Posts tagged piano

Two part Jack Reilly Interview 2003

May16
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Peter Blasevick

Acclaimed for his solo jazz concerts and trio dates in the US and in Europe, Jack Reilly is a vibrant exhilarating pianist. His recordings and books—three volumes on jazz improvisation entitled Species Blues and the nationally acclaimed book The Harmony of Bill Evans—confirm the scope of Jack ‘s talents and versatility.

jackReillyThis interview was conducted by pianist (and BillEvansWebpages webmaster) Jan Stevens in the music room of Jack’s home in the New Jersey shore area. A long and complex discussion of Bill Evans music followed. From the interview:

J.S. So, tell us when you first met Bill Evans, and maybe you can give us a couple of details.

REILLY: Well, I should say I first heard him in ’52. I was in the U.S. Navy; he was in the Army. We both were stationed at the Washington D.C. School of Music. That’s where you go if you’re a musician, and in the service and they teach you music for military functions, dance band stuff, etc. And I just happened to be walking down a hall, and I heard this incredible piano playing coming from a practice room, and I looked through the peep hole in the door, and it’s this guy who looked like a librarian playing, sounding like Teddy Wilson, Bud Powell, George Shearing. But he had his own linear concept going already and it was cookin’ like mad. And it was only solo piano! He was practicing, and I stood there for about 10 minutes or so and wound up getting captain’s [unintelligible] for neglecting to go to my class. Of course it was a school, you know, we all had to take classes, except Bill, they just let him do whatever he wanted ’cause he was so advanced at the time.

Click here to read Two part Jack Reilly Interview 2003

—Peter Blasevick

Posted in Evans, Bill, Reilly, Jack - Tagged , , , ,

The Hal Galper Interview 2002

May13
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Peter Blasevick

halGalperPianist, composer, publisher, educator, and author Hal Galper has somewhere around 100 recordings to his credit, many as a leader. Best known for his work with Chet Baker, Cannonball Adderley, John Scofield and the Phil Woods Quintet, his recordings as a leader with Mike and Randy Brecker are considered among his best.

In continuing with a concentration on Bill Evans, here is an interview by Jan Stevens posted on the BillEvansWebpages which was conducted over a period of several weeks in April 2002 mostly in email, and after several phone conversations. In it, Galper shares his vast knowledge of and his love for the music of Bill Evans. From the interview:

What do you feel was Bill’s influence on your own playing personally, and how did that come about? And how did it change the way you approached voicings or perhaps rhythmic displacement ?

I was attracted to his harmonic conception but not his lines. I tried a few of his voicings but a truth I learned when I was copying Red Garland raised it’s ugly head again: what you play on any instrument will be dictated by the sound you get on it, i.e., one’s touch. When I played Red’s or Bill’s voicings, I had to either add or subtract notes to make them sound good with my hands.

Click here to read The Hal Galper Interview 2002

—Peter Blasevick

Posted in Evans, Bill, Galper Hal - Tagged , ,

Bill Evans with Martin Perlich 1978

May08
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Peter Blasevick

Continuing with the Bill Evans theme this week, here is a two part audio interview with the great pianist conducted by the legendary interviewer Martin Perlich in 1978. From the introduction:

The interview with jazz immortal Bill Evans was special in many ways. Commissioned by Warner Brothers Records who had just created a Jazz and Progressive Music division, they wanted me to get Bill to talk about how close his music was to rock; “…sell it to the kids!” This was, of course, impossible, but gamely I stuck out my jaw, fielded his words of one syllable answers in the negative and went on to his experiences in classical music as a kid, and in Jazz, especially stories about Miles Davis. The most important “special” aspect was that I place my Nakamichi 500 next to him on his bed and took up a suitable position on the floor.

—Peter Blasevick

Posted in Evans, Bill - Tagged , ,

Chick Corea interviewed by Billy Taylor

Apr24
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Peter Blasevick

Here is a cool CBS Sunday morning segment on pianist Chick Corea featuring clips of his Akoustic Band and Elektric Band. Dr. Billy Taylor interviewed Chick for this show in the mid 1980s and both the interviews and live clips are fantastic. You even meet Chick’s mother!

If anyone can help with an exact dating of this interview, please shoot me an email.

—Peter Blasevick

Posted in Corea, Chick - Tagged , ,

Jacob Collier: Multi-instrumentalist and music Genius

Apr23
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Peter Blasevick

If you haven’t yet checked out Jacob Collier, do so. Right now.

In this 2012 interview with the Brazilian website Falafil, the singer, multi-instrumentalist, and all around prodigy discusses his famous videos, his family, the Royal Academy of Music, and other topics. From the interview:

You are a winning self-taught multi-instrumentalist. How and when you discovered your interest and natural talent for music?

I have been interested in and passionate about music every since I can remember. My mother inspired me from a very young age by playing her violin, and I often used to watch her conducting the chamber orchestra at the Royal Academy of Music. There were always instruments around my house, and I always loved to play, as well as to sing. I remember being given a Djembe drum when I was about eight, and loving it. I was introduced to Cubase software when I was about seven years old, and this enabled me to begin composing, arranging, and recording my music. I always loved to record singing in harmony, even at a young age.

Click here to read Jacob Collier: Multi-instrumentalist and music Genius

—Peter Blasevick

Posted in Collier Jacob - Tagged , , ,

McCoy Tyner: NJN/State of the Arts Showcase 1995

Apr17
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Peter Blasevick

Grammy Award winning jazz musician McCoy Tyner in a 1995 interview with State of the Arts host Amber Edwards. Tyner discusses his meteoric rise to fame when at the age of 17 he became part of the legendary John Coltrane Quartet along with his early years growing up in Philadelphia. Tyner performs solo renditions of Blue Stride and Flying High.

—Peter Blasevick

Posted in Tyner, McCoy - Tagged , , , ,

1994 Tommy Flanagan interview on WKCR

Apr06
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Peter Blasevick

The one year anniversary of TNYDP! Thanx to everyone who visits the site, I really hope that people are finding it useful. For the last month we are averaging about 20 new visitors a day and we’re up over 200 followers on Twitter, so I guess some are!

Here is a long in-depth interview with Tommy Flanagan conducted by Ted Panken. The pianist talks about everything in what was originally a Sunday Jazz Profiles show on WKCR in November 1994. HEre is a quick excerpt:

TP: …so many great stylists of Jazz came up out of Detroit around the same time.  Milt Jackson, Lucky Thompson, Billy Mitchell, Barry Harris, you, and the list goes on.    

TF: Yes.  Well, as a young musician, Lucky left Detroit early.  So we didn’t know him until he came back to settle in Detroit for a while.  I think he’d even been to Europe, and he did the West Coast scene with those bands out there.  When he came to Detroit, I guess I was like 17 or so.  Lucky formed a band with Pepper Adams, Kenny Burrell and myself — I can’t remember all the other players.  He was a wonderful writer.  It was a seven-piece band, a septet, and he wrote some beautiful arrangements, and really got me interested in how to voice music, and got me interested in trying to arrange — although I never did get that far into it.  But he was a big inspiration, and he helped us a lot in learning how to play music on a professional level.  He certainly was in a class with Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster and Don Byas, just a notch under them, and he certainly was cut from the same cloth.

Click here to read 1994 Tommy Flanagan interview on WKCR 

Posted in Flanagan, Tommy - Tagged , , ,

Dick Hyman: The Beat Goes On

Apr01
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Peter Blasevick

The legendary Dick Hyman turned 86 years old earlier this month, and he is as busy as ever. In this lengthy recent AllAboutJazz interview, the versatile pianist discusses everything from Fred Astaire to Shostakovitch to Moog synthesizers. From the interview: 

AAJ: You did a series of solo albums devoted to such composers as Cole Porter, George Gershwin and so on, including Duke Ellington. Would you share your thoughts on Ellington as a composer, and as a pianist?

DH: Well, the Ellington project was a little bit different from the others, “the others” including Gershwin, Porter, Arlen, Rodgers, and Berlin. Ellington’s tunes were ingenious, and more to the point, they came out of a jazz background. You can’t say that for some of the others—you can make them into jazz, and they’re wonderful vehicles for jazz playing, such as Richard Rodgers’ earlier songs with Lorenz Hart—but Ellington was already there, in the jazz world, when he composed his pieces.

 On that Ellington album I liked going back to some of the things he did in the 1920s, as well as his later standard songs. Some of the older ones are very much like the trial improvs that a jazzman would make in approaching a set of chords. Ellington has a certain catalog of devices he’ll apply to a series of harmonies. Which is the jazz way: You take a set of chords and pretty soon, after you’ve tried them out a number of times and probably changed them a bit, you start to make up your own melody, as opposed to the other process of decorating and embellishing the original melody.

Click here to read Dick Hyman: The Beat Goes On  

Posted in Hyman Dick - Tagged , , ,

Jazz Police Interview With Geoffrey Keezer

Mar21
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Peter Blasevick

A few cool interviews I found on the JazzPolice website this week. Here’s a quick 2005 talk with the great modern-day pianist Geoffrey Keezer. He talks about recordings and some of the people he was playing with at the time, as well as growing up with the support of his parents:

JP. You grew up in a family where music was a major component of daily life. [Father Ron Keezer headed the jazz band program at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire.] Looking back now, how did that environment inform your development as a young musician, and how does it impact your work today?

GK. I feel so fortunate and blessed to have had the total support of my parents in whatever I wanted to do. Of course if my parents hadn’t been musicians I might have turned out differently. But as a kid, I thought everybody played music – it just seemed so normal to me!

Click here to read Jazz Police Interview With Geoffrey Keezer

Posted in Keezer Geoffrey - Tagged , ,

Getting Some Fun Out of Life and Music: Back in St. Paul With David Frishberg

Mar20
2013 Leave a Comment Written by Peter Blasevick

A few cool interviews I found on the JazzPolice website this week.

Today’s interview is with American jazz pianist, vocalist and composer David Frishberg. He’s likely best known for writing funny tunes (and of course the Schoolhouse Rock classic “I’m Just a Bill”), but he is quite the pianist and singer as well. In the piece, Frishberg discusses his early years, leaving Minnesota for New York, songwriting in L.A., and some of his influences. From the piece:

Looking back, David identifies three individuals who most influenced him personally and musically—Al Cohn, Jimmy Rowles, and Dave Karr. He also cites pianists whose style made the biggest impression—Teddy Wilson, Mel Powell, and Nat Cole. “Also I was a big fan of Tatum and others—Errol Garner and the boppers, Al Haig, and Bud Powell.” But it was particularly Jimmy Rowles whom he admired. “I was already in the Twin Cities Big League, but then I heard a Jimmy Rowles record. Something about the way he played and touched the piano changed me. I wanted to play with and learn from him. I listened to him play on the Woody Herman Small Band sides, and on Peggy Lee’s “Black Coffee” on a 10-inch LP from Decca. It showed me how brilliant and elegant an accompanist could be. Rowles had everything.” Of old bandmate Dave Karr, Frishberg says, “Dave Karr is one of the most profound influences on my music—his excellence and musicality. I’ve learned a lot and was inspired by him. He was the most proficient musician I had met at the time.”

Click here to read Getting Some Fun Out of Life and Music: Back in St. Paul With David Frishberg

Posted in Frishberg David - Tagged , , , , ,
← Older Entries

About TNYDP

The mission of The Notes You Don't Play is to be the Web's first comprehensive library of jazz interviews. Click on an artist below to go to their collection, visit our about page for more information, or contact us to suggest interviews to include in the library. Read more...

Artists