By Dave Roberts
Fans of solo jazz piano are in for a treat the weekend of April 20-22, as three fine pianists -- Marcus Roberts, Geri Allen, and Gonzalo Rubalcaba -- will be performing on successive nights. Allen has performed with legends such as Ron Carter and Tony Williams, Roberts has an encyclopedia of jazz piano history at his fingertips, and Rubalcaba is one of the great Cuban pianists. It's the fourth weekend of music in the SFJAZZ Spring Season , with a weekend featuring the bass to follow.
Unlike the classical music world -- which has a tremendous solo piano literature and a tradition of solo piano recitals -- solo jazz piano concerts are surprisingly rare. And there's really not that much solo jazz piano literature, unless you include transcriptions of recordings. This is ironic because the piano has been a prime player in jazz history from ragtime to dixieland to swing, bebop, chamber jazz, etc. And in the first half of the last century it was common to hear solo jazz piano being played in a bar or at a party.
And there is a great jazz piano tradition that includes styles such as stride, barrelhouse, boogie woogie, walking bass, modified stride, block-chording, etc. And a litany of giants such as Earl Fatha Hines, Jellyroll Morton, Fats Waller, Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, McCoy Tyner, Chick Corea, and on and on. For a glimpse into that "on and on" check out the wonderful Concord Records series "Live at the Maybeck Recital Hall," a set of more than 30 CDs documenting many of the best jazz pianists of the 1990s playing solo in an intimate setting. Although they're all speaking the same jazz language, there is an amazing variety of styles, moods and adventurousness among the players. I particularly recommend the Roger Kellaway CD, he's one of the great player/composers of the last several decades.
Geri Allen, who performs Friday April 20 at 8 p.m. at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, has a breadth of experience to draw upon. She has recorded with legendary bassist Ron Carter and the late, great drummer Tony Williams, Maroons (Blue Note, 1992) and toured with Carter for two years. She said it was both inspirational and a bit terrifying for a Herbie Hancock devotee such as herself to perform with two of the three members of one of the greatest rhythm sections in jazz history, the mid-'60s Miles Davis Quintet. Allen has also covered the musical spectrum by playing with noted avante-garde or "outside" players such as Ornette Coleman, Oliver Lake, Lester Bowie, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. Allen was the first acoustic pianist in a Coleman band in 30 years. She has accompanied vocalist Betty Carter, who had a reputation for being tough on her musicians. Allen also performs with her husband, trumpeter Wallace Roney, and plays on an upcoming recording of his.
Marcus Roberts will be peforming three shows: 1) Saturday April 21 at 2 p.m. ("American Songbook") and 2) later that day at 8 p.m. ("Among Giants"), both at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, and 3) Sunday April 22 at 3 p.m. ("History of Jazz Piano") at Herbst Theatre. Gonzalo Rubalcaba will follow Roberts into Herbst Theatre at 7 p.m. Sunday. In the following interview Roberts discusses his approach to solo jazz piano.
AAJ: Tell me about your upcoming concert, what are we going to hear?
MR: Well, you're going to hear pretty much the history of the piano as you can realistically cover it in the amount of time, maybe 60 minutes. I will play probably some Jellyroll, some James P. Johnson, Waller, and a lot of the classic earlier pianists. And I will probably do something from the bebop era, "Cherokee," or something. Just try to give the audience a menu, if you will, of possible flavors and hopefully a good sense of coverage of the history of the solo piano tradition.
AAJ: Have you been doing this type of concert for a while?
MR: I have been playing solo for years. I just did a show like that at Avery Fisher Hall in New York. So it is something that I've been doing, not as much as I used to, I pick periods out of the season to do it.
AAJ: What led you to do a solo piano concert?
MR: The main interest is just that I think it's important to extend that tradition. Most of the great pianists if you look before the 1950s could play solo. That was one of the mandates of being a good complete pianist. I just want to tie into that. It also helps with group playing. Because you have more independence between the hands, more of a sense of voicing, and more of a sense of how to balance things in a more creative way than if you can't play solo. When you play solo you have to produce everything: the groove, you have to produce the imagination. And it forces you to understand all seven registers, instead of the registers above the bass, which is typically what happens when you only play in a band. The other reason is that there's just a lot of great music, some specifically for the piano and some that just works very well.
AAJ: Don't you have to work a lot harder when you play solo?
MR: You do in some ways, but at the same time there is a freedom that is there. You can change keys any time you want, you can change tempos any time you want. There's certain elements of it that are not as restrictive as being in a group setting. But yeah, you do have to work harder to keep the audience's attention.
AAJ: Do you see yourself as a curator of the solo jazz piano tradition, helping keep it alive?
MR: Well, I don't think I'm needed to keep it alive. I just think it's a major ingredient in what a pianist can do -- in the same way that if you talk to concert pianists, they love playing those Beethoven sonatas. It's a good benchmark of greatness in that field. So for me it just has more to do with wanting to address the actual standard so that one can continue to develop as an artist. It's not so much a question of keeping it going. I think what keeps it going is the fact it's great and that there's a need for it and the consciousness of the public has always been elevated. The piano is a major part of American consciousness, and I think it'll continue to be. It's the one instrument that you can be a little solitary playing the piano, but at the same time it seems that if there's a piano in a room you can have an event immediately like a picnic or a party or a dance or whatever. The piano seems to be the one instrument that if you can pull it into the room it can sustain a wide range of activity by itself.
AAJ: Do you have primary influences when it comes to playing solo piano?
MR: Certainly all the masters. James P. of course, that's how I learned how to play stride piano. Monk, after bebop, is my biggest influence probably. And then McCoy Tyner and Errol Garner, Oscar Peterson of course. All the major figures have blended into whatever you want to consider my style to be. Of course, I started in church so there's always that influence.
AAJ: Tell me about playing stride. What's involved with playing stride successfully?
MR: It's difficult. You have to be able to feel distances freely. Because again what the left hand is doing, it's doing two things: it's providing a groove and a palette for the right hand, but it also can interact with the right hand in very colorful ways. Playing stride for me has more of a feeling of if you're taking a brisk jog or walk -- it's a high-energy kind of thing. It's hard, it's virtuosic. But I think it's one of the ways that you can really emulate the dance element as far as American culture is concerned.
AAJ: It seems to be a style that's become passe among many mainstream pianists today.
MR: Possibly, the bass and the drums sort of replaced the left hand. And also you've got the element from a choreographer's standpoint of if you're looking onstage and there's four or five people, that's more interesting to people in one sense. But, pianists, unfortunately, as far as the younger generation, have sort of gotten away from it and have lost touch with what playing stride can provide themselves and the public. And it's a lot of work, it's a lot of work. So it's something that you've got to believe in as far as your development. And then if you really believe it and you can really execute it right, then I think the public is more open to it. I don't know if people are less sophisticated than the people who used to love stride piano. But if you don't believe in it, then why are they going to want to hear it?
AAJ: How about a walking bass in your left hand, do you use that a lot when you're playing solo?
MR: Yes, sure, I think as many creative things that we can do with our left hand, the stronger the performance. Yeah, you've gotta do the walking bassline, that is one of the things, that single line in the low register, that's one of the things that gives you a source of variety. So yeah, I use that a lot.
AAJ: Bill Evans, as great a pianist as he was, was always sort of intimidated by playing solo piano in public, and recorded very little solo. His style of solo piano doesn't use stride or walking bass, favoring more arpeggiation and chordal comping in the left hand. What do you think of how he played solo piano?
MR: Well, I think he had a clear vision of what he wanted to do. It's always interesting just to hear the colors, the impressionistic. He seemed to have more of a European approach to the instrument. Which is very good and strong. I think rhythm is where you start to define the American flavor. I think he chose to do that more so through his interaction with the rhythm section than what he himself was going to play. I think it's good playing. I personally was not that influenced by it, but I'm certainly aware of it. And again, like everything else, you take what you need from it
AAJ: How would you describe your approach to solo piano?
MR: My approach to playing solo is to view the solo piano repertoire as a reservoir. And to view it as an ocean, not a lake. Therefore, I'm interested in playing and drawing from the entire history as a whole rather than seeing myself as dated. I don't consider myself to be a bebop pianist or a stride pianist or boogie woogie. It's all connected. And in this way I think it gives you much more modern possibilities of what you can do with the stuff. So I don't have any problem applying a Jellyroll concept to a Monk tune or vice versa or what have you, to stack it different ways, and to let the natural improvisation dictate how much of a given style should be there.
AAJ: Can you give an example of how you would apply a Jellyroll concept to a Monk tune?
MR: You might if you're playing a Monk tune, you might impose breaks and have call-and-response sections and certain modulations that are consistent with New Orleans piano, just things like that, while still using a modern vocabulary. Also there's a certain way of playing New Orleans piano, where you impose the sound of that, the types of harmonies, the types of rhythm, there's a certain way that they swing and syncopate in New Orleans playing that you can incorporate that inside of Monk or "later" styles.
AAJ: When you play solo piano in a Monk style, what do you tend to do?
MR: If we're talking about Monk, oh my, there are a million things that he introduced that were completely unique and original to him. In his view of how the whole-tone scale could be used to produce tension and color. And the rhythms of how he would interpret the whole-tone scale and all these other very profound ways that he would organize melody -- sort of the noble yet childlike against the very profoundly abstract. I think when you deal with Monk you're always dealing with essential, with fundamental. And he understood, for example, how to play chords on the piano that are maybe three or four notes but it would sound like eight or nine just because of the placement. And the way he voiced it and the types of tensions inside of the harmony that he would use. And ultimately the way the harmonies resolve has everything to do with how big the sound is too. He just was a genius of acoustics. He understood the overtone series and how the piano really functions. It's the best instrument to define it. And to have organized that and being able to swing like that, I don't think anybody's even come close to doing what he did since then.
AAJ: Who are some of the other pianists that you're going to be playing pieces by?
MR: Probably Gershwin, James P., Waller, probably. Of course there will be some other tunes that weren't necessarily done by pianists that I will do.
AAJ: If you play a James P. piece do you play that in a different way than you would play a Waller piece?
MR: Possibly, I don't really think about it. The key thing is to make sure that the improvisation is not limited by the style itself while at the same time you have to protect the integrity of it. So you might play a James P. Johnson piece with a walking bassline or something, which is not characteristic of what you would normally do with stride playing. So again, it's a matter of being free. So as the set evolves from tune to tune, you're gonna mix up how you want things done, depending on the flow and the tempo. One tempo might be a little slower than this one. So you really do have to kind of sculpt as you go.
AAJ: I was wondering how much you work out ahead of time and how much is spontaneous onstage.
MR: Well, onstage it all has to be spontaneous, but it doesn't mean that you don't work out in a clear sense what's there and what your original intent is. Then you use that as a springboard, to be open at that point as if you never heard it. Because I think that's kind of the key to freedom. You might decide you're gonna go to a store and you know a route that works. And you might just decide on the spur of the moment, "I'm gonna go down this street and pick up this other street three blocks down" because you want to see a bunch of trees on the side of the road that are real pretty, who knows. That's the thing about jazz, it gives you the permission to forsake logic, but never in a random way. So you're replacing one form of logic with another. And it allows you to produce this very new feeling spur of the moment. And I think what's incredible about it is that it didn't exist until it happens. If there's an audience there they can truly say they didn't hear it until that moment.
AAJ: What about blues piano, like boogie woogie and barrelhouse. Do you play much of that and how do you approach that?
MR: Well again it's just another available set of resources. I play some of it. I think it's great stuff. I think it all comes from the same tree. I guess that's my point, it's all related. Again, it just increases your ability to have variety in terms of how you develop the show.
AAJ: Do you ever play free-form, just totally spontaneous improvisation without a theme to base it on?
MR: No, I don't do too much of that.
AAJ: What is your approach to composing solo piano pieces?
MR: Well, I try to compose not in the same way that I would for a band. I don't do as much solo composition. But usually for me most of it comes down to how I want the chords to move. Because that's one of the biggest gifts that I have, I feel like I can hear harmonic relationships clear. So even melody at times is organized inside of that. When I compose solo it has to do with mood and key and color, and which registers are necessary to produce the timbre that you're going for.
AAJ: Do you have a preference between playing solo or with a group? And what are the advantages of playing with a group?
MR: The thing about a group, of course, is that you get to hear other people play and gain inspiration from a source that's not you. So I guess in a way that's the essence of jazz. And on a certain basic level that's probably why most people chose to play in bands as their primary way of communicating with the public. I do think that there is room for a profound evolution of a solo pianist. It's just a matter of what you really want to do. Oscar Peterson was able to do that quite well. I think it was Ellington who encouraged him to do it. So he had already developed his trio and everything else before he really did much of it. I just think solo piano it's just another color, it's another palette that's available to you as a musician. And it's a very special one because solo piano is exactly that, it's just a piano. You're not gonna see too many people playing solo saxophone or trumpet or what have you. Those instruments don't have the range to do it. Typically it requires that you have other instruments that fill in the overtone series that they don't cover.
AAJ: Many people consider Art Tatum one of the greatest if not the greatest solo jazz pianist. How do you feel about that, and what have you learned from Tatum's playing?
MR: Oh my. Certainly, in terms of one kind of piano playing, again the Harlem stride tradition, I think he's at the top obviously. No one physically had that kind of command over the piano that I've heard. In addition to that he had a whole lot to say about chord progressions, and a very strong harmonic style that he developed that was used by a lot of the bebop musicians later on. He's a major cultural figure in my mind.
AAJ: You've played some classical music pieces. Have you done much integration between classical and jazz? And how does that work?
MR: I've done some. Of course the Portraits in Blue CD, that's what that is. But it's more like welcoming certain philosophies that were introduced in classical music into a jazz format. The same understanding. It's really more of an approach sort of like what Ravel did, which is to take 10 percent of American influence and incorporate that into a French piano composition style. So I tend to take what I love about classical music, certain themes and certain ways of approaching voicings and harmony and melody, and I welcome that into a clearly jazz framework.
AAJ: Can you give an example of that? I've heard a solo piano CD of George Shearing, and he's consciously imitating Debussy's rumbling bass figure from the "Underground Cathedral" on one of the pieces, and it's very effective.
MR: I'm just saying there might be certain chords that you like from a Beethoven sonata maybe. And so you might play around with those chords and play a melody based on those chords, but you're not at all trying to imitate Beethoven. It's more like you're using the framework of that for something totally different that's truly about jazz. It's hard to explain. It's not about trying to mimic the classical perspective, it's more about welcoming that kind of consciousness but redefining it in a way.
AAJ: Do you have advice for piano students who are looking to become more proficient in solo piano?
MR: The first thing you gotta do is you have to learn how to play ragtime piano. You gotta have a two-handed conception. You gotta be able to hear how to interact between the hands as an understanding of how to produce a clear, even sound between the hands. So you probably want to start there and, as you can, start learning pieces by the major folks, a Jellyroll piece, a piece by Duke Ellington. Obviously at some point you've gotta grapple with "Carolina Shout," James P. Johnson, some Fats Waller, and Willie the Lion Smith, and Earl Fatha Hines, et cetera. So that you have a wide palette of colors to choose from. Because the biggest danger in playing solo is that you'll bore people to death and put them to sleep because you're playing the same mood all night. Nobody wants to hear that. You gotta have some flexibility and some virtuosity so that you can shake up the piggy bank every now and then and give it some color.
AAJ: So you'll be doing that in your upcoming show.
MR: I hope so or people will leave [laughs]. So that's important, yeah.
Tickets: $5 to 52 available in person (without service charge) at
the SFJAZZ Store, 3 Embarcadero Center, Lobby Level; on SFJAZZ's web
site, www.sfjazz.org (service charge applied); by phone (service
charge applied) at 415/776-1999 (outside CA 800/225-2277). Tickets
for Herbst Theatre concerts only are available by calling City Box
Office at 415/302-4400.
Dave Roberts has been a professional writer for more than a decade in
newspapers, magazines and high-tech. He's a student of jazz piano, and
writing a book, Tips From the Jazz Piano Pros, consisting of interviews with
jazz pianists that focus on the art and craft of playing jazz piano.
If you are a professional jazz pianist or know of one who would be interested
in participating, e-mail him at DaveRobertsJazz@cs.com. Also, if you are a Bay Area (or northern California) jazz musician, let him know what you're up
to: CDs, shows, Web sites, etc.
