing older, the presumption being, jazz is now akin to classical music in that it is pursued more as an art form and less as a type of music.

I’m not sure I get the distinction, because when I’m playing the piano, I don’t really feel like I’m “doing” art. Maybe somebody passing by my window might be struck by my “art”, but I doubt it. As for jazz passing into the realm of classical music with an aged, presumably affluent, fan base, well so be it. Hell, this entire blog is about the fact that I got to jazz late and now I’m trying to make up for lost time. I can’t help it if I’m in the “old” demographic. Give me a break!

For what it’s worth, I think it is way too early to push the panic button. If I can “discover” and enjoy an entirely different type of music that I never enjoyed before, it could happen to anybody at any time. Who knows? Maybe when the younger generation reaches my age, they won’t be nostalgic for the rappers and grunge and whatnot that clutters their music sphere now. And even if they are, a person’s passion is their own. I’ll not question that.

Jazz does not need to be saved, because it will never die. Trust me on that.

Hector's "Barely O's" Jazz Club: Opening ... Never

Had the pleasure of attending the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra last night (March 15). It's something that for the price of late season fill-in tickets ($20), I find quite enjoyable. When I went last month (OK, tix were 2 for $40), pianist Yakov Kasman playing Rachmaninoff was the big attraction, so I didn't go there for any other reason than to listen and enjoy the music. Last night, being vaguely familiar with Bartok (the first session), Ravel (also the first session), and better than vaguely familiar with Berlioz (the second session, Symphonie Fantastique), I attended the concert, first, to enjoy the music, and second, to find some kernel of linkage to jazz music which I could apply to my music. And while I know from my introduction to music course in college that all western music shares similar roots and structures due to being based on the diatonic and chromatic scales, other than an occasional distracting dissonance put in (what I thought were) obvious places specifically to upset the emotions of the listener (don't forget: we're hanging a guy in the fourth movement), I don't think I learned much about jazz last night. This morning, I spent some time thinking about it more, going over the notes, both literal and allegorical, and really, I can't come up with anything. I don't know. For me, having been brought up listening to a lot of choral and liturgical works, then pops, and much later a steady diet of classical work, all eventually leading me to jazz, personally, I find jazz just too different from other types of music. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure it's not all that different. Just for me, at this stage in my learning about jazz, I only learn about jazz when I'm playing, listening, thinking, or talking about jazz.

I read somewhere that when learning jazz, one should listen to only jazz, and listen to it continuously. And, in my zealousness to become a jazz musician, I followed that for a time. Now, I disagree with that. I think, if anything, jazz benefits from having modern and classical influences, pop and traditional influences, and finding those influences is easier if one is listening to a broad range of music with an open mind, looking for applications, variations, and "cross pollination".

But I'm still a big Berlioz fan. One can't help but wonder what the audience thought back when this symphony was first performed and the oboe player stood up, walked off stage, and then, began the third movement, the oboe echoing in the distance, being answered by the rest of the orchestra. It's echoes (sorry) of an avant garde musician in the jazz tradition, so I guess I can take that as my kernel. Nonetheless, Hector is no longer with us, though I'm sure he's jamming somewhere, just not here. The Barely O's jazz club is not to be.