Departure

As I am prone to do in my more sentimental moments – and closing up our house for a couple of months while we return to our boat in Connecticut is such an occasion  – is to linger over the piano, a friend I have to leave during that period.  What to play, what to play?  I found myself drawn to a piece written by the great jazz pianist, Erroll Garner.  He was a self-taught pianist, couldn’t read a lick of music, and played strictly by ear.  Like me, his hands were small – very unusual for a jazz musician.  They say his hands could barely span an octave (I can reach it, but not much more).  Oscar Peterson, by comparison, could easily reach an octave and a half!  Yet, both Garner and Peterson were comfortable playing stride when called for. To hear Garner’s performances is to understand that he was simply in love with playing the piano, a process so natural that the effortlessness belies his great gift and distinctive sound.  I can in no way imitate his talent, but one of his compositions, No Moon (Young Love), seemed to suit the moment, and with my audio-flawed digital camera, I recorded my rendition.   When I listen to him play it I think I’d give my right arm (but I’d need it!) to even remotely play like that.  He was given the gift.

On an entirely different subject,I have to thank my son, Chris, for bringing this New Yorker article to my attention.  I’ve been practicing “bibliotherapy” ever since switching my major from psychology to literature in college and didn’t even know it!  No wonder I enjoy reading so much, becoming “involved” in other people’s lives.   Reading fiction is a mind and emotional exercise, an exploration of the writer’s imaginative world, both the outer and inner.    To immerse oneself in it is to help understand this mystifying journey we call life.

My last entry was about William Trevor.  His short stories are an addiction, so much so that I’ve ordered Trevor’s subsequently published Selected Stories and thanks to Amazon I’ll have it just in time for our departure.  This collection includes his After Rain (1996), The Hill Bachelors (2000), A Bit on the Side (2004), and Cheating at Canasta (2007) which as the Booklist notes “merge all their pages into this deep reservoir into which avid fiction readers will dip repeatedly.” Now that I’m finished with his earlier collection, the characters seem to inhabit my mind, and I’ll miss them.  Thus I look forward to reading Trevor’s more recent stories.  It’ll be a “reunion” of sorts!

So armed with some books, we soon begin our trek north to our boat in Connecticut, living in a few hundred square feet.  However, most of the days and many of the nights we are out, sometimes on the water, but there will be theatre in NYC and at the Westport Country Playhouse to attend, and friends and our two sons to see - and perhaps a brief return visit to Asheville on our drive back in September or, in other words, a nice break from Florida. We’re fortunate to still be able to do this.

One of the last details is to put away the boat we have in Florida.  Early Monday morning I was following a 60’ sport-fish out into Lake Worth, the Parker Bridge was just closing after it had passed under – so this was the view from my console.   

It was indeed like a lake on the water early that morning, the sun rising, the air temperature “just” in the high 70’s, but alas returning the boat to the dealer for storage and maintenance over the summer made it sort of a bitter-sweet trip. 

It’s Love – It’s Christmas

We’ve all heard just about every Christmas carol or song ever written, but here’s a rarely performed one composed by the great jazz pianist Bill Evans.  It’s quite beautiful and in the Evans’ mode.  What makes it particularly unusual for Evans – aside from the lightness of the piece – is he wrote the lyrics for it, something he rarely did.  He once said “I never listen to lyrics.  I’m seldom conscious of them at all.  The vocalist might as well be a horn as far as I’m concerned.”  But I guess it was the spirit of the season which led him to write lyrics for his own Christmas song.

It’s Love – It’s Christmas

Dancing to the music low,

The world covered white with snow;

A kiss……..

That won’t let go.

It’s love, it’s Christmas.

Jack Frost

Painting window panes,

A sleigh, Santa at the reins;

A fire, candy canes,

It’s love, it’s Christmas.

Lovers watching a star,

Their dreams so near yet so far;

It’s love, the spirit of Christmas.

© 1991 Ludlow Music, Inc.

Although the reflection on the piano might belie a Floridian presence of Jack Frost, I offer my own recording of Evans' lighthearted Christmas piece, and as we’re taking time off for the holiday, a happy and healthy New Year to all!

Two Songs

As an amateur pianist, I generally focus on the “classic” period of the Great American Songbook, including Broadway, from Gershwin to Rodgers and Hammerstein to Sondheim.  I relate to that music, as I do to classic jazz (not the so called “smooth jazz.”) Just let me listen to a piano, bass and drums and I’m in heaven.  Think Oscar Peterson or Bill Evans and so many other wonderful jazz pianists.  A great vocalist such as a Stacey Kent is an added bonus.  And I enjoy classical music, although my ability to play classical pieces on the piano is limited to those that have been transcribed for fake books.  In effect, I have to improvise much of the music – not the intent of the likes of Beethoven, etc. 

Although my musical tastes sometimes extend to country and R&B, I do not relate to most contemporary music, some of the so called “American Idol” sound.  But I suppose I’m beginning to sound like my parents, criticizing my teenage addiction to the music sung by Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, and I could go on and on with that list.  I still enjoy occasionally listening to that music today, making me a nostalgist.  (After all, that’s what half this blog is about anyhow.)

My teenage musical “taste” gives me an opportunity to post something that’s been in my files for some 56 years now.  Why I kept it, who knows.  Maybe for this moment?  New York City’s WMCA distributed a weekly listing of the top hits at the local record stores where we would buy our 45’s. This particular one was for the week of Dec. 20, 1957.  I still can hear (in my mind) most of the “tunes” listed on this particular sheet.  Coincidentally, number 15 on the list for that week was Hey Schoolgirl sung by “Tom and Jerry.”  They were a local pair, growing up only a mile or so from me.  Never heard of them?  Later they reverted to their real names, Simon and Garfunkel.  They too tried to make a go of R&R but I don’t think any of their songs at the time rose higher than the one listed here.

I’ve tried to keep up with contemporary Broadway / West End musicals but except for Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Claude-Michel Schönberg, nothing really appeals to me. But I’ve been remiss in not seeing (yet) works such as Nine and Rent.  There is a song from each which I discovered in my fake books and I found myself playing them although I had never heard them before. 

From the more recent of the two shows, Rent, there is One Song Glory, which needs to be appreciated in the context of the lyrics and the story, but even without those, the music has a haunting leitmotif.  So I decided to make a video of my playing it, but it’s digital size is too large for the limited software that BlogSpot offers, and to my chagrin I discovered that BlogSpot’s video postings do not play on certain devices, particularly mobile ones (where the entire digital world is moving – get with it BlogSpot!), so I had to post my rendition on YouTube to play here.  There are risks doing that, opening myself for criticism – any professional knows that I am but a rank amateur, but that doesn’t matter to me, I still enjoy playing.

Unlike the other videos I’ve done its close up.  This is not because I’m wild about my hands.  After all, they are, together, 142 years old! : - ).  But the sound was better with my little digital camera nearer to the piano. One Song Glory is a genre outside my traditional classic Broadway comfort zone.  In other words, it doesn’t come naturally to me, but sometimes we have to forge into new territory….

The musical structure of Growing Tall, from Nine, on the other hand (no pun intended), is closer to the traditional Broadway musical, so I’m more relaxed playing this piece.  Its digital size is within the parameters of BlogSpot, so I can bypass YouTube (although it may render it unplayable on some devices, sorry).  Getting Tall is a very evocative conceit, the younger self counseling the mature version of the same person. 

Learning more, knowing less,

Simple words, tenderness part of getting tall.

Hopefully, that tenderness comes across….

Masters

I was going to call this entry “Finale” -- not to describe my last blog entry, but the title of the last CD piano album I will record, my fourth one over the years.  However, on the good advice of an old friend who warned me never to say “never” (as I had said when I wrote about my penultimate CD, Music Makes Us) I’ve changed the title to Masters.  Also, “Finale” sounds maudlin – and I don’t intend it as such whereas “Masters” is a better description of the composers I showcase in this latest CD. 

Nonetheless, I am fairly certain that this is my last recording as I've now covered most of my favorites as well as the different kinds of music I enjoy playing (although all fall under the “Great American Songbook” rubric). Masters is intended to "fill in" some of the blanks in my Broadway repertoire, having already included thirty four songs that were performed on Broadway in my previous CDs.

The "missing" songs are by the composers I feel dwarf all, George Gershwin (with his lyricist, his brother Ira) Richard Rodgers (with Oscar Hammerstein) and Stephen Sondheim.  Masters addresses that lacuna by including twenty-three other songs by these celebrated Broadway innovators.

In an interview by PBS' Great Performances the daughter of Richard Rodgers, Mary Rodgers, related that "Noël Coward once said that Daddy just 'pissed melody.'” She also revealed that "Gershwin was a close friend. If he was ever jealous of anyone — and I don’t mean 'jealous' in any nasty or competitive way — it was Gershwin."  No wonder, Gershwin wrote in all musical genres, Broadway being just one. (And some of the Gershwin songs in this CD were actually written for Hollywood, but written in the Broadway vein.) Who knows where he might have moved music if he hadn't suddenly died so young.   So there is continuity here -- Gershwin knew Rodgers & Hammerstein, and Hammerstein, the lyricist, was a mentor to Sondheim – who naturally began as one as well, but would go on to become a composer of intricate, urbane songs, as well as writing the lyrics.  George Gershwin and Richard Rodgers always had a lyricist to rely on (although after Hammerstein died, Rodgers wrote his own lyrics for the show No Strings).

I should footnote that the music for the last song in the program, Maria, was written by Leonard Bernstein, although I include it here as Sondheim wrote the lyrics and I think his collaboration with Bernstein helped launch his long-time career. Sondheim is now the senior statesman of Broadway and I can't imagine anyone touching his legacy.

There is another reason I decided to work on this album.  This is the first year I've been without a regular “gig,” normally performing at retirement homes during the season.  My contacts at previous intuitions had changed and my season started with adverse health news. I had other things on my mind. So, instead, I turned more inward, playing these songs and others, writing some fiction.  .

It is restricting, just so much time to play the piano, and having a studio recording session one has a tendency to practice these songs more, to the detriment of other piano music.  I'm looking forward to no such responsibilities in the future (other than my “senior circuit” engagements) so I feel this will be my last such recording.

Masters: 

George and Ira Gershwin

Summertime / I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise / Somebody Loves Me / The Man I Love / Embraceable You / Who Cares? / Love Walked In

           

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein

People Will Say We're in Love / The Carousel Waltz / What's the Use of Wond'Rin' / If I Loved You / You'll Never Walk Alone / Bali Ha'i / Some Enchanted Evening / Hello Young Lovers / We Kiss in a Shadow / The Sound of Music / It Might as Well Be Spring  

Stephen Sondheim

Send in the Clowns / Sorry – Grateful / Being Alive / I Remember / Maria (Music by Leonard Bernstein)