We’re continuing with the fifth and final part of our interview with LACO’s Composer-in-Residence Uri Caine, who will be performing on solo piano at Amoeba Records, 6400 Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood on Wednesday evening, May 7th, at 7:00 PM.

Uri: There is a greater inclusiveness now than there used to be. Barriers get broken down, and then new barriers get erected. Young people have to come in and figure out, “How are we going to challenge this? How are we going to make our way in this world?” There’s always that turmoil, which is a healthy thing.

Bob: I totally agree; and you certainly played a big role, in terms of breaking these barriers down. It’s got to look different for someone like you, looking at the scene today, than it did when you were young.

Uri: I saw the way a lot of the older musicians that I knew in Philadelphia were treated, and disrespected; they were considered to be “just jazz guys.” You wouldn’t see any of them playing at the Academy of Music, where we went to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra. There were a lot of social aspects to it, and there still are. I think there are many musicians who have the sense that, through music, they are seeing parts of society that they wouldn’t necessarily see if they were doing other jobs. Perhaps this raises the issue, “Who am I playing for? Why is it that, in this situation, this type of music is acceptable, but in that one, it is not?”

Bob: What does the expression “Third Stream” mean to you? When did you first hear it used? And how does it relate to the work you are doing today?

Uri: I first heard about that term when I was reading Gunther Schuller. I picked up a series of essays that various people had written for a jazz journal. It was an anthology, and a couple of the essays were by Schuller. One was an analysis of a Sonny Rollins solo on the song “Blue Seven” where Schuller examines a musical phrase that Sonny Rollins plays at the beginning and then repeats in many different ways. I had tried to decipher “Perspectives of New Music” (an academic journal about contemporary music); it was very theoretical, very dense—and very interesting. Here was Gunther Schuller describing jazz in the same manner.

I also read another article Schuller wrote about his experiments with the Lenox School of Jazz. A string quartet was in residence there, but also, so was Ornette Coleman. Classical musicians were playing along with jazz musicians; and jazz musicians were writing pieces with classical groups. Records were released of these experiments, and I bought the records.

My impression was that this was inevitable, because, throughout music history, styles change when different musics are combined. I remember reading that Bach’s son ended up writing in a totally different manner, a new style of classical music, and that he was a teacher of Mozart. And I remember thinking, “How can that be, that somebody’s style, like Bach’s, just comes to an end? And, of all people, it is his son who becomes the one to inaugurate the new style.”

Bob: And jazz musicians combine styles, also?

Uri: Yes. I was really impressed by a record that Chick Corea recorded with his group called Circle. They were playing standards, but the way that they were playing, they sounded like Boulez and Stockhausen sometimes, but it was also swinging. That made an even stronger impression on me than the theoretical writings.

For me, it had a lot more to do with the specific musicians who were involved in the experiments, rather than whether the Third Stream experiment was deemed to be “valid” or “invalid.” To me, it was natural; it was going to happen. I don’t know whether it qualifies as “Third Stream” when Duke Ellington takes Tchaikovsky and reimagines it…

Bob: Oh, I think it does; it falls within my definition. In fact, in a blog here last December, I described seven jazz interpretations of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, Ellington’s and six others, dating back as early as 1941.

Uri: Exactly. So it was something that didn’t have to be theoretically defined. Although I have always admired Gunther Schuller; I read his books, and I actually got a very long letter from Schuller once. He listened to the CD I recorded of Mahler ‘s music; I don’t think he really enjoyed it all that much—he was very critical of it—but the tone of the letter was good. “You went for something different. I don’t know if I totally agree with it, but it’s interesting…”

Bob: “…and congratulations for the effort.”

Uri: When I saw him later, he said, “I hope I wasn’t too harsh…”

I think he’s an important person. I think what he was trying to do speaks to what was going on at the time. I think you have to understand the world that he was coming from. He had an incredible life himself. He was playing French horn with the Metropolitan Opera when he was teenager…

Bob: …and also playing with Miles Davis and Gerry Mulligan on the “Birth of the Cool” sessions!

Uri: Exactly. So he’s trying to figure out for himself what’s happening. I’m sure that he influenced things a lot by becoming head of the New England Conservatory of Music. It’s not a radical thing these days for students there to sit down and play Beethoven, and then also to sit down and play improvised jazz solos. But, we can’t forget that that was not as accepted then as it is now.

Bob: I think it’s easier for us now today because of what he did, the bridges that he built back then. But, do you have any other thoughts about working with LACO?

Uri: I have had a wonderful time working with LACO. Working and playing with Jeff was inspiring and fun. I have made many friends among the musicians. It was great to see Margaret Batjer again. Josefina Vergara joined my ensemble to play Mozart and Mahler in Macao and Barcelona. She is a great musician and we had a great time in Barcelona with her mother! The tour in Europe was also a great experience. I know it takes an enormous effort on the part of the organization and I appreciated how hard everyone worked. I also enjoyed going to some of the schools and universities in Los Angeles and meeting their young musicians.

Bob: What do you plan to do on May 7th at Amoeba Records?

Uri: Well, I’m playing solo. So, what that means is that I’ll probably play a combination of original pieces; jazz standards; maybe some of the classical arrangements that I’ve done, short arrangements of Mahler, Mozart maybe, in solo form; and perhaps some spontaneous improvisations as well. I usually try to do a combination of different things. I’ve played there before. I like that place; it’s a great record store.

Bob: It is a great record store. Uri, this has been just super. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the time we’ve spent together, and I’m confident that our readers will enjoy it as well. Thank you so much for the time and insights you’ve shared with us, and we’ll all be looking forward to seeing and hearing you on the 7th of May!

Uri: it’s been great talking with you.

We’re continuing with the fourth part of our interview with LACO’s Composer-in-Residence Uri Caine, who will be performing on solo piano at Amoeba Records, 6400 Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood on Wednesday evening, May 7th, at 7:00 PM.

Uri: The Mahler recording was made 10 or 11 years ago. Since then, I’ve continued to play improvised music, but I’ve also had the chance to work with classical groups. One of the projects, The Goldberg Variations, involved playing with some musicians from the Concerto Koln (on baroque instruments, recorders, lutes, etc.). Later, they commissioned me to write a piece for them. They weren’t improvisers, so I thought I would try to arrange the Diabelli Variations, orchestrate it for this group, and then improvise with the music. It would be different than the Goldberg Variations, where each variation had a different ensemble with a different style, emphasizing variety. I wanted it to be more like a piano concerto.

That piece was a turning point, and it opened the door to commissions and invitations to play with other classical ensembles. Eventually, I performed it with the Cleveland Orchestra and the Moscow Chamber Orchestra. So, at the point when I was commissioned by LACO, I already had some experience working with orchestras. I think that’s probably how I got to Los Angeles around the same time. Jeffrey Kahane told me that his son Gabe turned him on to my music by giving him a CD (probably one of my older projects). When I met Jeff, I felt an immediate rapport. It was a pleasure to know I would be working with such a wonderful musician.

Bob: What a marvelous niche you’ve found for yourself, being able to compose, to play jazz music in small groups, and also to play with larger classical ensembles. And it doesn’t seem to be very crowded…

Uri: Well, maybe. There are obviously so many amazing musicians playing and composing today. But, there are a lot of different factors involved in determining who gets to play where, when, and with whom. Sometimes it is just the kindness of strangers. To be invited by LACO to compose this music, to play with them, and then, at the same time, to get a call from the Jazz Bakery and have them say, “Well, fine, if you’re going to be here, then you can bring your trio here, too.”

Bob: The best of all worlds…

Uri: As I’m going through this, it’s a continuous process of education, trying to discover what needs to be done to get to the next level. That type of endless study is very attractive to me. There are a lot of people obsessed with making themselves better musicians, in so many different ways. For some people, this means locking themselves in a practice room; for others, it means studying African percussion; for still others, studying very specific things in electronics. I saw that there is a whole musical world, and then worlds within worlds, and that there is something endless about it.

Bob: That’s part of the excitement…

Uri: The work that it takes, and the people that you meet, are a big part of it. I mean, music can be a very solitary thing, but also a very social thing. It’s not like being a novelist, and locking yourself up in your room for six years to write your novel, and then, people either read it or they don’t. There’s a much more active social element to music.

Bob: I made the assumption a bit ago that this niche you are in was not very crowded. I got the sense that maybe you think it’s more crowded than I realize, which simply means that I don’t have much exposure. Are there very many other people that you see doing the same kinds of things you’re doing?

Uri: There is a long history of improvisation in classical music. There is also a long tradition of jazz musicians who have taken classical music as a basis for their improvisations.

I think that there are many composers, especially younger ones, who are less “I’m a composer, and here is my music,” and more like, “I’m a composer; I have a group; there’s improvisation in my group; and we deal with all these different elements.” There is always a hunger for something new, or some new combination. I don’t like the word “crossover,” because that implies they’re doing it for commercial reasons. But what’s really happening is…

Bob: Maybe they’re doing it for creative reasons.

Uri: Yes, they’re creative and curious. Sometimes it’s just happenstance. They hear something and they say, “What is that?!” Even if it’s not within their musical world, they can pursue it and make it their own. I have heard some great music from younger musicians who are making that effort to combine some of these different elements.

Things change. For instance, at Curtis: when I was young, Curtis was a very conservative environment. It’s still a very straight-ahead classical environment, but I was just asked, a couple months ago, to have a master class in improvisation at Curtis.

Bob: Impressive!

Uri: And the students in the class, 18, 19 years old, were eager; great musicians, and they can already improvise. So, a change of consciousness may be happening; things may not be quite as separated as they might have been.

Generally, we have a better level of acceptance in Europe, although things have changed here in the US, too. I’m thinking, though, of how much I play in Italy, or Germany. Classical music is important to them, and to the extent that I am trying to transform in into something else, they understand what I am trying to do. It doesn’t mean that they love it all the time, but the idea of doing it is more acceptable.

Our interview with Uri Caine will conclude in our fifth and final installment.

We’re continuing our interview with LACO’s Composer-in-Residence Uri Caine, who will be performing on solo piano at Amoeba Records, 6400 Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood on Wednesday evening, May 7th, at 7:00 PM.

Bob: I don’t think you could buy a better education than you had.

Uri: Rochberg and Peiffer were wonderful teachers with strong personalities and opinions. I am not sure that I totally agree with the method of teaching by imitating classical models, but when I was a teenager, it liberated me in a certain way. I remember the first time I went to Interlochen, at a composer’s conference, someone laughed and said, “Oh, you actually write TONAL music? You’re playing TONAL music?” For a lot of people then, atonal music represented the be-all and end-all of contemporary music, and I was also a passionate devotee of this music. But I also loved jazz, Frank Zappa, salsa, and a lot of other music with groove and tonality. It wasn’t like this present era; there are so many strands and strains of music that coexist today.

The teachers at Penn had their own opinions, and certainly, composers who taught there, like George Crumb and Richard Wernick, were very open-minded. I am not sure they approved of the jazz I was playing, but it wasn’t an issue, because Penn didn’t have a jazz department then.

Bob: So, what came next?

Uri: After I graduated from college, I stayed in Philadelphia, probably longer than I intended to originally, because I was playing so much; I was happy there. But I thought perhaps I should try going to New York to live. I had tried living in several different places. And then at one point, I thought, “Go to New York.” This was in the early ‘80s.

I scuffled around in New York—it was hard to find a place to live, in 1985, I guess it was…

Bob: You were how old at that time?

Uri: I was 28.

Bob: OK. So, you were in Philadelphia after college, let’s see, five or six years…

Uri: Right, but not the whole time. I went to Israel and was surprised that I could support myself as a musician there, and was surprised at the life I found there, but that was for less than a year. I played on some Caribbean islands for a half a year or so—this initially was interesting.

Bob: So then you said, “No, I’ve got to find out whether I can do it in New York.” So it’s 1985, and you’re in New York, and you’re 28, and you’re scuffling…

Uri: I really had to begin again. I knew people in New York, and I was familiar with the city. Still, in the beginning, it was hard. So I played in places for the door and went to people’s houses to rehearse, even without a gig. We were just trying to get things together. That was my life in New York. Of course, I met many people who are still important in my life, musicians, people that I play with, and I heard a lot of music.

It was a time when there was contrast between the more “straight-ahead,” young-lion school, as exemplified by people like Wynton Marsalis, who were really coming into their own, with the more “down-town” type of sensibility, where it was improvised music, but it wasn’t necessarily straight-ahead jazz. It was based more at places like the Knitting Factory, art galleries, places that didn’t function as music clubs, but places where people would come to hear music and play music. I found myself in that scene, too. I was also playing at the Village Gate until 4 in the morning, or at a club called Augies, with a rhythm section. I met many other musicians…

I guess around the late-‘80s – early -‘90s, I had been playing with musicians like Don Byron, Dave Douglas, and they were getting better known.

Bob: Sure; I know of them both, Byron on reeds and Douglas on trumpet.

Uri: Playing with them in Europe broadened my perspective.

Bob: In what way?

Uri: Well, it became obvious that music was happening in places that had nothing to do with Philadelphia or New York. One could stay in Italy and play, because people are so into the music; or in Germany, where there are so many jazz clubs.

Making my first recordings was a definite turning point. In 1992 Sphere Music, my first CD, was picked up by Stefan Winter, who had a company named Jazz Music Today (JMT). He was based in Munich, but he recorded a lot of “down-town musicians” of the time, as well as people who would be affiliated with M-Base*: Steve Coleman, Greg Osby and Gary Thomas. Stefan was a very forward-looking guy; I made two CDs with that record company. JMT was being distributed through Polygram and Verve, and they decided the music was too avant garde, so they basically took the record company he started away from him and closed him down.

Bob: Wow…!

Uri: So Stefan started a new company called ¬Winter and Winter. He asked some of the people who were on his former label to stay with him, since things were in turmoil. The one thing he said is that he would not try to function within these corporate record company rules.

The first recording I did with his new label was the Mahler project, Urlicht – Primal Light. And that was another turning point for me, because it took my music out of just the jazz world and opened it up to a much wider audience. People tend to associate us with the “jazz world,” despite the fact that many different styles of jazz coexist at any given time, and many of us play music that involves many elements of contemporary music that are not exclusively jazz. But, in my case, this record actually led to gigs at Mahler festivals, the Salzburg festival, and other festivals. Even though we might still have been perceived as improvising musicians from New York, or jazz musicians, this broader acceptance put the music in a different context. Although that was not something I was seeking; it just happened.

I continued making recordings that would be considered more straight-ahead jazz, but I alternated them with improvisations based on classical works. I recorded a version of the Goldberg Variations next, and I started to tour with the groups with whom I had recorded. Paradoxically, it also enhanced what was happening for me in New York. People in New York would say, “I heard that you played at this festival in Germany.” And I was thinking, “Hey, I’ve lived here for ten years, looking up at your window, asking, ‘Can I get a gig here?’ and all of a sudden, you tell me you heard about me from someone else!” But I see that that’s the way life works…

Our interview with Uri Caine will continue in our fourth installment.

*M-Base (short for “macro-basic array of structured extemporization”) is a construct for creating modern music which reached its peak in the mid-to-late-‘80s and early ‘90s. It is sometimes called a type of jazz, but this is not strictly accurate; participants do not view M-Base in this manner. The word is also used to refer to a collective of musicians, poets and dancers who were associated with the movement. Some of its main proponents were saxophonists Steve Coleman, Greg Osby, and Gary Thomas, vocalist Cassandra Wilson, and trombonist Robin Eubanks, all of whom are all still actively performing and recording.

We’re continuing our interview with LACO’s Composer-in-Residence Uri Caine, who will be performing on solo piano at Amoeba Records, 6400 Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood on Wednesday evening, May 7th, at 7:00 PM.

Bob: So, as a teenager, you were studying piano with Bernard Peiffer, and composition with George Rochberg, but you were focused on how your studies could help you be a better jazz musician.

Uri: Yes, I was. Rochberg was a musical mentor to me. He took me to his studio recording sessions, to turn pages as he played the piano, for instance. He was writing a lot of string quartets for a group called the Concord String Quartet (a group that doesn’t exist now). They were not from Philadelphia, but George and Gene, his wife, opened their home when they were working on his music, and I saw the intensity they brought to bear when they played and rehearsed. So, as a young person, I was checking out a lot of great role models.

Bob: What a great opportunity for you to have had…

Uri: This is the point at which I began studying piano with some of the teachers that Rochberg recommended. He had been a student at Curtis, so I started studying with a really great, kindly teacher there, Vladimir Sokoloff.

And I had other important musical experiences: I went to Interlochen Music Camp, and as a 15-year-old kid from the East Coast, this was my first contact with Midwestern music culture. It was very different from the way I was dealing with my music in Philadelphia, but I just tried to drink in all the music that I heard that summer, and the people that I met. While I was at Interlochen I met [LACO concertmaster] Margaret Batjer for the first time. I was very happy to see Margaret again and to meet her husband, Joel McNeely, who conducted the Double Piano Concerto that I wrote for Jeff Kahane and LACO in 2006, and the Three Mosaics in 2007.

I ended up going to the University of Pennsylvania in order to keep on studying with George Rochberg. I also got to study with another composer there, George Crumb, who was really a great teacher. That’s when I really jumped into the music world that was happening in Philadelphia. I played with some of the jazz musicians that had been my idols when I was growing up, people like Philly Joe [Jones], Mickey Roker, and these other groups that were happening. There was a saxophone player named “Bootsie” Barnes with whom I played a lot. We just played everywhere. I met many musicians that were coming from New York, older musicians that told me about Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and what it was like to be in Philadelphia in those days—days that I missed, basically.

But I had a lot of good experiences at the University of Pennsylvania besides just studying. My job at the university was to be the pianist for the choir. So three days a week, I would play Bach and other composers, with the choir singing away…

Bob: That exposed you to a wonderful repertoire of music!

Uri: Yeah; I was so happy just to be immersed in that world. I couldn’t get enough of it.

Bob: Your lessons were primarily classical during this time, I presume, although your teachers were expansive enough to be supportive of what you were doing in jazz?

Uri: I would say that Peiffer was the type of teacher that, when a student said, “I want to learn to improvise, I want to learn how to play,” he would say, “OK, I can show you that, but you have to practice Bach for this much time a day; you have to play scales in every key, symmetrical scales..” And then, also, he was the one who said, “Start checking out contemporary music; you haven’t heard Stravinsky? Come on! You have to hear this, start buying scores, etc.” But a lot of times, when I would bring in a composition I was writing, he would spend forty minutes going over four measures, showing me different chords; “You can do this, you can do that…”

We talked about jazz improvisation, but the way people taught improvisation back then was not as structured as the approach to jazz in schools today. Although one thing that Peiffer did emphasize: he told us to get these tape recorders that we could turn down so they would slow down an octave, so that we could transcribe jazz solos. So we spent a lot of our youth listening to jazz that was going “Rowr, rowr, rowr…” [laughter] Now there’s a thing you can buy—I have it on my computer—where you can slow down the speed without changing the pitch.

Out of school, I would get together with people my own age, and I was always learning something new. I could see that some musicians were playing certain repertoire, some were into different genres, some were playing electronic instruments, some were dealing with funk music that’s not really coming out of the straight-ahead jazz tradition… There was a whole lot of variety out there. Rather than, “What is the proper way?” my thing was, “I’m going to try to absorb as much as I can and see what works for me.” It’s always that way: you’re sort of absorbing from the past, but you’re picking things up from the present.

Again, our conversation with Uri Caine will continue in the next installment.

I am pleased to announce that LACO’s Composer-in-Residence Uri Caine will be performing in the Los Angeles area in the near future. He will be playing solo piano at Amoeba Records, 6400 Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood on Wednesday evening, May 7th, at 7:00 PM. As you may remember, Caine composed the remarkable “Concerto for Two Pianos and Chamber Orchestra,” commissioned by Sound Investment and premiered by LACO in May 2006, featuring duo pianists Caine and LACO’s Music Director Jeffrey Kahane.

Born in Philadelphia, Caine studied piano with Bernard Peiffer and attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied composition with George Rochberg and George Crumb. At the same time, he was receiving a priceless jazz education, playing in the bands of such Philadelphia luminaries as drummers Philly Joe Jones and Mickey Roker, saxophonists Hank Mobley, Odean Pope, Robert “Bootsie” Barnes, and Grover Washington, Jr., trumpeter Johnny Coles, and bassist Jymie Merritt, among others. Since moving to New York City, Caine has recorded eighteen albums as a leader. His most recent, released on the Winter and Winter label in 2007, is The Classical Variations. He has recorded CDs featuring his jazz trio (such as Live at the Village Vanguard in 2004), his Bedrock Trio (Shelf-Life in 2005 and Bedrock in 2006), and his ensemble, performing arrangements of Mahler, Wagner, Beethoven, Bach, Schumann, and Mozart.

Caine is much in demand throughout the country and in Europe, receiving commissions and grants, premiering works, and performing at jazz and classical festivals, for instance, in Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Israel.

I recently had the opportunity to speak at some length with Uri Caine, and I’m delighted to share that conversation with you:

Bob: I know you have recently returned from Europe, Uri; in fact, you appeared with LACO during their recent triumphal tour on the continent. I can’t imagine how busy your schedule must be, and I’m most grateful to you for spending this time with us here in The Stream.

But let’s “jump right in” (pun intended): I’m curious to know how you got interested in music. I know that your father, a professor at Temple Law School, was not a professional musician. Were there other musicians in your family? Where did your interest in music come from?

Uri: Well, my cousin actually was a pianist—I was younger than he—and he went to Juilliard. When I was young, he would come to our house in the summer to practice. He practiced Brahm’s 2nd Piano Concerto for eight hours a day. This made a strong impression on me and I admired him. But my parents played a lot of music in the house. They played classical music, and my mother was into the Beatles, the music from Hair, and Aretha Franklin—the pop music of the day. My parents were also trying to speak Hebrew to us, so a lot of the music we heard was Israeli music, music from Morocco, Sephardic music that also had that function of helping us to learn Hebrew.

Bob: When did you begin lessons?

Uri: I started taking piano lessons when I was about seven or eight years old with a woman who lived in our neighborhood. I would say I was mildly into it; I was not as interested as, say, playing sports with kids on our block. But then I started to hear records of jazz, as well as the classical music around our house, and also to hear musicians in jazz clubs which really started to pique my interest. I asked my mother if I could switch piano teachers, so that I could start studying with a man named Bernard Peiffer. He was a French musician living in Philadelphia, an incredible virtuoso; in fact, you can get some CDs of his which have recently come out. He grew up playing classical music but then went to Paris and was influenced by the music of the Hot Club of France. He had to leave Europe as World War II was closing in and ended up coming to the United States and then to Philadelphia.

Bob: How old were you when you started hearing musicians in clubs?

Uri: My parents would take us to coffee houses when I was real young. They were getting involved in politics; my father was a legal advocate, and he became head of the ACLU in Philadelphia. In fact, my parents went to Woodstock and left my sister and me home (when we were old enough to have gone ourselves!)

Earlier on, there was a place near Philadelphia called the “Main Point” where people like Joni Mitchell and Stevie Wonder would appear; that was in the ’60s. There were a lot of jazz clubs and places to hear music in Philadelphia then. It wasn’t until later when I got more into jazz that I realized that some of the musicians I was seeing were the same ones that were playing on the records I was listening to.

Meeting Bernard, and the coterie of others who were studying with him, was a powerful experience for me. I studied with him until he passed away when I was 17. Those four years were really important.

Also, I started playing with other people my age that I knew in school. We had a group of kids, 14 or 15 years old; we were really into rehearsing. I don’t know how we sounded, but there were places for us to play. There was a place called “Togetherness House,” that was a popular meeting place in 1969.

There were a lot of older musicians playing in Philadelphia; it was a very vibrant music scene. I remember hearing Philly Joe Jones play, and Mickey Roker, and Hank Mobley… And, there were a lot of musicians coming through Philadelphia, because it was so close to New York.

Bob: What about your teacher? Was he supportive of all your extra-curricular activity?

Uri: Yes, but Bernard Peiffer was a very demanding teacher. He wasn’t just talking about practicing; he said you really have to think about what it means to be a musician, to learn about music history, jazz history, to start reading books. You have to learn to play with older people, with younger people, and you have to think about making choices. He was an open, wonderful man.

Bob: So you studied with him through high school?

Uri: Peiffer suggested that I leave high school a year early so that I could just practice music. He emphasized practicing in a lot of different ways. I started studying also with a composer named George Rochberg, who was teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. During the ‘50s and ‘60s, he was one of the very important American composers writing serial music. Then he had a change of heart, especially after his son died, and he started writing music that was tonal and that had quotations from tonal music. (In the ‘70s, it was considered heretical for an academic composer to be writing music that borrowed from a lot of different types of styles.)

Rochberg was a wonderful teacher. I told him when I first met him, “I really want to study how to write 12-tone music; I love Arnold Schoenberg, and I want to learn all the secrets of his music.” And he said, “I can teach you, but you have to submit to the discipline of writing music imitating older models.” We also studied Webern and Berg. He began by having me imitate Bach chorales, Mozart sonatas, Chopin preludes, and also songs in the style of Schumann. Initially I thought these exercises were academic, but once I started to work on them, I got excited. I realized that I can learn a lot from this music, and that this will help me with my jazz playing, which was my priority then.

Our interview with Uri Caine will continue in our next installment.

As I commented last time, it is unlikely that anyone has ever better exemplified excellence in both classical music and jazz than 78-year-old composer, conductor and pianist André Previn.

Previn’s discography numbers well into three figures and spans more than 50 years of recordings for all major labels. In addition to his roles as pianist, conductor, arranger, and orchestrator, Previn has also become a significant composer of no small acclaim. Multiple awards have documented his stature across the musical spectrum. During his career, he has been nominated for 16 Oscars and won four. He has been awarded ten Grammy Awards: two for Soloist or Small Group Jazz Performance; two for Best Sound Track Album; one for Best Orchestral Performance; two for Best Choral Performance; and one each for Best Classical Crossover Album, Best Chamber Music Performance, and Best Instrumental Soloist (for his Violin Concerto, recorded by Anne-Sophie Mutter). His “Triolet for Brass” (a particular favorite of mine) was recorded by the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble on its 1987 release PJBE Finale. In 1996 he was appointed an honorary Knight of the Order of the British Empire. His first opera, Streetcar Named Desire, premiered in 1998 in San Francisco and was subsequently broadcast on PBS and recorded by Deutsche Grammophon; it has been awarded the Grand Prix du Disque. Previn has been awarded both Austria’s and Germany’s Cross of the Order of Merit, as well as a 1998 Kennedy Center Honor for Lifetime Achievement. Musical America has named him Musician of the Year, and in 2005, he was awarded the Glenn Gould Prize.

In the late 1980s, André Previn returned to jazz, one of his first loves. With guitarist Mundell Lowe and bassist Ray Brown, he formed the André Previn Jazz Trio, which toured Japan, North America, and Europe in 1992 and 1993. He likewise resumed recording: Old Friends in 1992, and What Headphones? in 1993, which expanded his trio with the addition of Warren Vaché, Grady Tate, Jim Pugh, and LACO’s own Richard Todd. He also returned to touring as a solo jazz pianist, as he had in the 1950s, and as a duo with bassist David Finck.

Previn most recently demonstrated that he is still at the top of his form as a jazz improviser with his October 2007 Emarcy release, Alone: Ballads for Solo Piano. The disc features ten inimitable jazz interpretations from the Great American Song Book: Matt Dennis’ “Angel Eyes”; Cole Porter’s “What Is This Thing Called Love” and “Night and Day”; Richard Rodgers’ “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was,” “Ship Without a Sail,” and “It Might As Well Be Spring”; Vernon Duke’s “I Can’t Get Started”; Kurt Weill’s “My Ship”; and Hoagy Carmichael’s “Skylark,” in addition to three of Previn’s own tunes: “André’s Blues,” “Darkest before the Dawn” and “You’re Gonna Hear from Me.”

Unlike some jazz performances of old standards, in which the primary theme is nearly overwhelmed by riffs, substitutions, and embellishments, however, Previn treats the original melodies of each song with respect bordering on reverence. (Some exploratory polytonality in “Night and Day” and “Skylark,” a number of tasty modulations, and some delicious re-harmonization of “Bewitched” are about as far out as it gets.) As Previn told Barrymore Laurence Scherer in a cultural conversation in The Wall Street Journal, “That hard-core jazz style is wonderful, too, but I think that in slow ballads, it’s different, especially the ones I chose—the melodies are so good to begin with that I don’t like to ring changes on them until they’re unrecognizable.”

When Chris Roberts, chairman of Decca Label Group for the U.S., approached him to record a solo piano CD, Previn was initially hesitant. “I told them, ‘I have to be honest with you; the style I would play in is kind of forgotten today, and it’s possible that no one would buy it.’” Roberts wasn’t having any of it. “So, I agreed to a recording date. Then, all I did was give them a list of 50 tunes that I quite like. And they got me 50 lead sheets, as it were, all placed on a table next to the piano. I would pick up the top sheet and begin to play it, and if I couldn’t think of anything to make of it instantly, I’d put it down and pick up the next one in the pile and proceed with that. So I made this CD in one afternoon, with every track done in one ‘take.’”

Although none of the renditions are “hard-core jazz,” to use Previn’s words, the CD is nonetheless exclusively improvisational; as he says, “If you’re going to make anything even resembling jazz or related to it, the music should be totally improvised.” For the New York-based recording session, Previn played a Viennese-made Bösendorfer piano; the tone of these instruments is characterized by a warm, rich fullness. As a result, the performance has a lushness that is remarkable. Previn again: “These are lovely, soft songs. Moreover, the great advantage to playing alone is that there are no harmonic restrictions—I don’t have to match what I’m doing to what another player is doing. So I had some fun.”

Previn was asked by Scherer whether he would play any of these pieces again the same way he does on the CD. “No. And I can prove that, because I did a jazz concert at Tanglewood, and Dave Finck, my bass player, suggested that I do some of the things on ‘Alone.’ And I had to look them up to see what they were, because I had forgotten what I had done.

“Of course, if you are thinking in a general way, all of jazz performance contains certain elements of memory—certain patterns that work in different pieces, certain tricks, if you like. But if you’re playing with another musician whose creativity challenges you, or if you’re playing all alone, there’s more improvisation than at any other time. And for someone in my profession, it’s a great luxury to spend all night improvising.”

Discussing these songs, Previn indulged in a bit of reminiscence about working “with a lot of the really best songwriters during my old MGM days. And some of them greatly disliked jazz improvising. Cole Porter, for instance: I was about to start writing the arrangements for the film of ‘Kiss Me Kate,’ into which they had interpolated his song ‘From This Moment On.’ And Cole said to me, ‘Oh, by the way, there’s a record of that song by Woody Herman’s orchestra. And it contains everything I hate about big-band writing—it destroys the melody, it destroys the rhythm, the harmonies are all weird, the tempo is insane. But I know all your arrangements for movies and they’re so wonderfully theatrical that I don’t need to fear.’ And I said, ‘Thank you, Cole,’ and I never told him that I had made that arrangement for Woody Herman!”

Arguably, no musician has ever better exemplified excellence in both classical music and jazz than 78-year-old composer, conductor and pianist André Previn. Previn’s ascent to the pinnacle in both fields has been an interesting story, and one with more than a few remarkable twists.

Andreas Ludwig Priwin was born in Berlin, Germany on April 6, 1929, the youngest child of a wealthy, musical Russian Jewish family. His father Jacob was a respected attorney and accomplished amateur pianist, and his late brother Steve was a noted director. When André was discovered at age six to have perfect pitch, he was enrolled in the Berlin Hochschule für Musik. In 1938, ahead of the Nazi menace, his family moved to Paris, where Previn studied at the Conservatoire; the following year, on the advice of his uncle (who was working as a film cutter at MGM), the family emigrated to the United States and settled here in Los Angeles, where André became a naturalized American citizen in 1943 at the age of 14.

Previn continued his musical training here, studying piano, theory and composition with Joseph Achron and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and practicing up to six hours a day. He worked professionally as a jazz pianist and arranger for MGM while still in high school. At the age of 16, Previn’s keen study of the recordings of pianists Art Tatum and Thomas “Fats” Waller led to his substituting on a film track for José Iturbi in a scene requiring a jazz solo that Iturbi couldn’t play!

In 1945, Previn made his first recording for the Sunset label; his early recordings for RCA were substantial hits and earned him considerable success. At his summer 1946 graduation from Beverly Hills High School, Previn on the piano accompanied Richard M. Sherman, playing the flute. Coincidentally, twenty-one years later, both composers won Oscars for different films, each winning in a separate musical category!

After his army service, during which he studied conducting in San Francisco with Pierre Monteux, Previn settled in Los Angeles and resumed an active career as a pianist, working with musicians such as Benny Goodman, Herb Ellis, Shorty Rogers, Pete Rugolo, Jackie Cain and Roy Kral, and Ella Fitzgerald. Previn played with the acclaimed Jazz at the Philharmonic All-Stars here in Los Angeles in 1952, and in 1956, his collaboration with drummer Shelly Manne on the album My Fair Lady started a fashion for jazz albums based on the music from Broadway musicals that continued to be popular for many years. In fact, the My Fair Lady album was the first gold jazz recording in history.

Previn’s career flourished in the late 1950s and early 1960s with musical hits that he adapted from the theatrical stage for films, and original scores he composed and conducted for other musicals and dramas. Having first signed a contract at MGM when he turned 18, he became musical director there, where he was nominated for sixteen Academy Awards, and won four.

Success in the jazz and Hollywood arenas did not satisfy his other musical calling, however. According to his own account in No Minor Chords—My Days in Hollywood, he longed to be part of the inner circle of what he regarded as the legitimate world of classical music. Hollywood was not the place to write and perform serious music. In 1965 he began recording with the London Symphony Orchestra, and from 1967 to 1970, he was conductor-in-chief of the Houston Symphony Orchestra.

In 1968, Previn assumed the position of principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, a post he held until 1979 (he has been Conductor Laureate since 1993). From 1976 until 1984, he served as music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra; in both of these roles he brought significant visibility to the orchestra through television appearances. In London, the vehicle was André Previn’s Music Night; in Pittsburgh, a TV series entitled Previn and the Pittsburgh.

Previn was named music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1984, officially assuming the role in 1985 and continuing until 1989. (He also served as music director and then as principal conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from 1985-1991.) In 2006, he completed a four-year stint as music director of the Oslo Philharmonic. He has been a frequent guest with the world’s major orchestras, both in concerts and recordings, appearing annually with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, and Vienna Philharmonic, to name a few. As Previn himself says, “I’m the only Vienna Philharmonic conductor who ever worked the Apollo Theatre.”

I’ll be back with Part 2 of our story next week.

Here’s the situation: Veteran Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke is leaving her seat as of July 1, and there’s a fierce contest being waged between State Senator Mark Ridley Thomas and LA City Councilmember Bernard Parks to fill it. Throughout her years representing the Second District, Burke has been a major force in ensuring that the County Arts Commission remained stable, even as – or perhaps, probably, because – the City of LA’s Department of Cultural Affairs was nearly dismantled several years ago, and the California Arts Council was all but annihilated the year before that. In fact, Burke was the deciding vote to approve a 2007 budget measure that doubled the Arts Commission’s grant budget. The upshot of that move? More dollars for more arts for more people across the 80 municipalities that make up Los Angeles County.

Putting a new Supervisor in the District 2 seat who believes as deeply as Burke does in public investment for the arts isn’t – surprise! – just a matter of who you vote for. (After all, only residents of the Second District can actually vote in this election, though the winner will undoubtedly cast pivotal votes on any number of issues – including arts funding – that now divide the five-member Board.) The real key is putting the leading candidates for the job on notice that all County residents expect the incoming Supervisor to live up to the high standard Burke has set as an arts advocate.

To that end, Arts for LA is hosting a candidate forum with Mark Ridley-Thomas on that very topic this coming Saturday, April 12, from 10:30 am to 12:00 noon at the Veterans Memorial Complex in Culver City. A strong showing at this event – and not just from artists and organization staffers, but from board members, donors, educators and everyday Joes/Josies – will reinforce for Ridley-Thomas that there is broad public support for the arts community and the County Arts Commission. And a poor showing on Saturday? Well, you know the answer to that.

RSVP for this free event at the Arts for LA website, and I’ll see you there!

PS – Arts for LA will host another forum in May with Bernard Parks. Check their website for updates.

On Saturday, March 29, my husband and I attended LACO’s London Triumph concert at the Alex Theatre in Glendale. The music was spectacular as always. But what I enjoyed even more than the music was observing just how close all of the musicians, staff, and directors are at LACO.

This concert marked two important events for the orchestra. First, it was LACO’s first concert since returning from its European Tour. Associate Executive Director Ruth Eliel told the audience that the tour was a success and that the LACO musicians were hailed for their musicianship as well as their smiles. I have no doubt that that is true. Smiling faces is one of the aspects of LACO that I have enjoyed the most. It is always apparent that the musicians are having fun performing and in turn the audience always seems to be entertained. LACO is no “stuffy” orchestra only for those with musical knowledge and experience! Instead, all kinds of people can and do enjoy the concerts. I have had so much fun attending LACO over the past two years and I hope that more and more people will come to the orchestra and find out how great it can be!

The other event was Principal Cellist Douglas Davis’s performance in CPE Bach’s Cello Concerto in A major. This marked his last solo piece for LACO as he will be retiring this year. As the Newbie here, it was especially remarkable to see how much Mr. Davis is loved and how much he will be missed. We heard emotional words from the Executive and Associate Executive Directors as well as a letter from Jeffrey Kahane about how wonderful the time with Mr. Davis has been. It was wonderful to see how cohesive the orchestra is and how well they work together. Congratulations, Mr. Davis!

Well, there will be one more LACO concert for me as LACO’s Newbie, May’s Pastoral & World Premiere. I greatly look forward to Beethoven’s “Pastoral” —it’s one of my favorite pieces!

When I caught sight of the title of Robert Fulford’s essay in Canada’s National Post (hat tip to Arts & Letters Daily), “My church: the mind’s ‘theatre of simultaneous possibilities,’” it rocketed me back more than a decade to my voice teacher’s living room/studio and her proclamation one evening between lessons, “[Music] is my religion.” I recognized her feeling immediately and began to think of the parallels: performers and composers as priests and priestesses; historians and theoreticians as monks and nuns; the audience as congregants; and all of us as seekers of spiritual transcendence.

In his essay, Fulford puts forth the idea that mere exposure to, or even appreciation of, the arts cannot transform a soul, but does offer “the chance to live more expansive, more enjoyable and deeper lives,” and, “gives us, as well, the opportunity to look at everything around us in a slightly different light.”

So I ask you, dear blog browsers, what makes music sacred to you?