Tour Diary June 2011: Birmingham Conservatoire with Jeff Ballard

So, after my three whirling weeks in Europe in May, it was nice to be home to see my family and do some laundry. However, there was still traveling to be done: this time, Birmingham, England was the destination. I was asked to teach and perform at the Birmingham Conservatoire with drumming phenom Jeff Ballard. I was thrilled and honored to be thought of in the same company as Ballard, who is known for his work with Chick Corea, Joshua Redman, and Brad Mehldau. We were scheduled to do a four -day stint at the beginning of June; and so, I packed my bag once again, headed to JFK, and boarded the Virgin Atlantic flight to London Heathrow Airport. At least this time, I would be mostly in one place, although I would have one extra day in London; the extra stay-over made the airfare a lot less.

The planning of this little excursion was actually two years in the making, thanks to the efforts of two English gentlemen: Jeremy Price, who is the head honcho of the Birmingham Conservatoire, and Tony Dudley-Evans, who is a promoter in the region, and also curates the great Cheltenham Jazz Festival. I knew Dudley-Evans from when I played in Birmingham for the first time with clarinetist Don Byron years ago. Dudley-Evans booked my quartet at Cheltenham in 2003, which was a blast. I met trombonist Jeremy Price at a week-long clinic in Denmark, where Ballard was also an instructor. Price and Dudley-Evans thought that Ballard and I would make a good teaching combination.

The theme of the week was "improvising interactively". The focus was somewhat on the rhythm sections; Price asked Ballard and I to talk about how to play while listening to others in the band. I thought this was a great idea, and this sort of theme always leads to other themes and tangents. So, with this in mind, it wasn't hard to come up with things to say. The first day in Birmingham, after a bus ride from Heathrow to Birmingham, checking in to my hotel and getting a long nap, I headed over to the school for a masterclass. I was alone on this one, due to Ballard's flight being delayed in Lisbon. (He was on a gig with Joe Lovano.) Right away, I was impressed by the attentiveness and humility of the students. And the overall musical level was pretty high. Clearly, most of these students already had a good feel for jazz, and could play well over basic tunes. I played with the students and answered questions; it was pretty smooth and it got us off to a positive start.

One thing that was interesting about the week was hearing so many different English accents; the students were from all over the U.K. At times, it was actually hard to decipher, but eventually, my ear adjusted. And I started to think my own accent sounded weird (I'm not sure if I have a distinguishable accent. Most people can't tell where I grew up, past the United States. I grew up in Columbia, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore, while my Mom and Dad were from East Orange, New Jersey and Brooklyn, New York, respectively. But I think if I lived in England, I would probably, much like Madonna, end up sounding British after a while.)

Jeff Ballard finally arrived the next morning, and so he ran the morning masterclass, while I merely played piano. After only playing one tune with Ballard, I lamented that over the years we had not played together much(we did play with Mark Turner once and then he subbed in my organ trio at the Cork Jazz Festival years earlier). Ballard is one of the most musical jazz drummers out there; he plays very organically, and has great control over dynamics and sound. He's always listening and reacting; it's a very pure approach. It can be unpredictable, but in a good way, because Ballard always has an open mind as to what can happen next in the music.

Ballard is a natural teacher as well. He has a lot to say and is very passionate about the music. He knows the history and also knows about world rhythms and different genres. He's also aware of the harmony and the melody. The students were very receptive to Ballard's comments and ideas.
Jeremy Price was trying to make sure that as many of the student as possible got the chance to play with Ballard and yours truly. I think it can be meaningful for students to get a memorable musical moment with very advanced players. Hopefully, it will be a sort of "A-HA!" moment in a player's development. I know I've had a lot of those moments over the years...

Ballard and I rotated listening and playing with the small ensembles later in the day (and more over the next few days). The plan was to narrow down the ensembles that would get to perform on the final concert. There were six ensembles, but only three spots. I actually thought that everyone should get to play, but that probably would have taken up too much time.(We ended up with four ensembles in the end.) Again, there were a lot of talented, hard working students, but we were able to narrow it down based on the ability of each group to play together in a mature, musical fashion.

One night, after some spicy Thai food and Thai beer(well, there was no spice in the beer), we headed over to an Irish bar called The Spotted Dog, in a neighborhood called Digbeth. There was a pretty intense jam session, which was organized by a saxophonist named Michael Fletcher and a jazz enthusiast (and actor) named Miriam Edwards. (Fletcher and Edwards are also involved with something called Rhubarb Radio; I ended up doing an interview for their show at the end of the week.)The bar was packed to the gills. Ballard and I played trio with a local bassist. The level of enthusiam was quite high, from the musicians sitting in as well as the listeners.

The final day of teaching, we selected which groups would perform. Some of the groups had their own originals, while others learned some arrangements that I had made up on the spot. It was shaping up to be a satisfying concert. Before the show, I went back to my hotel to change clothes; unfortunately, the mechanism on my hotel room door ceased to function! Hotel employees were forced to drill into the side of the wall in order for me to enter the room and get my concert attire. I cut it close, but I was able to shower, change, and still make the concert on time.

After the concert, there was another jam session at a little bar next to the hotel called The Yardbird, which was another fun hang; I sat in on drums and keyboard, and I jammed a bit on the melodica as well. I was impressed at the vibrant nature of the Birmingham scene. Some of the students remarked that Birmingham as a jazz city doesn't get the proper attention, since it is so close to London. I suppose it would be like comparing New York City to Baltimore, in terms of size and music scene. And much like New York, London is so expensive to live that it can prove daunting for young musicians to try and move there to seek their fortunes. Still, many of the young players in Birmingham were ambitious, and I hoped that they were inspired and gratified by the week's lectures and musical interactions.

I had two extra days in the U.K.; on Friday, Fletcher and Edwards showed me around Birmingham a bit, and we returned to the Spotted Dog for a quiet evening of getting hammered on beer and Irish whiskey. The next morning, I took a train to London, and a friend of mine, who I previously knew only from Facebook, offered to show me around Hyde Park. It was a leisurely end to my British excursion, and I anticipated a return visit in the hopefully near future.

Jeff Ballard Masterclass 1

Ballard Masterclass 2

Ballard answering questions

Ballard playing with the students

Pick a pint, any pint!

dessert cart at Thai restaurant

Interesting wall hanging at Thai Restaurant

Spring rolls and such

Birmingham 1

Birmingham 2

Birmingham 3

Birmingham 4

Birmingham 5

Birmingham 6

Pie AND Mash? WOW!

this is a Spanish favorite

This is a Dutch favorite....I think.....

Ballard playing the shite out of the cajon

Men trying to open my door 1

trying to open my door 2

Final concert 1

Final Concert 2

Proof that my blog is not a hoax

They're EVERYWHERE!

Park in Birmingham

they call this part of town the Bullring.....

And this is called the Custard Factory....

Custard Factory 2

Custard Factory 3

Custard Factory 4

Hyde Park 1

Hyde Park 2

Hyde Park 3

Hyde Park 4

Hyde Park 5

mmmm, Ice cream.......

Jazz Pianists of Baltimore, Maryland, Part 1

Every jazz musician has their influences. Many musicians talk fondly of their favorite recorded music. However, if you go back to earlier generations, you find that musicians talk more about the players that they heard live and the players that they knew, or even studied with. Jazz started as more of a folk tradition, with information being handed down to the next generation, and each generation adding to the tradition. I believe that has changed somewhat, due to the lack of local venues, and our increasingly isolated society. After all, it is a great thing to take from recorded music; it's actually essential. But what about hearing people live? Don't you think music has more of an impact when you can actually see the musicians and feel the vibrations?

Gary Bartz

I feel lucky that I was in Baltimore when there were still a lot of gigs going on, although many of the
piano gigs were in hotels or restaurants. I missed the era of The Closet, a great jazz club that closed not long after I arrived at Peabody Conservatory (I did see one performance of Gary Bartz and his quartet before they went out of business, but the Closet used to be the spot where New York musicians would come down and play with the top local rhythm sections). But I did spend a lot of time at the New Haven Lounge, which had New York players and top local players every weekend. I also used to go to the One Step Down and Blues Alley and Twins in Washington D.C., which had even more name acts. Baltimore and Washington D.C. are so close that, at least in the 90's, it was considered the same "market" and musicians would frequently drive back and forth between both cities.

Tim Murphy

One of the pianists who was a huge influence on me was Tim Murphy. I first heard Murphy at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Baltimore in 1987. My friend and fellow Peabody classmate, trumpeter Alex Norris, took me down there to hear the house trio, which featured vocalist Shelia Ford, pianist Armen Boyajin, bassist Larry Kinling, and drummer Jim Hannah. But Boyajin was not playing piano this time, he was playing violin, and Tim Murphy was playing piano. I remember hearing Murphy play some harmonies that sounded like Hindemith on absinthe! And I wasn't yet serious about the piano as my main instrument, but the more I listened to Murphy that night, the more I had the inclination that "I want to do what HE is doing...."

It turned out that Tim Murphy is actually very studied in the jazz tradition: he can show you two

Messian

handed Oscar Peterson blues licks for days, and he's transcribed a lot of Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner. But he also happens to be a virtuoso classical organist, and he has performed many works for pipe organ by Oliver Messian. Messian had his own system of harmony based on "modes of limited transposition", which includes what you might know as the diminished scale. Murphy urged me to look at Messian's book entitled The Technique Of My Musical Language, which I did, although it was kind of advanced for me at the time, in retrospect.

Murphy and I ended up playing together in the Baltimore-based Latin Jazz band called Rumba Club; I was playing timbales in the band, if you can believe that! But I used that vantage point to check out what Murphy was playing, and any time he played a chord I wanted to steal, I would yell from the timbales, "What was that chord?" and Murphy would shout back,"I'll tell you later!" And eventually, Murphy couldn't make a lot of the Rumba Club gigs, so I ended up subbing for him, and trying to basically sound exactly like him, which of course I couldn't.

You might know Murphy's playing if you are a Gary Thomas fan; Murphy is on many of Thomas' recordings, including Code Violations, By Any Means Neccessary, 'Til We Have Faces, Exile's Gate, and The Kold Kage. Unfortunately, Murphy has not to my knowledge recorded as a leader, and at this writing he is still in Maryland,  teaching in the Peabody Jazz Program and also at Towson University. I think Murphy is one of the most unique players that remains in obscurity. Murphy never had the desire to move to New York and join the Jazz Rat Race, which is unfortunate, because I think he is deserving of wider recognition.

Bob Butta

Another big influence on my decision to switch to jazz piano is another Baltimore native named Bob Butta. The only time I ever went to The Closet, Butta was in the rhythm section backing Gary Bartz (with Geoff Harper on bass and Steve Williams on drums). I remember thinking at the time that that was first time I ever heard a band that sounded close to what the John Coltrane Quartet must have sounded like live; they played with so much intensity, and they really stretched out. Butta is a forceful accompanist, channeling the likes of Wynton Kelly, McCoy Tyner, and Horace Silver all at once. And Butta has the "right hand of doom"; he took the Tyner pentatonic idea and put his own stamp on it.

I probably saw Butta play more than anybody in Baltimore. I followed Butta around so much that he
started joking that "Yeah, he's my son!" I tried to absorb his techniques. Butta really knows the history; in his playing you'll hear Red Garland, Bill Evans, Cedar Walton, and Theolonious Monk. Butta is a real " jazz pianist's jazz pianist". It's unfortunate that he, like Murphy, never moved to New York. Although, there is a legendary story about Butta being in New York at the Star Cafe jam session in the 80's and while he was playing, bassist Lonnie Plaxico ran in and said in Butta's ear, "Art Blakey needs a piano player, we are driving to Canada tonight!" And Butta replied, "Can I finish playing this tune first?" And then when the tune was over, Plaxico was gone, and Blakey had driven off. (At least that's how I recall Butta telling me the story, I would accept some corroboration....")



For more on Tim Murphy, click here. For more on Bob Butta, click here.

Viewer Mail: Solo Piano Playing

 I recently received this email  from a young pianist:

Hi George,

I'm a recent graduate of the MacEwan jazz program (piano) in Edmonton, AB. I had the opportunity to see you with the U of M faculty combo at the Yardbird Suite a few months ago. I really love your playing, and recently started reading your blog, which I have found very helpful  and inspirational. I just have a few questions about playing:


What do you recommend to develop solo piano techniques? I find that after a substantial amount of work, I can come up with a good solo piano arrangement for a tune, but I feel that I'm stuck with using a few techniques. I've recently started transcribing sections of arrangements that I am drawn to (Monk, Mehldau, Fred Hersch, etc), and attempting to arrange in a mish-mash of styles. What is your perspective on growing as a solo pianist?

Are there any exercises that you do to develop rhythmic sophistication? I practice technique in odd rhythmic patterns and groupings, but I still haven't found a satisfactory practice method for rhythmic development.

Lastly, would we be able to do a few lessons when you're back in Canada in the Fall? I will be in Winnipeg for a week or so in September. Thanks a lot for all of your wonderful playing and blogging. Hope to hear from you soon,

Alec Meen

Thanks for your letter, Alec. Glad you enjoyed the gig at Yardbird Suite. The ensemble I played with was billed as the University of Manitoba Faculty Ensemble, but it really should be called Steve Kirby and Friends, or maybe all of our names (Jimmy Greene, George Colligan, Steve Kirby, Quincy Davis.) I say this because Faculty Ensemble is very a non-descript sort of name, and gives the impression that our only musical common denominator comes from teaching at the same school. It's a pretty heavy band, and the interplay is stellar, since we had been playing every Wednesday night for a whole school year!

It's also interesting that you are asking little old  moi about solo playing, since I didn't do much of that during that particular show, and it's not something that I'm readily identified with (although I have released three solo CDs on Steeplechase). I don't even think that I am that great at solo playing! However, I think that many young jazz pianists mistakenly feel that solo playing is out of their grasp (no pun intended). I think that most players have the tools already, but it's just a question of getting comfortable with the space. Most of my professional experience as a pianist has been playing with bands, so the number one problem I have when I play solo is THE SPACE! Space is good, but you might end up feeling naked without the bass, drums, and horns or vocalists to take the pressure of of you.

And speaking more about space, one should not think that they have to fill up every square inch of the music in order to be a functional solo pianist. Everyone hears Art Tatum or the stride players or what have you and thinks that they have to be able to do that. I disagree. Bill Evans played incredible solo piano, and I never heard him play stride or walk bass lines. So my first piece of advice is this: don't be afraid of solo piano! And don't shy away from opportunities to do it on the gig. Whether it be a solo intro to a tune on a trio gig, or a 5 hour solo gig at a restaurant, look for places to try it out.

One common issue with pianists trying to play more solo piano is the left hand. If you play in jazz bands a lot, you probably have a good right hand, but your left hand is lacking the speed and finesse. This is totally normal. So can you develop this? Here's piece of advice number 2: Practice everything that you play with the right hand in the left hand. It's not that your left hand is incapable, it's just asleep. You need to engage it more than you have been doing. And you can start with left hand alone:play melodies, licks, scales, voicings, arpeggios, anything, and just focus on the left hand. Even on the gig, try soloing with just the left hand. Don't worry about speed. Just think about developing a new, more efficient link between your left hand and your brain.

Piece of advice number 3: Start with ballads or slow tunes. Relax! Solo piano is a time to enjoy the softer, slower side, the lyrical side. Enjoy playing rubato. However, a word of caution: I believe that the best solo pianists understand and make a distinction between rubato playing and/or playing without strict time AND being able to keep strict time by themselves. I have heard many solo pianists in lobbies and restaurants throughout the world who clearly have gotten lazy with their time keeping. Like I said before, most of my gigs have been with bands, so I am more aware of keeping time when I play alone.

Here's piece of advice number 4, which was passed on to me by the great Bill Charlap: practice performing to get comfortable with your nerves. What Charlap meant was that you want to practice a solo piece and get comfortable with the idea of continuous playing, regardless of mistakes or anything that you didn't completely like. Later, you can go back and make it better, or tape yourself and take note of what worked and what didn't. But one thing I notice a lot from youngsters who come in to a lesson is that they play and stop, play and stop, without just developing a sense of how to get through a performance, regardless of imperfections. This is part of developing confidence as a player. We all play things that we aren't thrilled with, but at a certain point, you have to just keep playing and hope for the best. So divide your practice time into isolating the minute details, and then try just playing a tune as if you were doing a solo concert at Carnegie Hall, and just get used to that feeling.

I took a lesson with Fred Hersch last summer, and he had a lot to say about solo piano playing; I believe he is really one of the best solo pianists around. And Brad Mehldau studied with Hersch, and I believe he took a lot from Hersch, more than folks realize. Hersch talked about inner voices a lot. He advised playing through a ballad, and trying to develop almost a four part chorale approach, almost splitting each hand in two voices. Even if you started with just one line in the right and bass notes in the left, and then added an inner voice in the thumb of the right hand and then a 7th or a third in the thumb of the left, then you would start to see and hear things differently, especially if you are like me; single note right hand and "The Claw" left hand, banging out voicings. And Hersch talked about sound, about not "slapping"the keys. I believe that solo playing is a chance to really explore all the dynamics of the piano. So a softer approach can give you more colors in your sound.

I never have considered myself to be a rhythmic expert, even though I have played with many groups that use odd meters and a wide variety of rhythmic genres in their music. I think the first thing that most students need to do is develop a good time feel for even basic 8th notes and so forth. Playing with the metronome helps. Playing along with recordings helps also, even without transcribing the solos note for note. Another idea is to develop soloing where you limit the number of notes, and isolate rhythm as one element. For example: let's say you want to play over an F Blues. Instead of playing all of your blues and bebop licks, let's take a melodic cell: A Bb C# D Eb. Ok, so instead of thinking of that as a scale, think of that as a five tom drum set. Now, your note choices are limited, so how are you going to tell a compelling story using only 5 notes? Rhythm is the answer. So you can use 8th notes, 16ths, triplets, odd grouping of 8th notes, odd groupings of triplets, etc... See if you can keep the form doing this. I guarantee you that making up exercises like this will make you focus on rhythm differently.

I hope this has bee helpful. And Alec, I should mention that unfortunately, I will not be returning to the University of Manitoba in the fall. Because.....I will be teaching at Portland State University in Portland Oregon! I haven't officially announced this; that will probably be a subject for another blog. But I will be in Winnipeg in August if you can make it out there. Or perhaps I'll be able to do a clinic at your school at some point. Either way, good luck to you, and if you have any other questions, please let me know. And for the rest of you, gentle readers, respectful feedback is welcome.

The Jim Beard Interview

Joe Zawinul said, "Jim Beard is my favorite keyboard player...besides myself." I think that's a pretty high compliment, don't you? Jim Beard has been on the scene since the 1980's, with a resume that reads like a sideman's dream: Wayne Shorter, Michael Brecker, John McLaughlin, Steely Dan, and a host of other upper eschalon artists. Beard is a virtuoso pianist and composer, yet he also is widely in demand as a multi-keyboardist. His perfection and taste with sonic textures is legendary. 

Last November, I was in New York, and I contacted Beard for a lesson. My goal was to get advice on keyboards and sound design. We met at his music studio in midtown. We got to talking, and I decided that I should interview him for jazztruth. He had a lot to say and I learned a great deal from his stories and thoughts. Here's where I started recording:

GC:
So you were saying, your original set up was the two Yamaha DX-7s and the drum machine?

Yamaha DX-7

JB: Yeah, I had a DX-7 and a TX-7 and and an RX 15, the Yamaha drum machine, and an Ensoniq Mirage, and my 4 track Fostex Cassette Recorder-that was the setup when I wrote most of those tunes for the Michael Brecker albums. And like I said, my interesting sampling came from that Prince CD, the one with "Kiss" on it. And also I was talking about when demoing songs, the need to sort of clearly arrange things, that and my desire to create interesting synth sounds. By the same token, if I would stumble across an interesting sound….but also lifting a weird pad from a Prince CD or something. Sometimes a cool sound would give me an idea for a song. So it would kind of go both ways. Right from the beginning, the nature, or the quality of a sound could either lure me into music, feed my desire to get involved with it, or turn me off, if it's an offensive, horrible sound. Pretty early on, I was pretty sensitive to what I viewed was a good sound or a bad sound.

GC: Even as a kid, when you were first getting into music?

JB: Well, no….

GC: How did you get into being a musician?

JB: Oh Jeez…..that started….I can remember being 4 years old. My Dad was kind of a technological nerd, he built our television from a kit, he built our stereo from a kit. We had a weird stereo, one of the speakers was in a cabinet  on the living room floor and the other was on the ceiling on the other side of the room. But when I was young, my idea of a good time was just to lay on the floor in front of the speaker and listen to records. Anything from…..a lot of it was the Herb Albert records…

GC: Really? Interesting….

JB: I mean, those records had a lot of detail in the arrangements…"Whipped Cream and Other Delights". That's a classic record. And I always loved holiday times, the traditional Christmas music, with the choirs and the orchestra and so forth. I used to love that.

GC: You grew up in Philly?

JB: Yes, Ridley Park, not far from the airport.

GC: Did you have classical lessons?

JB: Yes. I had the same teacher for about 12 years. I started when I was 6. I did the whole heavy classical routine. My teacher entered me in competitions.

GC: Did you get a degree in music?

JB: Yes I went to Indiana University. After that, I world on a cruise ship for a year , with the intention of saving money to move to New York. But I didn't save any money! And I moved to New York anyway..

GC: And then right away you got the call to play with the Mahavishnu Orchestra?

John McLaughlin of Mahavishnu Orchestra

JB: Not right away. I moved in August of 1985. Within that year I was working with Mahavishnu. Yeah, that was an interesting time.

GC: You came to New York in '85. You still live here part time, and part time in Helsinki?

JB: My wife is Finnish, so we split the time between Helsinki and New York.

GC: How do you think New York as a city has changed? Since you've been here?

JB: I think it's a safer city now, which I believe qualifies as being better…..In terms of music, it's hard to say, you might have to compare with younger musicians who come here who are hungry. I used to do jam sessions all the time, with the loft scene….New York has gotten so expensive now, that it seems there isn't as vibrant a scene as there used to be.

GC: I guess it depends on who you talk to.

JB: The rents…..I don't know how a kid out of school with no money saved up, without a job, could move here. I guess they don't move to Manhattan, they live in Queens, or Brooklyn.

Donald Fagen and Walter Becker of Steely Dan

GC: You're pretty well established as a musician, so I imagine you are touring a lot. You are still touring with Steely Dan?

JB: I've been doing that for two years. But we are on a break right now, so there's a tour with a band called the Dukes of September. It's Donald Fagen, Michael McDonald, and Boz Scaggs. So the three of them in one band. It's really fun. I'm playing mostly Hammond B-3 on that.


GC: Have you done a lot of B-3 playing?

JB: Yeah, I've done some gigs here or there that were exclusively Hammond B-3. But most of the time, like with something like Madeline Peyroux, I would have a set up with A Steinway piano, a Wurlitzer, and a Hammond B-3. That really served that music well.

GC: How do you adjust your set up, or your mindset, for this wide variety of gigs you have been doing?

JB: If its a more electric oriented gig, with more emphasis on synthesizers, then that's obviously much different than doing an acoustic gig, of course. After a few years, I had a working set up that I used for a good stretch; two controllers,  the Yamaha 88 weighted key controller (the KX88) and then the KX76 on top. And then I had different versions of these midi control boxes, that you could assign different splits and routings and so forth. And then midi cables running to a big rack of synth modules.

GC: And you would always bring that?

JB: I would always bring that for the Mahavishnu stuff, and then I got called for John Scofield, and he had a pretty electric setup as well. I was only with that band for a year. Wait, I did Wayne Shorter after Mahavishnu…there were several different bands, one was with Kenwood Denard on drums and Alphonso Johnson on bass…one with Omar Hakim on drums and Victor Bailey on bass…there were maybe 7 or 8 different configurations with Wayne. Then I did Scofield, and then I did Wayne again, and then I did John McLaughlin and the Heart of Things. But I found that this approach with two keyboards, with all of these bands, that these songs had a strong emphasis on arrangements. These songs were recorded with a lot of overdubs and different sonic layers, and so….My job was to recreate the sounds on these recordings. I saw this as a fun challenge.

I saw this task as making me the orchestrator. It takes thought in terms of the ergonomics of it. Let's say, this section needs some pads in this part of the keyboard that are warm and rich, and then if stuff gets wild, I'll have something splashy in the top part of the keyboard, and then maybe I'll have a solo sound in the other keyboard. Some keyboardists now just have sort of one keyboard and then their laptop. That would drive me nuts! Because this is like having, let's say 10 people, who can play all the instruments, but they can only play one instrument at any one time, so they have to switch up constantly….no, you want to have everything ready to go all the time! If there is a spontaneous need to play a certain sound, you don't want to have to press some command on your laptop, you want it to be within reach.

Wayne Shorter

When I was doing Wayne Shorter's band, with David Gilmore on guitar, this was 1996, that's when the Roland JP 8000 came out. That was the beginning of the whole virtual sound modeling thing started. It was cool to play the instrument, because you could adjust the sound in real time with the knobs…it had a lot of cool Joe Zawinul types of sounds, almost like weird creatures speaking from another planet or something. So then I added a third keyboard. Well, actually four keyboards, because with Wayne and John, there was a grand piano as well. A piano to my left, two keyboards next to that, and the the JP 8000 on my right.

John McLaughlin and The Heart of Things was a fun band. I had to do a lot of homework! But it got to the point with that band, where it reminded me of a Band of Swashbucklers…

GC: A lot of virtuosity…

JB: Which is not naturally my thing. That's not necessarily what I look for in music. It's ok in measured doses…

GC: What do you look for?

JB: Music! Musicalness!

GC: (laughs). I hear you ! But for any musical situation, you always rise to the occasion, right?

JB: Exactly. The craftsmanship of making the music at hand. That's the priority. Serving the music. Now, if the music is about getting out there and beating your chest, and trying to impress people, then sure, I'll rise to that. If the music is about repeating a little rhythmic part that has to be in the pocket, and that's all you have to do night after night, then I'll do that. Whatever serves the music best.

I just find that there doesn't seem to be an overabundance of musicians that have that as their priority. A lot of musicians have their own agenda. It's like, "This is what I do regardless of who I'm playing with."

GC: But don't you think that every musician goes into a situation having to make judgement calls?

JB: For example, with Steely Dan, I'm such a fan of their music. Those records helped me create my musical concept and my harmonic vocabulary as a teenager. When they gave me the charts, about 55, 60 charts, I felt like I already knew must of their music. And so much of their music is so tangible and strong. So most of the gig is just about making the sound of the recording come to life. But there are times in the show where they will give me extended unaccompanied piano solos, where they want me to be me. So then I can get into some stuff, like Classical meets Fats Waller spun out of a riff from "Babylon Sisters", and then you gotta turn on a dime and play the part from the song, you know, just nail it.

That's why I like doing film scores. Those are really fun. With film scores, you don't see the music until the last minute. In a way, it's almost like the musical equivalent of acting; they describe the scene, maybe they want the piano with a single note melody. Sometimes that can be more challenging that having to play a page full of Rachmaninoff. It's so specific: the director and the composer have such a specific idea about dynamics, or exactly where things are supposed to be.

I don't do a ton of film scores, they come in waves. This year is pretty good. But you know, a lot of big studios are closing down. Clinton Studios is gone, Legacy closed down, they've been gone for about a year. Those were two of the rooms where you could do large ensembles. Now they use the Manhattan Center, which is an event room, setting up the mics, etc….


GC: What about Avatar?

JB: Maybe not for an orchestra, but that's one of the last great rooms in New York. Yeah, it's depressing, all the studios closing.

GC: What is your most recent solo project?

JB: It's called Revolutions on the Sunnyside label. It's with an orchestra. It came out good.


GC: How long did it take?

JB: It was done in two chunks. In 2005 I was a guest with the Metropole Orchestra, I was invited to record and work with them for 5 days. I think it was 6 tunes. The only purpose of it was a radio broadcast in Europe. It was fun, I got some mixes, and it really turned out very well. So I thought, gee, wouldn't it be great to make an album with this orchestra. So I put the bug in Vince Mendoza's ear, and he submitted it to the management of the orchestra. And then I got Joachim Becker from ESC Records to get involved. So we did that, but we needed more songs, and I wanted to redo some of the first batch, so then we did some more recording in 2007.


GC: My favorite recording of yours is Advocate. I love the first tune, "Fever" so much! Where did you come up with the inspiration for that recording?

JB: That particular song….actually, I had written much of that song quite a bit earlier, it had just been sitting around , and I didn't have much of a production concept for it. There was this project, I don't know if they are still doing it now, but a band with drummer Zach Danziger and bassist Tim LeFavre called Boomish. I had heard their first recording, and I thought it was some really brilliant stuff. I thought they were possibly on the edge of something really unique. So I invited Zach to be involved with the drum approach on that tune. That was a time when I was still into programming and trying things….what I had not written at that point was the solo changes, which just sort of keep escalating throughout the song. That just sort of spilled out.

 It was fun making that record. There was a lot going on in my personal life at the time. I had two very young children at the time, they were one and three. A lot of that was really freaking me out! Fatherhood felt really new to me, and a lot of that feeling went into that recording.

GC: Did you spend a lot of time mixing that recording? Because the mix sounds really great to me…

JB: Glad to hear that. I get pretty fussy about that. Mixing is something that I'm actually kind of obsessive about. That was 1999, that was the beginning of the decline of the music industry, maybe now we're at the bottom. But then it was a small budget. I did a lot of the recording myself. I used to have my own project studio. I had a loft right across the street from here, and I ended up recording a lot of the stuff there. The tune on the record called "Mirrors", Zach's drums were recorded there. I just wanted to see what real drums would sound like on this tune. So I put a C414 mic up above the kit and a SM 57 in front of the kick drum. We did one or two takes and I thought it sounded great. It had that sort of lo-fi thing to it. That was the beginning of when it became cool to be cheap and dumb, so to speak! And that made it on the record.


GC: Do you think that now that the budgets are dropping, the sound quality is dropping? Or because of the technology, things are sounding better for less?


JB: Both. I heard a recording the other day, I won't say whose, and it sounded harsh, and brittle, and kind of cheap! I think the problem is that now a lot of people think that they can be the artist and the producer and the arranger and the engineer. I think people still love music from the 60's because you didn't have that at all: you had the artist, the composer, the arranger, the lyricist. It was a group effort. You get a lot of cool things when you have a collaborative effort.


GC: You're touring with Steely Dan now, what is your set up with them?

JB: Acoustic Piano-we travel with a Steinway. A Hammond XK-3C, which is one manual of a digital Hammond, and the Nord Stage. That's it. The Nord Stage is great. Great clavinet and Rhodes sounds.


GC: Are you planing on doing more things as a leader at some point?

JB: Yes, though I'm finding that much of what I've done as a leader doesn't pay what some of these other things pay! When you have kids, you have to set your priorities. I was invited to a festival in Mexico with my own group a few years ago,  and they asked me to confirm almost a year in advance. And then Steely Dan announced their world tour. And I signed a contract. And then the management said that the tour was going to be extended, which conflicted with my gig in Mexico. I really didn't want to cancel my own gig, but Steely Dan made it clear that they don't want to sub out the rhythm section. So the people in Mexico were pretty upset; they started talking about lawyers and such. I thought I would be on their blacklist  forever. But then they asked me to come down with my band the next year! I couldn't believe they asked me again! But I had to turn it down, because Steely Dan was planning a tour of Australia around the same time. And then the Steely Dan tour fell through! So I could have done the Mexico festival. It's Murphy's Law, I suppose.

GC: You are a prolific composer. Did you ever study composition?

JB: I studied a little bit. Indiana University.But I studied with a guy who was really into this 12 tone Schoenberg stuff. Honestly, I didn't learn a lot from him. Most of my inspiration comes from listening and playing a of of music. If you play Ravel's "Tombeau De Couperin", it's just perfect music, complete. Any great music! Bach still knocks my socks off. Solo piano stuff, Chopin can really be amazing. But also, Tom Waits' Bone Machine does that to me as well.

GC: I hear a lot of different influences in your music, but I hesitate to call it "eclectic" because that can be a negative connotation from certain folks.  But I feel like your albums hang together cohesively.

JB: Sometimes I feel like my albums are more like musical "little cities." Sometimes when I'm writing a song, the song will take on the characteristics of a person. And then once I feel like it's a good song, there's a point where the song takes over. I'm not writing it anymore. If I get at least 16 bars….I mean, I reject 9 out of 10 things that I write. But once I accept it, it starts to become a character. Then I say, "How does this character walk, how does he talk, is he sad, is he happy?" He's like a person in a town. And then you want to have other people in the town. But how boring would the town be if everyone it it was the same! Of course, there is a line that can be crossed; if you have a song that's a Country-Western duet fooled by something that sounds like Wagnerian Opera, followed by a Led Zeppelin type song. That's sort of over the top…..

GC: I get the idea. Although……(Laughing) that gives me an idea……Anyway, you taught at Queens College for a while?

JB: I taught there for a year, and I was also teaching at Rutgers the same year. It was ok, my kids were 7 and 9 years old, and I thought about maybe shifting my career towards teaching, so that I could be around the kids more. And then there was an advertisement in a trade paper about a job at Berklee College of Music for a Dean of Composition. So I submitted my stuff, and I made the short list. So I sent some more material. So then I made the finals, the top 3. So I flew to Boston. I swear to God, I've never been more stressed and nervous! I felt like I was being vetted for Supreme Court Justice or something. At the end of each day, there would be a big panel of other Deans, looking at you…..and I guess I felt like "wow, this just isn't me"! What ended up happening is that....they didn't pick anybody! The academic world can be strange…..


GC: I agree!

People who do well in the academic world have to have the mind of a politician. And everybody's looking over their shoulder, afraid they are going to get the axe. And, at the time, I just didn't want to play the game.

GC: Do you see yourself teaching in the future?

JB: If somebody came to me with a job and I didn't have to go though a maze to get the job, and they were very straightforward about it, I might consider it. Depending on where and so forth.

GC: Do you enjoy teaching?

JB: If it's good, I enjoy it. If I have a good student who is feeding the energy back and forth , then yes, of course. But sometimes I get students who I just know in my heart that it's not going to happen for them, and that can be tough. I had an improv class at Rutgers, and I tried to give students a sense of reality. I had a bass student in the class who had problems keeping the form for any tune. Yet this person expressed to me that he wanted to work on advanced soloing techniques. I said, 'Really?". But I had to get real. I said, "If you want to work as a bassist, people are going to hire you to play THE BASS. You've got to be able to keep the form through a tune. That's what you need to do first to get hired."

http://www.jimbeard.com/