Transcriber: Ivana Korom Reviewer: Jeong-Lan Kinser
Thank you.
I'm quite good on the piano,
but I'm not very good at speaking, so, bear with me.
I'd like to talk a little bit about what I do for a living
which is mainly improvising.
I looked up the definition of improvising in the dictionary, and it says for music:
"to create and perform spontaneously without preparation."
And the general definition is
"to produce or make something from whatever is available"
which, I quite like that definition more
because as a jazz musician when I'm playing with other musicians,
that's really what we're doing all the time, we're listening to each other,
and throwing ideas around,
and responding to what's happening to feel the improvising.
Improvising, I think, is this completely natural thing
that we all do all the time.
I think when you see a child go to an instrument,
the first thing they'll do is to improvise,
especially if they haven't learned any music before.
They'll sit down, and they'll just start playing,
and I think that's such a wonderful thing.
And in fact, actually everyone can improvise.
Sometimes I speak to the often classical musicians,
who say, "Oh no, I can't improvise..." and they're terrified;
but actually, most of the time, well, in fact, all the time,
they find that actually, of course they can improvise,
it's just that in order to enjoy it,
they have to put aside their ideas,
like the previous speaker would say without perfection,
not being good enough, and all that sort of stuff.
And they often find that this lovely music comes out.
Now, something like this always fascinated me about improvising
is that in classical music, as a western classical tradition,
improvising was really a huge part of being a musician.
So all the composers improvised,
a lot of the musicians improvised,
if they did a concert, they would include improvising as part of it.
Apparently, Liszt,
would go, when he was performing a concert somewhere,
he'd go to the local opera or theater, and he'd listen to all the themes
and the songs that were being performed there
and then he'd take those themes and improvise on them in his concerts.
There's a great quote from Czerny. He was...
he wrote studies for the piano, he was Beethoven's student.
And he said of Beethoven's improvising:
"His improvisations were most beautiful and striking
in whatever company he might chance to be.
He knew how to produce such an effect upon every hearer
that frequently, not an eye remained dry
and many would break out into loud sobs."
(Laughter)
Now, I personally would love to see Bach or Beethoven improvising
that would be a big phenomenon,
but what I'd like to just quickly do
and demonstrate on the piano is just how as a jazz musician,
how we might improvise on a particular chord sequence
or in a song that you might recognize.
But I'll start off making it a bit ambiguous;
and if any of you do recognize what it is, feel free to shout out,
and then I'll stop.
(Piano music)
Any idea?
(Piano music)
(Applause)
Now interestingly enough, but I'm not quite sure why,
but improvising in classical music at the beginning of the 20th century,
it seemed to die out.
Which, I'm not quite sure why that happened.
It could be that in classical music,
things got a lot more perfectionist;
musicians concentrating solely on
performing one of the composers' work, or maybe two or three composers' work;
and they stopped being all-round musicians
as Beethoven would've composed, and improvised, and performed.
And that was the reason.
But then the interesting thing happened,
the jazz musicians seemed to take over the job of improvising.
And so it carried on, and we have the whole history of jazz,
which is really what attracted me in the first place.
I just loved the fact that there would be playing stuff
that they didn't know whether they were going to play.
It was crafting the unexpected.
And for me, the jazz side of it that also appealed to me,
was the African rhythms and the feel,
and the combination of those two things completely got me hooked.
People like John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Erroll Garner, Keith Jarrett,
and also Wayne Shorter, who's a great saxophone player,
who I was fortunate enough to actually end up working with for a while.
And I just loved what they did with music.
And this whole improvising thing completely appealed to me;
I did actually used to improvise before I discovered all this,
without really knowing what I was doing.
I have taught jazz piano probably for about 25 years now;
and you might think: "Well, how can you teach improvising?
I mean, it's supposed to be spontaneous music.
How do you teach that?"
And then the answer really is that improvising with music
is very much like improvising in anything else.
For instance, having a conversation with someone is improvising.
But in order to communicate your ideas,
you do need some kind of language and grammar
which is what, for the jazz improviser, is learning the scales.
You know, learning the chords, learning what things work, when, where;
and then the idea is that when you actually come to perform,
you forget about all that stuff.
So just as in when you have a conversation
you're not thinking at the beginning of the conversation:
"Well I want to go here,
and then after he's answered that bit there, I should do this answer."
It just comes out spontaneously, and that's exactly what we're trying to...
We try to be improvisors with music,
and this is to be in exactly the same place where you're open,
you don't have an idea where you want to go,
and you just follow where it does go.
And one of the things, apart from teaching the nuts and bolts of it,
one of the things I find fascinating
is the thing that holds us back
will stop the improvising being good.
in a word, it's really thinking too much.
it's judging what's coming out,
and deciding: "Oh, this isn't good," or "I should more of this," or...
It's all that sort of interfering with your natural musicality
that actually stops the improvising from being good.
And sometimes when I'm teaching, sometimes I feel my job is to say,
"No, listen; actually, what you have musically is fantastic.
it's just that you're not allowing it to come out and you're stifling yourself."
And I often say to people with that encouragement.
"Actually sit down and improvise again, and be completely lost in it."
And as soon as they're lost in it, I find I'm lost in it too,
and it really is a wonderful experience.
So I think...
one of the sort of the benefits of this skill, if you like,
of being vulnerable and allowing something
that you don't really necessarily understand to come out.
I think one of the advantages of that
is that it does give you confidence and faith in yourself.
A very funny story actually, it was a matter of fact in the Jazz Factory,
and I was teaching this chap who played saxophone;
and he hadn't really played that much.
He loved it, and we'd practice for a few weeks,
and after about six weeks we had a concert,
and he did the concert, and it went really well.
But he came up afterwards to me and he said:
"I was in the Air Force, and I was a fighter pilot.
I'd been shot at many times by people wanting to kill me.
but I've never been as scared
as I was standing up there playing the jazz saxophone."
Which I think was wonderful.
Obviously not wonderful being scared.
(Laughter)
So, now just to show how you can overcome that fear
of, "I'm not sure what I'm doing,"
some great things can come from it.
And my favorite improvisors are the ones
that are constantly not trying to impress you, or not trying to be clever,
but are constantly just being open
and let it, in a sort of child-like innocence come out.
And I think when you hear that, it's a lovely thing.
I'm also aware that improvising, and music generally,
can be very therapeutic for people.
I once met a very severely autistic youngster
who actually played jazz.
He was very difficult, he couldn't really communicate verbally;
he had no real social skills and interaction skills,
but we sat and played jazz together.
And we communicated, and it was fantastic.
You know, it was just lovely that he'd found...
or that there was a way for him to communicate that didn't require
the normal social skills that most of us have, but some people don't.
So it was fantastic.
I do teach a bit young kids.
I have been in the project with the Jazz Rainbow project,
and we go to primary schools and sometimes secondary schools.
And we get kids to come and improvise and it's, most of the time, very positive,
and you definitely see people coming out of themselves,
and starting to realize actually: "Wow, there's quite a lot of creativity in here;
if I just allow it to come out."
And that's lovely when someone realizes
that they have something really nice to contribute
to the musical world and the world at large.
That’s really all I have to say
except that if you do get a chance to support improvised music,
please do go along, go see a jazz kid or classical improvised kid,
and there's definitely a really nice atmosphere
about that quality of unexpectedness at these events.
That would be great, I'll just play,
I'll just completely improvise with no agenda to finish off my talk.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
(Piano music)
(Applause)