Kathryn Merriam Studio Recital

(Used without permission)

The infallible Kathryn Merriam

So sometime last summer I played for a friend of mine's piano studio recital. She taught a jazz piano course at BYU and wanted to give her students an opportunity to perform with professional musicians (that's us in case you were wondering). They each prepared a jazz standard to perform, and we talked about some of the basic principles of communication in a rhythm section. At the end we performed a song for them and after everyone had left we stayed around to play a few on our own.

That I can remember, the three of us had never played together before. The incredible Kathryn Merriam obviously is playing piano and Chad Bacon is on bass. The other two are much more accomplished jazz musicians than I am and it was fun to play with them. In fact, if you want to hear a great jazz recording check out "No More Blues" on Kathryn's website. She's as good of a singer as she is a pianist. It was fun to play together for the first time and to try to get used to the musical personality that each of them had. It was a particularly interesting experience for me, because 1) I was playing on BYU's drum set rather than my own, 2) There were no amps so the volume had to be kept under control, and 3) I had just finished my first year of teaching and had not really had time to gig or practice at all. It was really interesting to me though, that having spent so much time teaching music and approaching it from the pedagogy side, I had really improved....a lot. My chops weren't nearly where they should have been, but my mind was much more involved as an artist. That might be hard to understand for some, but to me it was very significant. I've heard many musicians say that sometimes the best thing you can do to improve is to just walk away. Insightful.

Even though it doesn't look like it, there were more than 2 people in the audience. I can't remember if we played this tune at the beginning or the end of the recital, but it was meant to be a demonstration of how players communicate to each other. I was still new and unexperienced with the laptop and had no external mic, so the quality isn't superb, but its enough to get an idea of what we sounded like. This is the famous Wayne Shorter tune called Footprints. Take a listen.

Footprints

Comments: There's a lot of stuff in here that I would love to keep out of the public eye, but as an exercise in being more transparent I have left it unedited. One thing that bothers me is my inability to get away from the main groove. I cringe every time I hear that blasted bass drum on beat one. Sometimes as I listen I feel the groove stagnate, and I just wish that I had changed it up. Throw in a fill, change the texture, stop playing altogether! Just DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT!

In contrast however, watching this clip made me feel very good about where I was heading. For the first time that I can remember I was making a conscious effort to contribute as an artist, rather than just being a medium through which the composer could get his message to an audience. I also loved some of the different sounds I was discovering on the kit, and I really liked the double time feel that I threw in now and again. Overall it wasn't a bad take, all things considered.

Track 2: Blue Monk

This is the first student to perform at the recital. As you can see the environment was pretty casual. You'll hear me and Kathryn both giving some directions as we went along.

Comments: While I'm not crazy about most of my solo ideas, or the overall time feel, this one is relatively painless for me to watch. I even get a little kick out of some of the subtle 'Jedisms' that every so often present themselves in my brushwork.

Track 3: Wave

After everyone had left, we were having so much fun that we stayed to play a couple more tunes. This is a personal favorite of mine, a famous Jobim standard called Wave.

Wave

Comments: So this is a track that for the most part I actually enjoy. I enjoy Kathryn and Chad's playing much more than my own, but there is still a lot of good things happening. You can tell that I was exploring a little with my right hand push/pull technique as some call it. It was cool the first time, and then got old. There is a balance issue in this one that really troubles me, but I keep telling myself that it was just because of the placement of the microphone and that I wouldn't in good conscience actually play that loud. Let's hope that's true. Other than that, no major complaints. Great playing Kathryn and Chad!