I personally think it’s a beautiful marriage between technique, the rhythms of Cuban music and jazz, and emotion. I personally find his work very compelling and not just flash with no substance. You mileage obviously varies.
I love Brubeck, and I do enjoy Harry Connick, Jr. (I went to one of his concerts, and it’s one of my favorite shows. And he could hold his own behind the drum kit, just like Rubalcaba can.) Overall, my favorite jazz pianist is probably Bill Evans, but Oscar Peterson comes very close, as does Rubalcaba. Thelonious Monk is another one who is from the sloppier side of things, but makes notes that shouldn’t go together sound great just through sheer confidence and conviction in how he plays them.
Missed the edit window:I remember about twenty years ago playing a transcription of “Nice Work if You Can Get It”, and wondering how in the hell it was supposed to sound any good. Then I heard this recording of it years later, and he just made it work. The negative comment by dapack60 kind of summarizes my feeling of how it all sounded wrong to me when trying to play through it, but I reach a different conclusion than the commenter. He made it sound right.
I used to, when I was younger and quite a bit ruder, use the line “It’s not too fast, you think too slow” when folks made comments about fast playing. These days I try and be less of an ass and explain things.
I play fast quite often (guitar, not piano) and I used to be scary fast but I don’t have enough time to keep up the practice these days. Anyway, the way I tend to think about it when writing stuff or improvising is that instead of building a melody with single notes it is building a melody built on phrases. Instead of hitting the main notes of the melody straight up, you circle them, work up or down to them and in the process the melody is there, just not as blatant. The downside is that it takes a bit more to hear it, and many people don’t hear it at all, but if you don’t focus on the individual notes as much and more on the phrases it becomes clear. At least it does to me. Sorta like the optical illusions where if you stare at it you can’t see it but if you relax and unfocus it pops out.
The example I use when trying to explain this is Tumeni Notes. It is a scary fast piece and every note is picked. But you can hum the main riff, even though there are a ton of notes.
Yep - a variation on Coltrane’s Sheets of Sound approach: using a flurry of notes to capture the musical point.
I can take it as punctuation in a solo - Van Halen does this well. But too much leads to note fatigue for me. I was watching a guitar video featuring Tosin Abasi of Animals as Leaders. Amazing technique and blindingly fast. Fun to shake my head at in disbelief and respect of craft and then move on.
**Pianodave **- as a player, how do you approach it (I.e., interpretation vs improvisation)? Did my post attempting to break it down hit anything from your POV?
Yes, WordMan, it did. Thanks very much for your informative post.
To answer your question, I personally favor improvisation over interpretation, though I think there is a point at which improvisation becomes too difficult for the audience to comprehend. In my playing, I focus on providing some kind of positive emotional impact to the MAJORITY of the audience, at a higher level, but not too high. I can’t do Tatumesque runs—well, some of them, but certainly not most. I’m not out to impress the cognoscenti. Even if I did, I would not be at the high level required. And it would not be fulfilling for me. Rather, I hope to raise the level of musical dialogue for your typical concertgoer. In my particular field, Jewish music, there is a decided trend towards musical simplicity. My goal is to give people an expectation for better quality.
In terms of interpretation (i.e. classical music), I enjoy classical music for the beauty of the original music (the written score), not necessarily for how well the music is interpreted. Personally, IMHO, interpretation is a narrower field to succeed in, and much more subjective. With improvisation, you exert more control over the story you want to tell, and that appeals to me. I am an improviser–I find the flourishes of interpretation (i.e. acting) a bit pretentious. But that’s just me. I did the same thing when going for my bachelor’s in classical music. Exaggerated hand gestures and the like.
To each his own, of course. All musicians have to juggle accessibility and artistry. You don’t want to alienate an audience. What do you think?
Oh yeah, it’s all about sales. Here we are now, entertain us.
It sounds like you have a sense for what works for you on the interp/improv spectrum. Does Jewish Music include Klezmer? I’ve heard some really great Klezmer that could handle some improv, for sure.
What’s the line from Dirty Harry Magnum Force: a man’s got to know his limitations. ;). That’s what I keep trying to do.
The late Cuban pianist Rubén González is the greatest improvisatory pianist I have heard. There are better examples of his piano-playing, but I’m not sure if they are fully improvised, while I think this example is all off the cuff.
Sure, Jewish music includes Klezmer. I am actually part of a Klezmer band myself, and we do improv basically all the way through. The kind of Jewish music I am referring to is more the general folk music/choral music/summer camp music/liturgical music. Klezmer itself is more intended as dance music.
Okay, so you spend time in both worlds. How complex is the interpretive stuff you play? I would assume not very, since it is for accompanying groups. You may even improvise a smidge, throwing in a passing chord?
I think we all sit on a spectrum between the two, or have both “muscles” within us. We tend to favor and/or work out one more than the other, but both are available.
It’s funny: I stink at rote memorization, can’t read, never ever learn the “real” way to play anything, etc. Typical self-taught guitarist. But I have songs I play to death, trying to figure out how to inhabit the vocal better and present a “more true” version within my very tight limitations. And I have lead fills I have played for years, cleaning them up, simpling them down, building them out. I can drop them in when I need them with little/no planning.
You always end up putting in the work, it’s just how you direct it.
I am not a sight reader, at least that’s not my forte. I am an improviser–I can take a lead sheet and make magic out of it, at least when it comes to Jewish stuff. Accompanying groups tend to let me do my thing. I’ve been in dozens over the years but they rarely insist on me playing exactly what’s on the page. While I understand accompanists are hired to play what’s on the page, with a rare exception those who hire me understand that I am by and large better at transforming given music than recreating it as written. I had one conductor a while back that insisted (rightly) that I play a Porgy and Bess medley arranged for choir exactly as written. It was a dense score that I had trouble sightreading. I did my best to learn the notes as written. Later, another conductor who knows me better insisted that this woman did not understand my talents at all. It’s weird, being an accompanist who always likes to embellish. You make more friends than enemies though.
Here’s an example of what I do in case you’re interested. I hope you enjoy!
Listen to this first.
It is a minute-long clip of the Blessings before the Haftarah. (Jews occasionally read the Haftarah, selections from the Book of Prophets, during services). This prayer is traditionally chanted a cappella.
I took that prayer and improvised the following track for my CD, still in production. You can see it has the same melodic contours but there is some variation.
Disclaimer: I don’t get paid to play the piano in either niche
I think, as already pointed out by Ukelele Ike in the 2nd post, that classical composers tended (and still do, they aren’t extinct, at least not in the broader sense of the definition of “classical”) to improvise themselves; for many, it is how they compose — they improvise then jot down bits and pieces they want to work on some more and it gradually solidifies into a composition.
Many (probably most, but I could be due for a correction on this) classical pianists are not only not taught how to improvise, they are rather specifically trained AWAY from learning by ear, via conventional piano lesson practice.
Conventional piano lessons themselves, at least, seem to favor that. With the same authoritarian attitude with which typing teachers teach you to type without looking at your fingers, many piano teachers tend to teach you to play without fumbling around with your fingers trying to reproduce the sounds you hear in your head and instead devote all your effort to staring at the score in front of you and reproducing THAT. The first-tier learning process focuses on doing it EXACTLY as written. Once students get decently good at that, they are encouraged to engage in interpretation, playing with the tempo, phrasing, being expressive in the dynamics; but generally NOT doing things like add or modify which keys to press down, shifting underlying chord architecture, that sort of thing. So the learning trajectory begins very mechanically and even at the more advanced level does not greatly depart from that in a way that encourages improvisational changes.
Extending the metaphor, conventionally taught piano players have effectively been taught to type from copy, not to play the piano in the same sense that a typical guitar player plays the guitar. Most piano students thus do not compose much music.