PLAYING PIANO: JAZZ

When I was 7 or 8, my father took me to Place-Des-Arts (during what I can only assume was the Jazz Festival) to see an amazing triple-bill of Ella Fitzgerald, Joe Pass and Oscar Peterson. I wish I had been aware enough to understand how amazing this was. I actually fell asleep during Joe Pass, the subtle soft guitar riffs probably too boring for my hyper-active mind. But Oscar Peterson was thrilling! I remember thinking I wanted to do what he did. And I do, sort of. I play the piano for a living - I would even say I kinda-sorta-almost play jazz piano for a living (Believe it or not!).  But man, it was a long road.

The first Christmas after I started piano lessons, my parents bought me 2 records (I'm tired of the jokes us old guys make about remembering vinyl, so I'll skip them...): Glenn Gould playing Bach Partitas, and Oscar Peterson and Count Basie's album Satch and Josh.  I fell in love with both, and played them until I wore them out. I loved Bach and jazz for the same reasons: the elaborate counterpoint, the rich harmony, the dextrous fingerwork. Perhaps coincidentally, I am terrified of both Bach and jazz, for many of the same reasons.  I was, however, lucky enough to have had 3 piano teachers who insisted that one could play Bach just as well with the score as without, so at least I didn't have to memorize the stuff.  But then and now, I'm terrified of the intricacies, both dextral and contrapuntal. I understand them perfectly, and indeed got an A in my Tonal Counterpoint class at McGill, where my prof said my 5 voice fugue was one of the best he'd ever seen (nudge, nudge...). But however tenable my intellectual grasp is, I can't translate it to an actual performance situation. When I was 12, I was playing the C minor 2-Part Invention in recital- not a tremendously tricky work, but one of the most beautiful melancholic works I've ever studied - a perfect canon most of the way through, using only 2 voices. About 30 seconds into the performance (which had to be memorized - yuck!), I somehow managed to switch my left and right hands - that is my right hand began playing what my left was supposed to (an octave higher) and vice versa (an octave lower).  I managed somehow to fudge by way through for another 30 seconds (much to the amazement of my piano teacher and the director of the Conservatory), making sound, if not beautiful, at least credible.  Finally, I crapped out. I turned to the audience and said "Let's start this again, shall we?". People laughed, I diffused the tension, and proceeded to play it perfectly. That was the last time I ever attempted Bach in public, aside from a couple of "Bist Du Bei Mir"s at funerals.

But jazz has an added bonus: the fear of the unknown.  As a young musician, I was already a proficient reader, and in fact loved to sight read more than I liked to practice. My instinctive grasp of harmony made it easy for me to see patterns on the page, and transmit them to my fingers.  By university, I could even read thorny 20th century music (I had to sight read Messaien's Poeme pour Mi for a singer who's accompanist hadn't shown up for her audition. It wasn't perfect by any means, but the auditioner was amazed. So was I. Have you seen that score?). I was/am so bound to the paper in front of my eyes, that the prospect of not knowing in advance what you're going to play is terrifying. Yes, I can "improvise" accompaniments and read chord charts (my first piano teacher, in an act of prescience, seeing that I had an instinctual grasp of harmony taught me to read from fake books), but it's not jazz.

5 years ago, when I started on cruise ships, I was under the impression that I'd be playing for shows and that there would be very few, if any, sets to do. No. We had mostly sets: by the pool, in the Crow's Nest, in the Ocean Bar. You name it, we played there. The music director was a guitarist who was nice enough to play the smaller combo sets with me most of time after the drummer and the bass player started yelling at me during one of my first sets. And why not? I didn't know what the fuck I was doing! I was scared shitless! Luckily, the other keyboard player was a great jazz pianist (but a not-so-great reader) who ended up with most of the trio stuff.

My next contract (first as music director) was slightly more successful, only because we played for the production shows and had a lot of guest entertainer shows to back. If we had sets to do on rare occasions, I could schedule the other pianist. However, once a cruise, I had to play the Captain's Cocktail with the drummer and the bass player. The Captain insisted that the music director play it. It was 30 minutes of standards and dance music before the Captain's talk, and 15 minutes after he talked. I lived in fear of the Captain's Cocktail. I would wake up the morning of with a pit already in the bottom of my stomach.  I begged, I pleaded - Don't make me do this! But a funny thing happened: it eventually got easier. I practiced chords and voicings and scales and patterns, and things got easier. I listened to more jazz pianists and things got easier. I can't say that I ever looked forward to the Captain's Cocktail, but my the end of the contract, I no longer had night sweats.

I'm working on it. It's coming slower than anything in music ever has for me, but it's coming. I listen more, I have a series of Jazz primers I work with (most "Play Jazz Piano" books start off with "This is middle C" which is generally absolutely useless), I practice, and I perform. I jumped in the deep end of the pool. Let's carry the metaphor further to say that I'm as good a jazz pianist as I am a swimmer, in that I can do the basic strokes and I wouldn't drown, but I'm no Ian Thorpe. I still have a long way to go - I don't know enough riffs, my fingers sill can't quite get around the notes, and I'm not that good at comping during bass solos, but I actually enjoy it now, and some nights, when the ghosts of Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans and Michel Petrucciani are smiling down on me, I can toss off a pretty impressive solo.