Concert Pianist vs. Jazz Pianist

Hi SD,

I was at the symphony yesterday listening to a Mozart piano concerto and it got me wondering.

How would a classical pianist (world-class, professional concertizer) fare at a typical jazz gig? Is improvisation hard for classical pianists? Transposition? If so, why? You would think someone who lives and breathes technically challenging and virtuosic music would have the skills necessary to do anything piano-related.

Dave

Today’s classical pianists are not trained in improv.

Back in the good old days, however, guys like J.S. Bach, W.A. Mozart, Franz Liszt, and Anton Bruckner could really tear up a keyboard…could probably outdo Fats Waller, Earl Hines, or Art Tatum as fingerbusters. See “cadenza.”

Here’s my take on it. I’m not a pianist of any kind, but I know a fair number of working classical musicians (one organ player, one pianist, one flautist, a couple of singers, one (recognizable name) guitarist).

Most classical musicians, as far as I can tell, could handle transposition pretty well, within the limitations of their instrument (it would be harder to transpose on the fly on a guitar than it would be on a piano, and there are range limitations for most instruments).

Improvisation is another story. They’re just not in the habit. The pianist I know loves jazz, and plays around town from time to time, but he doesn’t consider himself to be very good at jazz.

Good jazz musicians, on the other hand, can do pretty well at classical music. Benny Goodman recorded Mozart’s clarinet concerto. Wynton Marsalis recorded Haydn’s trumpet concerto. Maybe they’re exceptional, I don’t know, but I’ve observed that most jazz musicians have pretty good technique and can read music just fine.

One view of the subject from the inside:

Andre Previn interviewing Oscar Peterson. They’re talking about Art Tatum (whom Peterson was close to), Tatum’s friendship with Vladimir Horowitz, and one particular meeting in which the two interacted musically.

The video linked below is Part Two of long interview; the section referred to begins about 30 seconds before the 9:00 mark. The video times out abruptly a minute later, but segues neatly into Part Three which should be ready and waiting onscreen nearby.

Many jazz musicians studied classical music before moving on to jazz.

There is a lot of musical talent in my family (I didn’t get any) and quite a few professional musicians. Almost all of them were classically trained at first, and then either branched out, or not. So one of my cousins who makes his living as a concert pianist will not play anything but classical. However, he does play a Beethoven sonata, the last one–I forget the number–and the way he plays it, it sounds really pretty jazzy in spots.

He also makes the Goldberg Variations sound kind of jazzy, in a way that other people who play them don’t. But he is not improvising, just interpreting.

If he were into jazz, I think he’d do all right.

Love that story - Horowitz works for months to figure out and transcribe from the bottom up a Tatum-style approach to Tea for Two. Tatum comes over to Horowitz’s place (I would trade a kid to have been there ;)). H plays his transcription, Tatum approves, sits down, and plays variations on it until H makes him stop. And Tatum was improvising on the fly.

But that’s Tatum. He was known for showing up at “cutting contests” with fellow legendary pianists, letting them play, then playing what they just did better. He toyed with people: Cutting contest - Wikipedia

The OP is fundamentally asking about *Interpretation *vs. Improvisation, and, in doing so, about how a player approaches The Rules™ of playing.

There is NO reason that a classical-sounding piece of music can’t be approached improvisationally - Liszt, Chopin, Mozart and many other players were known for their impromptu playing.

But at this point, the Classical Canon is a fixed thing. To be clear, we are already in a period where Rock tribute bands have to nail the iconic solos exactly and be judged on their interpretation. Can you imagine improvising a different lead to Comfortably Numb in front of a crowd of Gilmour Heads? ;).

So, interpreters learn the rules and the parts from the bottom up. It’s all mapped out in advance - your job is to cook that recipe with panache and flair, breathing life into that set of instructions. It’s fucking hard, and because the notes are known, your technique and interpretation are everything. There is very little slop allowed in your playing.

Improvisers create on the fly. Jazz players are expected to be good enough to pick up the key and the underlying chord changes of the piece, know how to play the main melodic hooks if they are riffing on a standard song like Tea for Two, and know what “feel” they want to up have when they improvise, i.e., know which rules and rhythms to adhere to, and which they want to break, playing “a bit outside.”

To be a good jazz-level improviser, you need to have bottom-up technical competency and top-down Executive skills to make in-the-moment decisions based on the variables I laid out above. And because you are working stuff out on the fly, slop is accepted as a byproduct. You can’t sound like an amateur, but I think we all know how slop adds immediacy to the playing of Jimmy Page, Thelonius Monk and countless others. You can have great tone but hit a clunker and be forgiven. Thank god.

Please note that, as we all know, an improviser doesn’t have to be technically skilled to make shit up. I am strictly an improviser on guitar, and was clomping through Chuck Berry riffs within a year or two of playing. My sister loved me. But at the jazz level, you have to bring both approaches to the performance if you want to sit in with the big kids.

Hope this helps.

I read a definition of a “professional” musician once – I wish I could remember where. But that description said…he could teach academic theory classes during the day, put on a tuxedo to play a classical concert in the evening, then switch to jeans to jam all night in a smokey night club playing jazz. And still have enough energy left over to direct the Sunday church choir while playing the organ.

IOW, professional musicians are quite versatile. I’ve known a few like that, and I myself have performed quite a variety of styles; whatever was called for at the moment.

I agree that it’s a completely different set of skills and the number of successful crossovers, in whichever direction, is very, very low IMHO.

One example is Friedrich Gulda, who started out as an exceptionally gifted classical pianist. His second recording of Beethoven’s complete piano sonatas is still considered one of the best in an extremely crowded field. He was a also a teacher to big stars like pianist Martha Argerich and conductor Claudio Abbado.

And then (from wikipedia):

His cello concerto is weird. I can’t say I really like it but it surely is distinctive It’s been recorded a few times, which is more than can be said about some hardcore contemporary works (ahem).

Funny guy but first and foremost a truly great artist.

I did catch Cuban jazz pianist Nachito Herrera, who played piano with the Cuban National Orchestra. They did “Rhapsody in Blue” and he improvised brilliantly. But, of course, that’s sort of crossover jazz/classical and I think Gershwin even improvised the piano part at the first performance.

I think it would very much depend on the concert pianist and their musical interests. I know professional classical musicians that are fluent in both classical and improvisatory forms of music and would have no problem in either context, but that’s because they’ve put in a lot of time learning the jazz idiom, feel, and conventions of the genre. Others are so completely devoted to perfecting their classical craft (or simply have no interest in jazz whatsoever) that they’d have difficulty playing outside their idiom and would probably be completely lost in a small combo context with nothing but a lead sheet and chord symbols. I mean, if I were running a jazz combo and I had an emergency at the piano and needed to fill in the slot with knowing nothing else but, say, that one choice is this year’s winner of the Chopin piano competition and the other is an average jazz piano player who plays the local bar and club circuit, I’d pick the latter guy every time because I know he knows the idiom and is used to the improvisatory nature of the genre and its vocabulary, whereas the former is a crap shoot.

Not a pianist, not a musician of any kind (save the occasional bean-driven concerto to amuse my dog), but I have a decent seat at the ring. Mrs. B. is a conservatory-trained classical pianist who in her prime played with some of the minor but name symphonies and still plays. Our son is an extremely talented musician who can play an instrument five minutes after picking it up. She loves jazz; he plays both classical/formal and jazz but prefers the latter. She can’t play jazz for squat.

My assessment is that classical training aims for a certain perfection and continuity in the repertoire, and while educated audiophiles can tell one recording from another by nuances, no performer or orchestra strays very far from the score. With that training embedded in the bones of the fingers, it’s very difficult to follow jazz into its fluid form and natural improvisation.

But… someone trained in both schools from an early point can do both. They may be better suited to one over the other, but a few can do both to the highest professional levels. But it’s easier to go from the looseness of jazz to the rigidity of classical than the other way around, and may in fact be impossible for someone drilled in 20 years of “perfection.”

Jazz pianist Hiromi Uehara started out as a classical player.

Sure, there are a good number of folks who went that way. As a well-known example, Oscar Peterson started out in classical. Or Herbie Hancock (he performed a Mozart piano concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the ago of 11, after winning a talent contest.) Or Art Tatum. Or Bill Evans. I’d venture to guess that a good number of jazz pianists started their training in classical (especially the early ones), because that was the usual route to learn piano. Now, I don’t know how many of them were world class classical performers, but at least Herbie performed with a world class orchestra, and Oscar Peterson was known for his classical chops.

I would add that I am almost positive learning classical fingering and speed (Hanon, Czerny) would make it much easier to do sparkling jazz runs.

On a classical pianist doing improv:

I heard a story where at a classical piano concert (a very quiet one), someone’s phone went off and their ringtone was a musical number.

The pianist heard this “interruption”, stopped what he was playing, and began immediately playing the tune, then segued into what he was playing before.

That’s not really improv, except for being quick enough to recognize the tune and switch it in and out. IMHO. Funny, though.

Oh, sure, and the jazz greats all were to one degree or another, good at practicing their scales and such. If you want to hear/see some amazing finger dexterity (and wonderful muscianship), look up Youtube videos for classically trained Cuban jazz pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba. Here’s one to start with, the jazz standard “Autumn Leaves.” His finger work is just so damned clean and emotive (OK, there is some “smudging” of notes here and there in the jazz tradition), it’s hard to believe a human can play like that.

Ugh. I didn’t like that one bit. What’s the point in playing so fast if there’s nothing behind it? It’s just flashiness. Could you really follow the melody during his extended improv? I play piano myself, so as a musician it sounds like gibberish. I’d say his skill is in playing the right notes so nothing sounds “off” or “wrong”. Lots of quartal and quintal harmony. But from my perspective it’s frankly useless. Musical masturbation and dick-waving if you ask me. Tatum did his fair share of dick-waving, but he had the melody in mind and you could tell he respected the story he was telling. People who find this stuff cool…I don’t know what emotional response they’re going for, but I don’t get it one bit. I bet people who like it don’t even know why they like it, except to say “WOW IT’S FAST.” I admire dexterity as much as the next guy, but when I listen to music I want to hear a story being told. I welcome differences of opinion. FYI, the pianists I’m drawn to include Brubeck and Harry Connick Jr.

pulykamell, what do you think of this guy’s music?

Here is the fantastic combination of Yehudi Menuhin (classical violinist) and Stephane Grappelli (jazz violinist) playing together for the first time (on the Michael Parkinson Show.)

They went on to record several successful albums together.