Jazz is Alive and Well in Jupiter

I am very fortunate to have a new friend in my life, Nina Motta’s brother, David. 

They were raised in a musical family and David Einhorn has established himself as a leading bassist. Although he lived in Martinique for the past several years, he has recently returned to South Florida to resume his jazz career here as well as continue his other vocation as a journalist.

David has played with some of the great musicians of our time, and was bassist with jazz pianist Dick Morgan for some 20 years, with several CD recordings.  He’s also played with Anita O’Day, Kai Winding, Nat Adderly, Woody Herman, among others.  While in the Caribbean he recorded and toured with jazz pianist Reginald Policard.

Knowing that I play the piano he suggested we get together once a week and play some standards as well jazz classics.  I am not a jazz musician, so I wondered why he would want to invest the effort, but as he explained it was all part of getting back in the grove, particularly with songs from The Great American Songbook, which given a lead sheet, I can play almost anything written.  Meanwhile I dabble still at jazz compositions, particularly ones by Bill Evans, a great enigma to me as a pianist, beautiful melodies with harmonic and dissonance challenges.

After soloing all my life, other than accompanying a singer at one time, playing with a bassist has issues for me.  Suddenly, timing becomes paramount.  Alone, I’ll add or delete beats here and there, where I “feel” the music.  It’s difficult for anyone trying to accompany a musical maverick.  So David as been a taskmaster as well and I look forward to our usual Tuesday sessions as learning moments.  But that will soon end for the summer when we depart for our boat in Connecticut, but hopefully our sessions will resume in the fall.

As David eases back into the South Florida jazz scene, I asked him to keep us apprised of any local gigs he might have and he told me that he would be performing (this past Sunday) at the Jupiter Jazz Society’s 2^nd anniversary Sunday Jazz Jam session at the Double Roads Tavern in Jupiter.  Little did we know about this Society and the fabulous stage at the Double Roads (and great Tavern food too).  This jam session is every Sunday from 5 – 9 and anyone with serious talent can sit in, but as a special occasion, they started off with a professional jazz gig, Jérôme-Degey on guitar, John D. Beers III on trumpet, David Einhorn on bass, Goetz Kujack on drums and Rick Moore on keys (Cherie and Rick Moore are co-founders of the Jupiter Jazz Society).  David even inveigled Rick’s group to play a Bill Evans piece in our honor, an embarrassing pleasure.  For an hour this group improvised some of the great jazz classics.  Where have we been Ann and I wondered?  We’ll now be at the Double Roads on Sunday nights when we can.

Once their set was over, and “Dr. Bob” an ophthalmologist had sat in at the keyboards, it was time to hand over the event to the "Jupiter Jazz Youth Ensemble."  If this is the future of jazz it is in good hands.  These kids were fabulous.

As the photograph attests, David goes into another world when he plays.  He’s as intense as I’ve ever seen a bassist and we asked David during the break, just exactly what he is experiencing at those moments.  He replied that the music must come through you, almost from another place.  He’s found that sacred piece of real estate.

We’ll be back and anyone in the area reading this blog who loves jazz is encouraged to do so as well.  Maybe next year I’ll pick out a lead sheet and try to do something myself with the group.  Although an electronic keyboard is not my thing, and playing with a group would test my skills, one never knows!

The Great American Songbook Inhabits the Palm Beaches

Some recent events bear witness to the title of this entry.  A focal point, though, is Palm Beach’s The Colony Hotel which has its very own version of Manhattan’s Cafe Carlyle, or any of the well known NYC cabarets, only more intimate.  The Colony’s Royal Room attracts some topnotch American Songbook talent. Also, the Colony’s Polo Lounge Sunday brunch this season featured one of the best jazz pianists, Bill Mays. Sometime ago we heard Mays accompany diva Ann Hampton Callaway (a composer and a great jazz-cabaret singer) at the Eissey Campus Theatre of Palm Beach State College and made it a point to seek him out at the Colony’s Polo Lounge a couple of weeks ago. 

I asked him to play Bill Evans’ Turn Out the Stars, not very frequently performed, a work of beautiful voicing and emotion.  After a break, Mays played it solo, without the bass, effortlessly as if he plays it daily.  To me, it was heartrending. Then we were treated to an impromptu performance by the then featured performer at the Royal Room -- Karen Oberlin.  Amazing how an unrehearsed number by three professionals can be so natural.  Bill Mays’ CD Front Row Seat is exactly as titled – it’s as if he is playing in your living room.

Last month at the Royal Room we also caught Jane Monheit who we saw years ago and who has matured into such a great stylist, with phenomenal range, her latest album, The Songbook Sessions, a tribute to the great Ella Fitzgerald. She gladly posed with Ann for a photo. 

She performed pieces from her album and other numbers with her trio, husband Rick Montalbano on drums, Neal Miner on bass and Michael Kanin on piano, just the perfect combo for classic jazz.  Unfortunately her album (and this is very personal, not a professional observation) included a trumpet player, at times a distraction. I just wonder why the addition of a brass instrument was necessary. The bass, piano, and percussion combo is (to me) ideal for intimate, classic jazz.

Nonetheless, just to tie this together is a YouTube performance by Jane Monheit of Bill Evans’ Turn out the Stars, which was recorded at the Rainbow Room some six years ago.  What a sultry performer, one of our leading jazz first ladies, along with Stacey Kent, two completely different styles but both at the top of their games.

Last Saturday our close friend and neighbor, Nina (the artist who painted “Jessica” which hangs over my piano), who is also a cellist and a singer (do her talents have no bounds?), performed in the Choral Society of the Palm Beaches (S. Mark Aliapoulios, Artistic Director) – at Jupiter’s Florida Atlantic University auditorium. 

This was one of the most diverse programs we’ve seen in a long time, culminating in a partially acted out version of Frank Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella, a Broadway show which was recently performed at the New York City Opera.

The program’s featured performers made it especially enjoyable, vocalists Lisa Vroman, a soprano with extensive Broadway experience (who played Rosabella in that New York City Opera presentation) and Mark Sanders, a baritone who frequently performs with the Gulf Coast Symphony.  They had the perfect chemistry for performing one of the most beautiful Broadway duets ever written, Loesser’s "My Heart Is So Full of You."

But for me the highlight was the appearance and performance of Paul Posnak, who arranged Four Songs By George Gershwin for two pianos, which he played with the Choral Society’s pianist Dr. Anita Castiglione.  The songs reminded me so much of Earl Wild’s arrangement, Fantasy on Porgy and Bess and after the concert I told him so. He was delighted by the comparison, and it was apt.

Not enough praise can be directed to Dr. Catiglione for her nearly non-stop performance during the 2-1/2 hour program, easily transitioning to soloing, to accompanying, from Gershwin, to Irving Berlin, to Rogers and Hammerstein, to then to Frank Loesser and finally to classical, accompanying songs beautifully sung by the 2016 Young Artist Vocal Competition Winners, Mr. Julian Frias and Ms. Celene Perez, both high school seniors with great artistic careers ahead of them.  Our friend, Nina, was instrumental in organizing this competition.

Judging by these events, the American Songbook thrives and its future seems assured in the Palm Beaches!

Sinatra

I gave a belated 100^th birthday piano concert in honor of Frank Sinatra – only a few days late, my regular Brookdale Senior Living home monthly performance, ironically on my own birthday.  I listened to Sinatra all day on Dec. 12, his 100^th and I wondered how different my life would have been if there had not been a Frank Sinatra.  He permeated our culture.  

The Great American Songbook would not exist in its present form if there was no Sinatra.  I remember in high school I was just getting over my fascination with Elvis Presley, and abandoning my guitar lessons, when a new kid moved into my neighborhood. Ed was unlike any of my other friends. When we hung out in his room he had two albums he played over and over again, Frank Sinatra’s Come Fly With Me, and Ahmad Jamal’s At the Pershing: But Not for Me, both released in 1958 on the eve of my senior HS year.  My parents never listened to such music. Those albums brought me back to the piano. 

So, thanks to that accidental connection, and Frank and Ahmad, I’ve had a musical life of joy playing the songs of the Great American Songbook during my entire adult life.  And I’ve had all those decades of enjoying Sinatra but it wasn’t until he was in his mid-70’s, the age I’m now approaching myself, that I had an opportunity to see him in person.  It was June of 1991 and we had ventured to Las Vegas for a long weekend to see our dear friend, Peter and his wife Marge, who lived there. 

Peter had been diagnosed with cancer but he was still mobile and relatively pain free and our mutual wish was to see Sinatra who was then appearing at the Riviera Hotel.  We had practically front row seats, slightly off to the left, and he sang many of his signature pieces, some of the same ones I played at my concert such as The Lady Is a Tramp, I’ve Got you Under My Skin, New York, New York and the piece I concluded my own piano tribute to him, My Way. That June 1991 appearance turned out to be among his last concerts in Vegas.  His orchestra was enthusiastically conducted by his son, Frank Sinatra Jr. 

Although one could tell that age had taken its toll on Sinatra’s voice by then, his phrasing, which made him so distinctive, as well as his personality, came through.  He had the ability to convince the audience members that he was singing directly to and for you.

I had one tangential connection with The Chairman of the Board.  In 1998 my publishing company published Ol’ Blue Eyes; A Frank Sinatra Encyclopedia, chronicling every song he ever sang, every movie he ever appeared in.  I gave a copy to a transient boater who was docked next to me at our marina as he was Sinatra’s drummer for many of his concerts over a twenty year period (forgot his name).  So I was regaled about several personal incidents and it was enjoyable to hear from someone who worked closely with him.  Bottom line, Sinatra was a perfectionist when it came to music and how he sang a song.

He was also an outspoken person all his life.  I found his 1963 Playboy interview fascinating.  Then, of course, the threat was communism and the cold war.  I’m pretty sure if he were around today, he’d have a thing or two to say about the present world tumult and the breakdown of our political process.

 

This Funny World

Before Rodgers and Hammerstein there was Rodgers and Hart.  They wrote so many great standards such as Manhattan, My Funny Valentine, The Lady Is a Tramp, I Could Write a Book, Bewitched, to name just a few of my favorites, but sometimes their songs became conflated with the other great standards of the era, those by George Gershwin and Cole Porter in particular.  Yet Rodgers and Hart were trailblazers in their own right.

They met as young students at Columbia University and they seemed destined for one another.  Rodgers of course could write a melody as us mere mortals can compose post cards. Noël Coward once said that Rodgers just “pissed melody.” He was the consummate composer and partner, productive and businesslike. One could always count on Richard Rodgers.  Larry Hart on the other hand was a troubled person. Unlike the “beautiful” people he wrote about and consorted with – first on Broadway and then in Hollywood -- he felt himself to be an outsider, he was gay, Jewish, and diminutive (always photographed standing while Rodgers was sitting at the piano).

His lyrics could be dark and cynical. But I’ve been so accustomed to playing their well known pieces, and as I do not have a singing voice, Hart’s lyrics became submerged in the deep pool of their music.  Furthermore, I've played most of their music from fake books, the melody line or verse only without the introductions.  Their songs without the intros are like birds without feet, homes without foundations.  I have a Gershwin songbook with the intros and I needed one for Rodgers and Hart. To the rescue:  Rodgers and Heart; A Musical Anthology.

Alas, my songbook arrived but I should have known that in this profit driven world the publisher (Hal Leonard) would chose the less expensive “perfect bound” alternative to spiral binding (such as my 40 year old collection of Gershwin’s songs).  Very sensible for the publisher but a nightmare for the pianist as most songs with the intros are at least 4 pages and turning the pages of a perfect bound book is difficult while performing. Even if one is merely playing for oneself it is frustrating to have to introduce a few bars of silence while trying to turn and pin back a page.

One could try to break the binding but ultimately pages would separate or one could guillotine the book and put the pages in plastic sleeves in a three ring binder, expensive and time consuming.

Ah, for the want of a nail. I knew there would ultimately be an iPad in my life and this was the final straw to tip the scale.  I'd photograph select songs with the iPad (still difficult to hold down certain sections of the book for photographing and having to accept some partially distorted pages, albeit legible). Then do the same for my Gershwin songs and other beloved standards, put them in albums, and then play the music from my iPad, merely swiping pages to “turn” them.  Voila it works! A couple of negatives though.  If your finger resides too long on the page you are swiping, you are returned to the pervious menu of all pages, so I’ve “perfected” the technique of quickly swiping while playing.  Furthermore, the page is about half the size of the printed book.  Good reading glasses to the rescue for that drawback.

 

This commitment to the iPad for my sheet music repertoire in turn has led to a certain acceptance about my piano technique.  I've gone into jazz, contemporary, some classical even, but I find the most satisfaction from the standards, particularly the music of the thirties and forties.  I was born too late to live in that moment, but today I find the themes to be as relevant to today as when they were written. So I’m making my iPad music albums all standards focused when playing in public venues, mostly local retirement homes. To date I’ve performed at The Inn at LaPosada, the Hanley Center, The Waterford, Mangrove Bay and most recently a monthly “gig” at Brookdale Senior Living.

And now I can incorporate the introductions to many of the standards which so beautifully set up the songs, sometimes acting as a counterpoint and foreshadowing the content.  Finally, playing the Rodgers and Hart Songbook yielded a double bonus, finding songs that are absent from my fake books, such as their hilarious To Keep my Love Alive, and some songs I’ve rarely heard.  One such song is This Funny World.  Here is where you see the genius of Larry Hart: the lyrics are so achingly cynical -- one can imagine Hart wearing his own heart on his sleeve. 

Richard Rodgers’ magnificent melody populates the introduction with minor chords, underpinning the dark lyrics by Hart. (Although, when working with Hart, Rodgers would normally first write the melody.  When collaborating with Hammerstein, the lyrics would normally precede Rodgers’ composition.) Rodgers writes the song in a major key.  Such sad lyrics to such a beautiful melody and the chorus which is also the title of the song is repeated four times just to make sure you don’t forget it!

With my imperfect equipment, in my imperfect recording studio (our living room), I recorded the piece and posted it on YouTube so it plays on all devices.  It helps to read the words before or during the video.

A mop! A broom! A pail!

The stuff my dreams are made of!

You hope, you strive, you fail!

The world's a place you're not afraid of.

But soon you are brought down to earth,

And you learn what your dream was worth.

This funny world makes fun

of the things that you strive for

This funny world can laugh

at the dreams you're alive for.

If you are beaten conceal it!

There's no pity for you.

For the world cannot feel it.

Just keep to yourself

Weep to yourself.

This funny world can turn right around

and forget you.

It's always sure to roll right along

when you're through.

If you are broke you shouldn't mind.

It's all a joke for you will find

This funny world is making fun of you.