Margherita Fava
Good evening, WUOT and welcome back to another episode of On Keys, the show dedicated to all instruments with keyboards.
This past weekend, we had a surplus of incredible musicians roaming around town for Big Ears Festival, and I took the opportunity to interview a few different pianists before or after their performances. It was all done on the go in different locations, so I apologize if today's episode audio quality is a little subpar to our usual shows, but I discovered a lot of different information and very interesting facts talking to these artists, and I wanted to share it with you all.
This first track that you heard was entitled Seven Ways by New York native pianist Jason Lindner, who was at the festival performing with Nate Smith and Saha Gnawa. I asked him to talk about some of his teachers, and this is what he had to say.
Jason Lindner
A teacher that really shattered all of my previous notions of music was Chris Anderson. Chris Anderson was a Chicagoan, ended up in New York after touring with Dinah Washington, but he was known as a harmonic sort of genius, and Herbie Hancock used to study with him in Chicago. And Herbie Hancock's harmonic style is, I would venture to say, greatly influenced by Chris Anderson.If you listen to some Chris Anderson’s solo recordings, he has a recording with Charlie Hayden, and some solo recordings and stuff, you can definitely hear like these sort of harmonies. I mean, totally different style from Herbie, but harmonically speaking.
We then talked more about some of his early experiences venturing out of the traditional jazz scene.
I basically was asked if I wanted to play in a Cuban restaurant at one time, and I had to learn very quickly to do my fake…faking of like Cuban piano. So I studied like Charlie Palmieri and Peruchin and all these like Arsenio Rodriguez, whose pianist was Lili (Martinez), and I was also studying ragtime at the time. And ragtime and Latin piano montunos are very similar, very similar languages. So that kind of brought me away from traditional jazz and bebop into sort of branching out into other things, and through playing Latin music, it was mostly for dancing. We would play for dancers. People would dance, and if you weren't grooving or swinging, people couldn't dance to it. So the whole point, more than harmony and individuality, was more being part of the team of creating this groove machine so that people could really feel it.
And that was another track featuring Jason entitled Putty Boy Strut, from Anat Cohen's album Luminosa, but originally a composition from LA producer and none other than John Coltrane's nephew! Flying Lotus. Jason's first recording is a big band album, and the music that he is doing currently is more rooted into club and electronic culture. And this is what he had to say about what draws him towards this genre and the connection between the two.
I'm into club culture in general. I'm into underground culture, nightlife and these places, these spaces where people can come together and immerse themselves in a reality that is more conducive to humanity and being alive and good feelings, and it contrasts all the bull***t that we have to deal with every day, from government down to our jobs and all these different aspects of society, capitalism and everything that we're dealing with in society that kind of like try to break down the human spirit and community and all this stuff. And it's really important, what these spaces provide is connecting with the community and all that good stuff, right? So now we have clubs, DJs, etc, but back in the early 20th century, the big band was the sound system. So that's the parallel I like to draw between, like, having this big band with drums and blah, blah, blah, before we had sound systems.
Next, I got the chance to talk to Swiss pianist and composer Nik Bärtsch, who, as you just heard in his composition Module 55, has developed a very unique and personal approach.
Nik Bärtsch
First of all, I see a live concert also as a dramaturgical bow. So for me, it's very important that the whole dramaturgy works from the beginning till the end. This is different depending on the room, the space, the audience, the festival, also a bit of the setting, what people expect. But usually I try to dive in and play one huge bow. Of course, in that I have, like pieces called modules. These are my pieces. Usually, that's a technical name, like Sonata or Etude No. 5 or so, but I can handle them flexible. On one hand, which module I put or which modules I put together. On the other hand, in the module itself, I can spread parts improvise, but from outside, it's actually challenging to know, is it improvised? Is it composed? Is it interpreted? So for me, these three things: improvisation, composition and interpretation, come from the same source. Like in the old days, where composers were usually also good improvisers on the instrument, especially on the piano. Yeah. And so I tried to create an atmosphere that is for me, also interesting, that I can create things, I can change things, I can play every time different, but at the same time, it's very important that the whole evening has a clear structure, a clear direction, and that the audience can dive in and follow that. So it's not so much one piece after the other, it's more like a big cinematic bow.
I definitely felt that. And also, speaking of the cinematic aspect, you play every possible way to play the piano! You play the keyboard of the piano, you play the inside of the piano in so many different ways. So I was just wondering, like, how do you practice prepared piano?
Well, first of all, the prepared piano has a long history, but the tendency is a little bit that prepared piano means experimental music. And I'm not so interested in showing the experiment. I'm more interested in creating an orchestral sound, that the piano has several sides, and the piano is a way an orchestral instrument. But with the sound and the different sound possibilities we have, we can even more emphasize this. So the way with touching strings, like damping strings, creating more percussive sounds, creating several registers of the orchestra, having also a little bit of noise in a positive sense inside that, that it sounds like wind or, you know, blendings that we know also from the orchestra. That's what I try to do. Now this needs to be practiced also, of course, because it goes very fast. So I don't prepare the piano that I just play on a prepared piano, and I basically do it while I'm playing it. And this means it must be very, very, very clear, very soft, and should not harm the piano. It should have the sound effect and not the kind of effect that people see that I'm doing crazy things, but it should sound precise and appropriate to the place I'm using it. And that needs a lot of training in terms of like, like you do it on the keys, that the movements are really subtle, smooth and precise. And I train that like a percussionist.
Interesting. And on top of your musical career, you're also well versed in the martial art of Aikido. And I'm just wondering, what are the connections that you trace between the two arts that you practice?
Martial arts is, for me, on several levels, very important to support, actually, this performance, spirit, performance, attitude. First of all, what we talked about before like “the movements must be smooth, precise, natural, final”, so that extreme movements are trained in a way that they really easily happen, and they serve the sound, they serve the dramaturgy, they serve the piece. So that's something we train in martial arts really intensively, that is it's not about the movement itself. The movement serves the impact. Or in Aikido, we do not attack, but we work with the energy of the opponent. And that is kind of challenging, because you don't want to injure yourself and the opponent. You want to do it smooth and round, and the more violence goes in, the more difficult this is, but we can transpose that to the music, to the way of playing an instrument. The other thing is the presence of the player, so in martial arts, it's very important that you stay calm under pressure, that the body stays soft around, the movement is precise, naturally happening. And under pressure, this is quite difficult. And in situations where we play live, the pressure is usually high, the pressure we give ourselves, the pressure from the audience, the space, all these things that are happening also in the mind. And I find martial arts very effective, very helpful, that we stay humble, modest and trained in this kind of being in the moment, listening, connecting with the instrument, with the audience, so that the presence is growing for the music, and your ego is not in your way.
And that was Nik Bärtsch’s band RONIN playing Module 66. How much does the music that you listen to like, for your own pleasure, reflect the music that you play? What is that connection?
Of course, I'm totally open to all sorts of music. I had the luck to grow up in a house where my parents were listening to all sorts of music. So in that house, the open spirit of interest for music was there. There was no ideology or so. So I had the chance to grow up without knowing what musical style means and class means certain culture means something. So I was just open to music. That's still the case today. But what I sharpened is a little bit my way of how I perceive music and what is important for me when I play music. So I'm looking often in other musical pieces, styles, etc, for a certain rhythmic organization. So I'm interested in how a community, how a band, how an orchestra, organizes their music as a rhythmic and ritualistic organization. So we find that all over the place, in like traditional music, folk music, but also, for example, in Stravinsky's music, or in a lot of groove music, where the band, the community, is very essential. So it's not so much like, what does an individual player do, but much more, what does the group do? And when I listen to music, I very often emphasize the focus on, on “what does the team do?”. Although you experienced me as a solo player, this spirit is very important. And when I play solo, I'm also connected, like we do that all together. It's the audience, me, the space, the instrument. It's also in a solo concert, togetherness. It's about being together. Togetherness, like what happens between the player and the audience and the space and the instrument. So it's about the resonance between us all. So that's what I'm interested in, usually in music. To say it's simple: the most beautiful thing in music is actually playing together.
You're listening to On Keys here on WUOT, 91.9 FM. Today I'm sharing with you some conversations I had during Big Ears Festival this weekend with different piano players that were performing here in town.
Another pianist that I had the pleasure to speak with was Matt Mitchell, who performed at Regas Square with his ensemble Zealous Angles, featuring Dan Weiss on drums, Chris Tordini on bass and guitarist Miles Okazaki. I asked Matt about his compositional process, and this is how he described it.
I mean, I always write my music, almost always write my music pencil to paper. So I'm just hearing something in my head. I get it down, and it's usually the composition for these pieces in particular, is pretty fast, like I usually write two or three in a day. So the process is pretty quick. I mean I get, like, some, you know, get materials on the page, I get pitches or whatever, and then I'm just trying to find different ways to have them interlock and interact, and then I just try, and I try with the band, and usually, I'm happy with it. And if I'm not, I just write something new. But I mean, yeah, It's not a super long process, really, you know.
That was an original composition by Matt Mitchell and Zealous Angles entitled Apace. This is how Matt explained the concept behind this project.
Basically the idea behind the music is that they're all pretty short pieces, that everyone has different parts that are different lengths that don't line up. So the music, so the rhythmic foundation is kind of always a little bit shifting, or, like tectonic plates or some other geological analogy like that. But basically it's like, you know, it's very specific music, and that's like, kind of, sort of like small, almost not quite cells, but just small phrases that then can be expanded upon. And everyone kind of has the freedom to move back and forth between different parts and then just improvise.
And last, but not least, I had the pleasure to ask Grammy winning pianist Sullivan Forner a few questions, hope you enjoy. The first one concerns the song you just heard, Waltz For Monk, a composition by Donald Brown that Sullivan included in his latest album Southern Nights. What's your connection to the song Waltz For Monk?
Well, I think the first time I heard that was on a Mulgrew Miller record. And, of course I've known Donald (Brown) for some time, and he's always been a real good, real nice person to me, you know, really, really cool. And I've always loved the tune, I've just decided when I had the week at the (Village) Vanguard and I was like “well, let's just try it!”.
So tonight you're playing at Big Ears with your trio. I mean, you always surround yourself with, like, amazing rhythm sections. I'm just wondering, what is your process when choosing a rhythm section to play music with?
Um, the requirement, I think would be with anyone just to listen, you know, to be good listeners, and you know, to also be good collaborators, you know, and create, good dialog, good arguments, so to speak. I like that. I like to feel like everyone has an equal part in the sound, and no one's greater than the other. So if everyone collaborates, and everyone puts in their best foot forward then we’re doing good.
It really feels like you hold no tension in your body whatsoever, everything just flows naturally. And I just wonder, like, how much of that is just your own instinct, and how much was hard work, you know, to get to that thing?
Um, I would say maybe, maybe 20 or 30% of it is instinctual. You know, I had really, really great teachers that basically told me about pain early on. It was like “if you feel pain, then you must stop and figure out another way to access it”. There's got to be another way, and you sit with it. If it needs going very, very slowly, if it needs recording yourself and just really being aware of your body when you play, you know. There’s no tension at all, very little tension if possible, you know.
And unfortunately, that's all for today's episode, but I'll be back next week with more music for your ears. Up next at 9pm Randy Fishman with Last Set At Birdland. Have a great rest of your night here on WUOT 91.9 FM. Ciao!
