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| Pianist Kenny Barron |
Kenny Barron, 74, has long been hailed
as one of the finest jazz pianists around. Known for his elegant and his delicate
playing. When Barron lays out on a ballad,
for example, his fingertips glide across the keys as if covered with feathers. Even
on up-tempo tunes when Barron is raising holy hell his playing and improvising are
imbued with loads of sophistication. A native of Philadelphia Barron built a
sound reputation with some leading figures in jazz such as James Moody, Dizzy
Gillespie, Stan Getz and Freddie Hubbard. If proof is needed that Barron is deserving
of all the high praise afforded him over the years-- nine Grammy nominations, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a National Endowment of the Arts Jazz master is a taste of some of his accolades-- survey any area of his
discography as a bandleader. You’ll likely find trio gems, duets with the likes of
Dave Holland and Regina Carter, masterpieces with the legendary group Sphere,
and some solo outings where Barron’s virtuosity is heart stopping. In 2016,
Barron made one of his best trio recordings yet “Book of Intuition” with his
longstanding trio, proving although he’s been active nearly five decades his
chops remain in mint condition. Last week, Barron released another wonderful
album “Concentric Circles,” a quintet date of mostly originals. I Dig Jazz spoke
with Barron Monday morning about an array of topics dear to him such as his
affinity for Detroit pianists, how the jazz scene has changed over the years,
and the enjoyment he still derives from composing and recording.
I’d like to start with something you said the last time you played in
Detroit with Regina Carter.
Okay.
You were interviewed before the concert and you were asked about your
musical influences. You said you were influenced principally by some of the
great Detroit piano players.,
That’s right.
You mentioned Barry Harris, Hank Jones, and Tommy Flanagan. Will you
expound on how their playing touched you?
I first heard Tommy when I was in
junior high school. A friend of mine had this recording. I think it was either
a Miles Davis record or a Sonny Rollins record. They were doing a Dave Brubeck
piece ’In Your Own Sweet Way’. What immediately struck
me about Tommy was his touch. Just the way he touched the piano. It was very
light, very delicate, and very clear. That was the thing. And then, the lines
that Tommy played made sense. It was like speaking in sentences. It wasn't just
running up and down the scales. He actually played ideas, beautiful ideas. That
was the thing that got me about Tommy. When I was young I really tried to
emulate him. Hank was the same way. He played the same way, a pearly touch and
just beautiful ideas.
So, do you believe that kind of sophisticated playing is still out
there today?
Young people are doing different
things today. That kind of lyricism isn't necessarily there. Young players got
other things happening. The stuff they play is maybe a little more
sophisticated in terms of rhythm and stuff like that. They're more harmonic
now, and not necessarily a lot more sophisticated than 40 years ago. They're
still melodic but in a different way. Although there are some who rely primarily on
technique. I won’t mention any names. That kind of playing leaves me cold a little bit.
Do you believe younger players are more technically driven nowadays?
Yeah, I think that's just mostly
among younger people. Another reason is probably that many of them have been
going to school, academia and the conservatories. Conservatories kind of rely
on that. That's a very important aspect to conservatories. There's nothing
wrong with that, but I don't think it should be done at the expense of
emotional content.
Does emotional content come with age?
When you've lived a little
longer, you got something to talk about. I think that's a big part of it. Just
living longer. Then you'll have something to say.
On the Detroit scene, there's a lot of good young players that are
coming up. When I listen to them their technical proficiency is apparent and
they can really play. They have a lot of technique, but I wonder if they ever
listen to the masters because I can't hear the history of their instruments
when they play.
That's all part of it. For a lot
of young players, they don't go back far enough. For a lot of them, the
saxophone history starts at maybe John Coltrane and that's old fashion to them.
Never mind Ben Webster or Coleman
Hawkins, and saxophonist like Stan Getz. They don't listen to that. There's a
lot to be learned from listening to older people. One of the things that we
were able to do years ago is you can listen to somebody's sound and identify
them. That's hard to do now.
Do you think it's partly because
their training is coming from academia as opposed to good down home jam
sessions?
That's just part of it. Definitely, that's a big part of it. There's so
much reliance on technique and everybody kind of sounds the same.
Do you think it can ever go back to that? Where everybody is
technically literate and they have their own uniqueness, their own sound, too?
I think it can go back to that. I
don't know what it will take, but I think it can go back to that. Most of the
stuff is academically driven. It's a different scene so it's hard to ask a person to just get out there and try to
be unique. First of all, there aren't the opportunities, so that's one thing
that's missing.
There aren't the opportunities
for young people to get out there and play. When I was coming up there were a
lot of different bands. So many bands, professional bands and then local groups
that you could play in. Those opportunities don't exist anymore. It's not the
young player's fault they don't get that
kind of experience anymore.
What's happening here in Detroit is that a lot of the young musicians
graduate high school or college and go straight out and start their own bands
as opposed serving an apprenticeship in an established band.
Well,
again that's one of the things that doesn't happen anymore. You don't get a
chance to serve an apprenticeship with
anybody. There's a lot of experience they're missing. It's hard when right out
of college, you're a bandleader. Leading
a band comes with a lot of responsibility. You're the band leader, that's more
than a person who calls the tunes.
How long
did it take before you felt comfortable with leading? You've played in some
great bands over the course of your career.
I don't know what year it was,
but I just maybe struck out in the 70's or 80's. I first started locally, in
New York. Going around with the trio and that kind of escalated. Then after I
had worked with Stan Getz, it kind of blossomed a little bit more. To where I
had an agent in Europe who started booking me on European tours with a trio, which
at the time was Ben Riley and Ray Drummond. We did a lot of tours. We did
several records in Europe. Then after that, I had a quintet for a while with
Victor Lewis and David Williams, Eddie Henderson, and John Stubblefield.
That's a great band.
We had fun. Back to the trio,
between the trio and quintet so my trio now is Kiyoshi Kitagawa, on bass and
Johnathan Blake, on the drums. We’re coming to Detroit as a quintet, we just
finished last night actually at a club called the Jazz Standard in New York.Then in the quintet, there's Kiyoshi Kitagawa and Johnathan
Blake, and Dayna Stephens on tenor and Mike Rodriguez on trumpet, fantastic
players.
Which setting do you enjoy playing in the most a trio or a slightly
larger ensemble?
I like both. With the trio, I may play more standards. I can kind of
go in any direction at any moment. Not
so much with a quintet because you have horn players, and they have parts to
play. Solo is probably the hardest of all for me.
Playing solo?
Yeah. It's always scary at least in
the beginning.
How so? What do you find so daunting?
There's always just little knots
in my stomach before I play. Which is normal I think.
How was it playing with the great stylist Stan Getz?
It was great. He was also a very
lyrical player which I can certainly appreciate, and he had a beautiful sound.
Very identifiable. That's what I'm talking about. He had an identifiable sound. Even my wife, who's not
a musician, she can identify Stan. She can identify John Coltrane because she
grew up listening to music.
Did Getz approach you about joining his band?
He got my number from somebody
and the first time I played with him, I actually took Chick Corea's place. Stan
had a band that was playing mostly Chick Corea's music, and they called it the
Captain Marvel band. It was Stanley Clark on bass and Tony Williams on drums.
I
took Chick's place with that group for just maybe two or three weeks?
That was kind of the beginning and maybe sometime
after that, Stan started calling me regularly to come out to California to play.
He was an artist-in-residence at Stanford University so I would go out there and
play with him. Then it escalated into a summer tour with all the festivals and
stuff and then full time.
Another of your big named bands was Sphere named in honor of the great
Thelonious Monk. Was Monk another of your chief influences?
Yeah, he was a big influence, but
the thing is with that band we tried not to play like Monk because Monk was
such a stylist. Monk was one of those musicians who could play any standard and
it sounded as if he wrote it. We had two guys in the band who played with Monk
Charlie Rouse and Ben Riley, so it was a great opportunity to play some of
Monk's music. They knew how Monk’s music was supposed to sound. How it was
supposed to be. That was a great opportunity and it was a cooperative band
without a leader.
We all shared in the
responsibilities. Everybody got paid the same amount of money. One person took
care of this, one person took care of transportation, so it was a shared
responsibility.
I recall
watching the Thelonious Monk documentary ‘Straight No Chaser’. In a scene, you,
Barry Harris, and Tommy Flanagan were sitting at the piano trying to dissect one
of Monk’s compositions. Do you recall that documentary and is Monk’s music
really that complicated to dissect and to play?
Some of his melodies are there's a tune called
‘Four in One’ and ‘Trinkle ‘. Technically those are very tricky. They're like, finger-busters. That’s what I call them.
Harmonically, it's not that complicated. Sometimes it moves in different
directions than you might think, but harmonically it's not that complicated.
The melodies sometimes are pretty complicated. Then the other thing is that sometimes his stuff is deceptively simple
harmonically. So simple that it's hard to play.
Did you ever get any pointers from Monk?
No, I never really got a chance
to really meet him. I would go see him at the Village Vanguard. I was very
young and to me, he was kind of a larger
than life figure. I knew Ben Riley. He was playing with him at the time. But Ben didn't really introduce me to him. I
wasn't the kind of person to go up and say hey how are you doing and meet
him. That Just wasn't me.
Going back to the Detroit pianists did you ever get a chance to get any
pointers from Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan or Barry Harris?
Oh yeah, with Tommy, I did a
recording with him, a duo recording. Two pianos.
That was for a Japanese label. For me, that was scary because I was playing
with my idol. I couldn't play for listening. I wound up doing this gig in the
90's. I toured in Japan, with ten piano players. It was called 100 Golden
Fingers. I was the youngest one. It was
Tommy Flanagan, Hank Jones, and pianists
like Cedar Walton, John Lewis, Roger Kellaway, and Monty Alexander. I had a
chance to listen to Tommy every night for three or four weeks. It was great. I
learned just from listening to him. Hank was kind of the acknowledged master back then. Whenever Hank
played, everybody was right there backstage,
checking him out. That was a great experience and no egos. No egos at all.
How fertile was the jazz scene in Philly back in the day when you
decided you wanted to be a jazz musician? Did you get your act together there
or did you have to go away to really understand the music?
No, I kind of had good beginnings
there because Philly had a pretty good jazz scene. There were lots of small
clubs where young players could play and work on their stuff. Then Philly also
had dances they were called cabarets where people would bring their food and
stuff and drinks. It was like a big party and so you would have to play for
dancing, but what they danced to was jazz. Then there were some rhythm and
blues bands, so a lot of those gigs and then a lot of little small bars in
Philly I used to work at. Then Philly had two major jazz clubs. One was called
The Showboat and the other was called Pep's.
I liked to go there.
Yusef Lateef did a great recording at Pep's.
That's right. ‘Live at Pep's’. I have
that recording
At what point did you decide jazz
was going to be your thing? Was it early on? Had you been exposed to it as a
kid?
Oh yeah, definitely. I was
definitely exposed to it. My oldest brother was a musician who played tenor. He
had a whole bunch of records. When I was 10 years old I used to go and find those
records and listen to them. We also had a great 24-hour
jazz station. I've never really thought about anything else. I just wanted to play
music that was it.
Did you go from Philly to New York?
Yeah, I graduated from high
school in 1960 and I stayed in Philly for
a year. In 1961, I decided to move to New York. My brother was already there. I
wound up actually meeting with a bass player from Detroit and he was living
right next door to my brother. He said
I'm hardly ever here because I'm always at my girlfriend's house. You can stay
here, just take care of the rent, so I did. Rent was like sixty dollars a month
or something like that. The New York scene was great.
It was really beautiful.
How long did it take you to find work there? Did you kind of make a
name for yourself right away or was it a process?
It was a process. I don't think
anybody can just go there and sweep the city by storm. That's not going to happen.
Where I was living. I lived down in the east village. I could walk to the two
major jazz clubs. One of the clubs was the Five Spot and the other one was the
Jazz Gallery. I happen to go to the Five Spot one night and James Moody was
playing. He was playing with a great sextet and he knew my brother. He asked me
to sit in. I said sure, so I played and shortly after that he hired me. That
was kind of my first break in New York City and that wasn't long after I'd
moved there so I was very lucky in that way. Luckily because of him, I got the
job with Dizzy. He recommended me for the tour with Dizzy. That was a really
big step for me.
Has there ever been a period where it got so bad or so difficult to
make a living as a musician that you wanted to quit and pursue something else?
I stayed with Dizzy for four
years. I quit, and it was kind of an impulsive thing. I had just tied the knot
and then my wife was pregnant with our second child. I wanted to stay in town
for a while, I didn't want to travel anymore. Being young, I didn't really save
any money. That was a really dumb move, but we got through it. I thought about
a day job. I just didn't know what kind of day job I wanted. I'd actually got
some applications for airlines and stuff like that. Luckily, I didn't have to
do any of that. By that time, I was living in Brooklyn and it turned out Freddie
Hubbard lived right around the corner from me. He started calling me to work
with him. That was also another great neighborhood in Brooklyn. Pianist Wynton
Kelly lived in the neighborhood so did Cedar Walton. It was great. Anyway, I
started working with Freddy, which spared me having to get a day job. He came
along at the perfect time.
A good piano player can always find work.
You can, but there are other
variables. One of the things that I wish, which unfortunately today a lot of
musicians aren’t aware of. Taking care of business. Showing up at a gig on time
stuff like that. That's a very, very important part of it, too. You can play
your butt off, but if you're not responsible, nobody's going to call you.
You have a new album coming out ‘Concentric Circles’.
It came out Friday.
Will you talk about the album and how it ranks among your other albums?
Well,
it's a quintet date and it's the same group I’m coming to Detroit with. I'm
very happy with it. It's a great band, they really play and they're very
energetic and have a lot of fire. The music is primarily originals. I'd say
it's about 80% or more. On every record,
I do a Monk piece so this record I did a solo. I did ’Reflections,’ one of his ballads.
I did a Lenny White composition called’ L's Bop,’ which came out really good.
I've very happy with the recording.
Do you still derive a lot of enjoyment from recording and composing
music?
I still look forward to it. Every
time we record, it's a chance to document where we are at a particular time,
but also it's just great and inventive to
hear your music played well by great people. That's a big incentive. It keeps
me composing and then working and trying different things.
Do you ever have periods where you go back and listen to recordings
that you did in the 60's or the 70's?
Oh yeah, and usually when I do,
I'm just like God, that sounds horrible. You listen to yourself and you always
hear what you could have done better.
They say that's growth though
when you look back and you can say, "Yeah, if I'd have played that note it
would have been that much better" or whatever.
Yeah, that is growth. Learning
what not to do. What not to play.
How has the jazz scene changed?
Well, it's changed quite a bit. The
number of places to play first, that's a big change. When I was with Dizzy we
were guaranteed to work 40 weeks out of the year and most of that was on the
road traveling in the states. One of the big differences for us is that you
would work in a club, let's say we would go out to California and work at the Jazz
Workshop or in San Francisco, but you're always in a club for two or three
weeks as opposed to two or three nights. Two or three weeks in San Francisco
then you go down to LA and do three weeks at the Lighthouse. We were away a
lot. One of the things that happened was that there were more clubs. Many more
clubs from New York to the Midwest.
There were even a couple clubs down in the
south. In Atlanta. Clubs in Atlantic City.
In Detroit I used to go hit the
Minor Key, and we played Baker’s a lot. Then
they had a whole thing on the west coast. Seattle, Portland all the way down to
San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego. All of those places we would play for
two to three weeks. It was great. That doesn't exist anymore, so you can't book
a tour. It's very hard to book a tour in the United States. Unless you're just
doing one-nighters. So that's one of the big differences. Just the sheer number
of. That doesn't exist anymore. I kind of miss that.
The other thing is that most of
the jazz festivals now aren't jazz festivals anymore. That's kind of a downer.
I look at some of the international jazz festivals that like Montreux jazz
festival. That festival is down to jazz night. Some of the big jazz festivals
may have Elton John as the headliner. He's nowhere near being a jazz artist. I
actually understand the necessity for selling tickets. I do understand that,
but they'll spend a million dollars on Elton John.
That kind of bums me out and then
the fact that you won't find a blues festival hiring jazz artists at all. Rock
festivals they're not going to hire me. That kind of turns me off a little bit,
but then there are some good and positive
changes. There are a lot of young players doing different things. Trying to
widen the audience. Hopefully, that'll
work.
Are you speaking about artists like Robert Glasper who's created a
hybrid between jazz and hip-hop?
Yeah, I mean I don't necessarily
agree, but I've heard Robert play in a trio
setting and he's an incredible musician, Everybody's got a family you got to
make money. I do understand that.
I figured that was a part of it. Once they get a taste of that R&B
and that Rock money it's hard for them to come back to jazz.
Yeah, I've seen him win a Grammy
so the focus may be there. Which I get. I understand.
For the most part, are you happy with the level of new talent that's
out there?
Oh yeah! The musicianship is
incredible. Do you know Gerald Clayton?
I love Gerald’s playing.
He studied with me at Manhattan
School of Music. He's an incredible
player. I love that boy. There's another young guy, he's from New Orleans,
Sullivan Fortner. He's seriously bad.
Absolutely.
I taught Jon Batiste. He was one
of my students too. Batiste has always been more of an entertainer. That's his
thing. I remember when he did his senior recital at Juilliard. He did a second-line
thing at the end. It was fun, but he's got that entertainer thing.
Last question. You're regarded as
one of the best jazz pianists in the
history of the music, so if a young player came to you and asked, ‘Mr. Barron,
what can I do to achieve what you
achieved and even more.’ what advice would you give him or her?
That's hard to say. Thirty years
ago, I would have said just hang out, practice. I know there are some good students coming out of college. What are they
going to do though? Everybody's not going to be able to play. Everybody won't
be able to earn a living playing music, but if that's what they want to do
then, they have to practice and they have to play. You could practice forever,
but you have to play.
The music is basically a social
thing. It's a group effort. You have to play with people, and you somehow have
to play with people better than you. Who’re
all matured and so that you can learn from them. You find all these people
coming out of jazz, graduating from college and are band leaders. It's so easy
to make a record now. You can pretty much do it yourself in your living room.
Years ago, people actually had to seek you out. The best advice would be to
just practice, listen, and play. Those are the main things.
The Kenny Barron Quintet plays Paradise Jazz Series at Orchestra Hall Saturday May 12th 2018-8:00 pm Special guest saxophonist Melissa Aidana (3711 Woodward Ave 48201 Detroit, MI 313-576-5111)
