[Dixielandjazz] The Tao of Solo Piano

[Stephen G Barbone]

Lonely Voyage of Player, Piano and Audience

By NATE CHINEN - NY TIMES - JULY 3, 2011

CRAIG TABORN was deep into a solo expedition one recent evening at the  
Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan, seeming for all the world like  
someone cracking a secret code. Poised for action at a grand piano, he  
disrupted an expectant stillness with a turbulent digression. With his  
left hand he formed the lopsided bass-clef vamp of a piece called  
“Avenging Angel”; with his right he improvised complex annotations,  
firing them off in boldface or sleek cursive. It was taut, transfixing  
music, sharpened by the austerity of the setting: just Mr. Taborn at  
the piano, on his own.

Solo piano, as a mode of performance, holds a privileged place in  
jazz, with a history predating the origins of the genre. What’s  
striking is the way that artists keep renewing the relevance of the  
format, which hasn’t changed much, in mechanical terms, for well over  
a century. Just within the last month or so there have been  
accomplished new releases not only from Mr. Taborn — “Avenging Angel”  
doubles as the name of his ECM debut — but also Gonzalo Rubalcaba and  
Larry Goldings, pianists of wildly different temperament. These and a  
few other recent albums share an understanding of jazz’s far-reaching  
solo-piano tradition. The diversity among them nudges that territory  
still further.

The dual objective of a solitary jazz pianist has always been  
entertainment and enlightenment; it’s the relationship between the two  
that has shifted over the years. Any pianist approaching the task  
today has to begin by deciding where to come down on the issue, since  
precursors lurk at every point along the spectrum. The most compelling  
solo jazz piano music has a way of blurring the lines, valorizing  
technical astonishments mainly as a means to an end, while delivering  
less tangible, more mysterious rewards.

At the turn of the last century, when Scott Joplin published “Maple  
Leaf Rag,” enjoyment naturally led the agenda. Jazz history has since  
claimed the song as a bedrock text; it leads off both the “The  
Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz,” compiled in 1973, and “Jazz:  
The Smithsonian Anthology,” issued this year. (Both compilations  
feature multiple versions, first as intended by Joplin and then as  
interpreted by jazz musicians.) A genuine sensation at a time when  
sheet-music sales provided the metric for success, “Maple Leaf Rag”  
probably won some of its admirers firsthand, so to speak, as they  
grappled with the canny arpeggios juddering through the song.

Improvisation became more of a priority with the advent of the stride  
style, which featured a steady left-hand chug to mask the absence of  
accompaniment. Among the early stride heroes, starting in the 1920s,  
were James P. Johnson and Fats Waller. The following decade brought  
solo pianism ranging from the terse economy of Teddy Wilson to the  
sparkling fullness of Earl Hines. And then there was Art Tatum, a solo  
pianist of such spectacular authority that many would argue he has yet  
to be surpassed.

Tatum drew on so much music, from stride to classical, that he gave  
the impression of endless possibility at the piano. He also mastered  
the feeling of surprise. His playing was as much about discovery as  
dexterity. But his legend has coalesced around the issue of technique,  
sometimes to the point of fetishization. A few years ago a company  
called Zenph Sound Innovations staged an unmanned performance of his  
album “Piano Starts Here,” using proprietary technology and a Yamaha  
Disklavier. (A CD was later issued under his name, with the subtitle  
“Live at the Shrine,” which is accurate only to a point.)

The evolution of modern jazz put a premium on cooperative rhythm- 
section interplay, making the self-contained world of solo piano seem  
a bit like a noble antiquity. Bebop in particular produced more than  
one generation of players with a powerful right hand and a subordinate  
left hand: the piano-playing equivalent of a fiddler crab. And yet  
there continued to be those who understood solo playing as its own  
separate discipline, artists like Erroll Garner, Jaki Byard and Dave  
McKenna. The great oblique modernist Thelonious Monk did some strong,  
distilled work in the format, notably on “Alone in San Francisco,”  
recorded in 1959 and reissued by Concord last month.

The first word in that album title crops up often in modern jazz’s  
solo-piano literature, almost like an existential cry. Ray Bryant, who  
died last month at 79, released his first solo album, “Alone with the  
Blues,” in 1958. A decade later Bill Evans named his first true solo  
album “Alone,” and any hint of vulnerability in the title was probably  
genuine. He was known to have had steep trepidation about solo  
playing, with its unforgiving clarity and lack of interplay. (His  
previous solo effort, “Conversations With Myself,” famously hedged the  
issue by featuring three piano tracks, overdubbed.)

Evans made a sequel, “Alone Again,” in 1975, the same year that  
“Alone, Again” was released by his steelier contemporary Paul Bley.  
And if solo playing elicited anxiety for a pianist like Evans, it has  
been nothing but liberating for Mr. Bley, who is now 78 and has a body  
of highly regarded solo albums behind him. Some of these — like his  
2007 ECM album “Solo in Mondsee” — revolve around blank-canvas  
improvisation, underscoring the appeal of the format to pianists of  
avant-garde temperament. Cecil Taylor, the free-jazz paragon, has been  
a lionized solo pianist for most of his long career. But the  
imperative of exploration doesn’t stop with free improvisers; it has  
become a necessary subtext even for a solo pianist engaging with songs.

The French pianist Martial Solal, now in his 80s, is known for pairing  
Tatumesque virtuosity with a wryly digressive approach to melody. Last  
year Geri Allen released an album of gorgeous, rippling originals  
inspired by the pianism of Mr. Taylor, Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner.

This spring two leading contemporary pianists released solo albums  
that treat songs like discrete excursions: “Alone at the  
Vanguard” (there’s that word again), by Fred Hersch, on Palmetto; and  
“Live in Marciac,” by Brad Mehldau, on Nonesuch. “Labyrinth,” a new  
album from Denny Zeitlin, just out on Sunnyside, leaves a similar  
impression. It bears noting that these are all live recordings: jazz  
is a music of interaction even in its strictest form, and a lone  
pianist playing to an audience isn’t, in the end, really alone.

Which may be one way to explain the predominance of Keith Jarrett in  
the solo field over the last 40 years. His 1975 “Köln Concert,” on  
ECM, is the best-selling solo-piano album of all time, and the  
cornerstone of a rarefied career. An improviser with the instincts of  
a conjurer, Mr. Jarrett often communicates inspired stoicism in his  
solo playing, even when he’s flirting with sentiment. The presence of  
a worshipful audience helps his cause. . . .



The article then goes on to review "modern jazz" pianists new albums  
which are of little or no interest to listees.



Cheers,

Steve Barbone

www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband