I’m currently in a production of La Boheme in Edmonton, and I share the dressing room with Etienne, the guy playing ‘Marcello’. It has been an absolute blast meeting him and working with him - fantastic voice, good actor, great personality, very good pianist and a pretty good guitar player. We have a piano and a guitar in our dressing room, and it has become our custom to jam around after we’re both finished out make-up calls.
The really interesting thing I wanted to tell you about him is that he has perfect pitch. It’s not that unusual for a singer/musician - I had a prof in university who read score like most people read a newspaper. Etienne is interesting because of how perfect pitch has shaped him as a player of pop music.
Essentially, when he hears a piece of music for the first time, there is no difference between his appreciation of it and his analysis of it, which in turn greatly accelerates his memorization of it. He simply hears the chords upon which a piece of music is based as distinctly as most people see colours, and as a result, he can remember a piece of music that he has only heard a couple of times. When I say remember, I mean well enough to fake his way through playing it. Inversions, unusual voicings, extensions, especially over diminished chords, are things that require a little more concentration for him, but Major and minor chords simply appear to him as very simple pieces of an easy jigsaw puzzle, or as words in a sentence.
Speaking as a more visual classical musician who prefers to read, it has been a remarkable couple of weeks. The fluency with which he plays and his ability to be a human iPod are just astonishing. At the post-reception [del]party[/del] production meeting in the chorus men’s dressing room on opening night, we were all playing and singing together whatever someone suggested. If the chord changes were hard, he’d graciously pass me the guitar and call them out to me. It didn’t seem to matter what style a piece came from - if he’d heard it a couple of times, he knew it.
I’m especially jealous of the memory - I’m at an age where it takes longer to memorize things, and I have to use a different approach. Once upon a time, anything I played more than ten times ended up memorized - now, I have to work at it.
I’d love to collaborate with him on a pop crossover project, but first I have to spend a year in the woodshed honing my ear just to play at his level. It has been an inspiring couple of weeks.
