The Learn Partimento Podcast: Recent Episodes
Songbird Music Academy
Today I speak to cellist and viola da gamba player Giovanna Barbati, whose repertoire extends from early to contemporary music and who has a special interest in improvisation. She appears frequently as a soloist, she plays her own music and has given the first performance of a number of works for solo cello. She has recently recorded the complete works for cello by Francesco Supriani (Da Vinci CD) with the ensemble Les amies Partimentistes. We discuss improvisation upon a ground, Francesco Supriani's diminution technique works, partimento and the cello, music theory/composition, and more!
Professor Sietze de Vries, famed for his mastery in classical improvisation, joins the show to talk about his education, training, approach to music, music education, and demonstrates classical improvisation in multiple styles, and time periods.
Professor Nicholas Baragwanath, author of the groundbreaking "Solfeggio Tradition" (published by Oxford University Press), returns to the show to talk about Hexachordal Italian Solfeggio. This was the method of solfege instruction that was employed at the famed 18th-century Neapolitan Conservatories, using 6-note overlapping hexachords, instead of the usual 7-note systems we use today. Professor Baragwanath answers popular questions and demonstrates solfeggio in numerous settings, from beginner lessons to more advanced examples.
Professor Ewald Demeyere returns on the show to discuss his critical edition of Fenaroli's partimenti collection and discusses Fenaroli's approach to pedagogy and partimento realization.
In this episode, I am joined by eminent professors Robert O. Gjerdingen, Giorgio Sanguinetti, Peter van Tour, and Rosa Cafiero, in a special panel session about the subject of partimento. We discuss the history of its modern research, the definition of partimento, why partimento died out, the problem with modern harmony instruction in conservatories today, the practical applicability of partimento in modern times, the future of partimento, and more.
I talk to Professor Niels Berentsen about the beginnings of improvised counterpoint, the reconstruction of incomplete music by Johannes Ciconia, computational analysis of counterpoint, teaching 15th/16th century canon, improvisation in the classroom at the Haute école de musique, the long history of improvisation models, and more. Niels has taught the theory and performance of medieval and Renaissance music at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague since 2011. He received his PhD from Leiden University in 2016. Since 2018 he is professor of improvised counterpoint at the Haute École de Musique de Genève (Switzerland). As a researcher, Niels has investigated techniques of polyphonic improvisation in the 1300-1500 period.
Today we have a special episode dedicated to Solfeggio, featuring Professors Nicholas Baragwanath, Job IJzerman, Robert O. Gjerdingen, and Peter van Tour. The famed students of the 18th-century Neapolitan conservatories undertook an extensive 3-year course of hexachordal solmisation using guidonian syllables before they were allowed to touch an instrument. This excellent training preceded partimento and written counterpoint studies. We discuss all aspects of this pedagogy, whether it is worth learning today, its benefits, and answer numerous audience questions.
I'm delighted to share this interview recorded yesterday with the great Professor Robert O. Gjerdingen, focusing greatly on Music Schema Theory as revealed in his groundbreaking 2007 monograph "Music in the Galant Style". In addition, we discuss Roman Numeral Analysis, Harmonic Function Theory, Hugo Riemann, Tonality, Dahlhaus, and Schenker, and he answers numerous audience questions, enjoy!
0:00 Intro
0:36 Start
1:59 St. Pius X's Motu Proprio "Tra Le Sollecitudini"
5:16 How did the Council of Trent affect Gregorian chant?
5:54 What do you think of Organum and composers like Léonin and Pérotin?
6:45 Johann Joseph Fux
14:53 Knud Jeppesen
26:54 Did Palestrina improvise or play the organ?
28:39 Bach played on the accordion
30:36 The Lute
31:44 Exultate iusti by Viadana, sung by the Sistine Chapel in 1925
36:34 Historically Informed Performance Practice
39:33 Has improvised counterpoint pedagogy become more prevalent in today's university music curriculums?
41:29 Professor Schubert's YouTube Channel/s
43:07 19th century counterpoint
47:03 Nadia Boulanger
50:07 Counterpoint for modern composition
52:59 Wrapping Up
53:20 Outro
0:00 Intro
0:36 Start
1:29 Refinements in approach to teaching with "Harmony, Counterpoint, Partimento" since last interview
6:21 Understanding the patterns in the book as "pure sounds"
9:59 Domenico Scarlatti: Sonata K. 82
10:25 Thinking of cadences as schema and things that are polyphonic rather than modern terminology like PAC or IAC
16:58 Joseph Haydn: "Surprise" Symphony No. 94
18:41 Thinking of 3-part harmony as complete instead of 4-part harmony missing a voice?
26:52 Antonio Vivaldi: La Primavera
39:32 Where do you typically take your musical examples from in the book?
41:08 Joseph Haydn: Symphony No. 43 ("Mercury"), 4th mvt
47:09 How does someone learn the different ways to accompany a melody line?
50:16 Francesco Durante partimento
52:28 Francesco Durante partimento realized as a duo live example
55:35 Arcangelo Corelli: tempo di gavotta
56:41 Arcangelo Corelli: tempo di gavotta, live example
1:01:16 In the early 18th-century, nobody spoke of "half cadences", which was a term that didn't exist
1:03:39 Did they think in terms of modes in the early 18th-century for composition?
1:04:43 The Discant Cadence
1:06:43 Job plays Bach BWV928 excerpt live
1:10:47 On the fluidity of voices dropping in and out versus strictly having 4-voices SATB "chorale-style"
1:13:13 Richard Wagner: Tristan Vorspiel
1:18:58 Richard Wagner was a musical great-grandchild of Padre Martini
1:24:13 Robert Schumann
1:25:29 Johannes Brahms
1:26:47 Tchaikovsky
1:29:52 How do new conservatory students react to your method?
1:32:29 How have other colleagues and professors reacted to your method?
1:34:20 Some conservatories have taken HCP as a compulsory book for 1st and 2nd year students
1:36:55 EXCLUSIVE: New Renaissance Counterpoint Book announced!
1:39:07 Wrapping Up
1:39:35 Outro
0:00 Intro
0:36 Start
1:26 When did you start your YouTube channel, and when did you shift from recording performances to research into Whole Beat?
6:22 Which composers used the clavichord?
9:01 Did playing the Clavichord change the way you played Organ?
11:06 What is the Clavichord's touch like?
12:55 Piano vs Clavichord
18:21 What if we had to reconstruct jazz without having access to any sound recordings but rely only on written transcriptions
30:21 Weren't there musical mechanical clocks during Haydn's time that captured authentic 18th-century musical performance practice?
34:22 What is the Whole Beat Metronome Principle (WBMP)?
36:45 Wim responds to people playing Czerny at single beat tempo
47:18 If Whole Beat is true, why do students and eye-witnesses of the great composers play so fast?
54:31 Was Beethoven's metronome broken?
57:56 Don't the flyers and concert bills that advertise the concerts of these composers invalidate Whole Beat because the concerts would be too long as opposed to their actual advertised length?
1:03:11 What has been the general response to your research overall?
1:08:57 Injuries: The unspoken dark side of performance careers in Classical music
1:14:55 Beethoven recording gets canned because the musicians' careers got threatened
1:15:48 The most powerful classical music agent Ronald Wilford wouldn't allow Cyprien Katsaris to record/perform piano transcriptions if under contract
1:16:22 What does Wim think of partimento and classical improvisation?
1:20:46 Wim's favorite composers
1:23:13 Great compositions sound great slowed down, maybe even better than how they are typically played fast today
1:30:46 Whole Beat can't work because vocal music is impossible if singers have to hold notes that long
1:38:42 Carl Czerny: Whole Beat or Single Beat?
1:38:46 Beethoven: Whole Beat or Single Beat?
1:38:50 Mozart: Whole Beat or Single Beat?
1:39:04 Franz Liszt: Whole Beat or Single Beat?
1:39:14 Did Paris Conservatory graduates historically think in terms of Whole Beat?
1:39:28 Alkan: Whole Beat or Single Beat?
1:39:39 Tchaikovsky: Whole Beat or Single Beat?
1:39:49 Rachmaninoff: Whole Beat or Single Beat?
1:40:54 Debussy and Ravel: Whole Beat or Single Beat?
1:43:50 Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky: Whole Beat or Single Beat?
1:44:13 What tempo should people play Bach?
1:45:23 Wrapping Up
1:47:10 Outro
PETER SEIVEWRIGHT has received a Special Judges’ Citation in The American Prize Ernst Bacon Award for the Performance of American Music competition, in the professional solo artist division. Peter Seivewright, honored for “Championing American Piano Music,” was selected from applications reviewed recently from all across the United States and the United Kingdom, and the citation awarded for his Divine Art album ‘American Piano Sonatas‘. Peter Seivewright has performed extensively as a recitalist and as Piano Concerto soloist with leading professional Orchestras throughout Great Britain, Ireland, Norway, Austria, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Denmark (eight recital tours), Latvia, Estonia, Malaysia, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Australia (four recital tours), China, India, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Trinidad and Tobago, the United States of America, Russia, and the Donetsk People’s Republic.
Peter Seivewright’s CD discography is extensive and includes: The Complete Piano Music of Carl Nielsen (2CDs – Naxos), Contemporary Scottish Piano Music, (Merlin), the major piano works by the Danish Romantic composer Victor Bendix (1851-1926) (Rondo Records, Copenhagen), and several CDs issued by The Divine Art Recordings Group, for whom he now records exclusively.
Peter is working through a series of CDs for Divine Art featuring the complete Piano Sonatas of Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1785), the last great composer of the independent Venetian Republic. In 2007 Divine Art released a double CD comprising the major piano works of the Danish composer Louis Glass (1864-1936).Other Divine Art recordings include a disc of J.S.Bach Piano Concertos and a CD featuring American Piano Sonatas, which was exceptionally critically well-received, and which is currently a finalist for the Ernst Bacon Award in THE AMERICAN PRIZE 2018. Future recording plans include several more sets of American Piano Sonatas, more J.S.Bach and music by Reger, Cyril Scott, and Olivier Messiaen.
0:00 Start
1:34 How has the book, "The Solfeggio Tradition", been received? 6:43 Italian solfeggio explained in 4 minutes
11:41 Should children delay singing solfeggio until their voice has broken?
14:15 Did 18th-century plainsong sound more like galant music rather than medieval music?
16:10 What about Palestrina?
19:35 An example of a lesson in Italian solfeggio
22:33 How do you learn to accompany a melody line by sight with the correct harmony?
28:00 How do you follow the rules of counterpoint when switching between hexachords?
32:33 How do you know when there is a change of syllable vs a continuation of a melisma?
34:57 Does the appoggiatura take the target note's syllable or have its own?
36:20 Up 4th Down 5th Bass Motion in Italian Solfeggio
37:19 Mozart improvisation solfeggio lesson (K. 545)
41:19 Notation is the curse of the modern musician
48:02 Did Mozart know Italian solfeggio?
51:10 Why did the Germans complain about the Italians keeping solfeggio as a trade secret?
53:11 Were violinists like Paganini, Corelli and Vivaldi familiar with Italian solfeggio?
57:11 Did the Italian Maestros abandon teaching solfeggio syllables if the students struggled with pitch?
59:11 Did Italian solfeggio completely die out in the 19th-century?
1:00:49 Did Italian musicians think of the bass in terms of solfeggio syllables?
1:05:56 What was the 18th-century Italian understanding of Keys and Tonality?
1:09:02 What are good solfeggio manuscripts to practice to with and how much proportion of time is spent worrying about syllable placement vs actual singing?
1:12:10 Do we have access to 18th-century plainchant that doesn't sound like medieval music?
1:17:19 Is there any value to practicing solfeggi exercises with "Ah" even if we don't know which syllables to use?
1:18:45 What are your favorite solfeggi collections?
1:19:46 What's your opinion on Johann Fux and his method of teaching counterpoint?
1:21:19 What do you think of Nicola Sala's counterpoint treatise?
1:22:39 How does your solfeggio expertise inform the way you would teach partimento?
1:25:08 Are those manuals of singing by maestros who changed to Fixed Do still useful for learning diminution?
1:25:57 What's the state of Italian solfeggio research today?
0:00 Intro
0:36 Start
1:58 What made you want to analyze Bach's 48 preludes?
4:26 Every prelude in the book has been transposed to C or Am
6:22 Is there one perfect analysis of Bach's compositions?
8:30 "The Walled Park of Closely Related Keys"
12:11 Would Bach go from C major directly to E minor?
12:42 Bach's use of closely related keys in the preludes
14:35 Looking at an example from the book 17:23 Talking about the nature of modulations in the 18th-century
22:02 Is Bach a galant musician, old school, or a transitional figure?
25:30 Do Heinichen and CPE Bach share any similarities in their systems of thoroughbass?
35:42 What is Bach's typical behavior in employing satzmodelle (schema theory)?
40:31 Is there anything controversial about your analysis of these preludes?
42:57 What would you say to someone who analyzes music with roman numerals and harmonic function theory about your book?
47:23 Which of the 48 preludes was the hardest to analyze?
58:23 What's the best way to realizing figures correctly?
1:04:40 How do you memorize all these rules of thoroughbass?
1:09:54 Reading Furno and learning that music is composed of consonances and dissonances
1:11:53 Does your interpretation of repertoire change from knowing thoroughbass?
1:16:24 What is the state of music theory in music education, how has it changed?
1:22:17 What future research would be good for thoroughbass?
Professor Peter Schubert from McGill University returns to the show to discuss the republication of a new edition of his book, "Baroque Counterpoint."
My guest today is Eric Boaro. He is the author of a very interesting article in Eighteenth-Century Music, called Evidence of the Practical Application of Solfeggio Patterns in the Manuscript for the 1707 Neapolitan Performance of La Fede Tradita E Vendicata by Gasparini and Vignola.
I’m very excited to welcome two very special guests to the program, Professor Robert Gjerdingen and Professor Giorgio Sanguinetti. Professor Gjerdingen is the author of Music in the Galant Style and Child Composers, while Professor Sanguinetti is the author of The Art of Partimento”. They join me today for a group table discussion on partimento, music education, music history, and much more.
My guest today is conductor, harpsichordist, and organist, Professor Patrick Ayrton. He currently teaches thoroughbass, chamber music, and improvisation at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague.
Harpsichordist and Composer, Jonathan Salamon, joins the show to discuss his article on the Leo Schema.
I’m extremely thrilled to introduce my guest today, Jazz pianist, educator, composer and arranger, Rossano Sportiello! He is one of the world's leading jazz piano players on the scene today, specializing in styles from Harlem Stride Piano to Bebop to Contemporary Jazz. Jazz piano legend Barry Harris said of Rossano, “Rossano is the most fabulous piano player I ever heard in my life; indeed, a master of his craft. Hear him once and you’ll know what I mean”.
0:00 Start
0:53 Background
5:18 Did you improvise or compose when young?
7:00 How did you learn jazz in your teenage years?
9:02 You started out as a dixie land pianist
10:45 Did you study harmony and counterpoint in the conservatory?
14:25 How do you think about chord symbols as your theoretical framework in jazz?
17:34 Classical improvisation
20:17 The great classical composers were like jazz musicians
21:40 What’s your opinion of modern jazz theory?
23:21 Jazz as the continuation of classical music
28:22 Barry Harris saying we should study figured bass
31:48 Can you technically explain your horizontal thought process of chords in jazz
34:10 How do you teach jazz that is different from modern jazz theory?
36:49 Do you think of chord to chord, or key area to key area?
38:16 The “A” section of Rhythm changes
40:56 Do you think of superimposed chord structures on top of other chords or purely in intervals?
44:54 What is your conception of right hand improvisation?
50:19 Do you transcribe entire solos, or parts of solos that you like?
58:03 What’s your advice on playing fast, up-tempo tunes?
1:00:59 Walking with the left hand and improvising with the right hand at the same time
1:07:38 Do you hum or sing, externally or internally as you improvise?
1:08:35 If you play with any 3 jazz musicians in history, who would they be?
1:09:37 What is your proudest musical moment?
1:11:44 Hardest tune for you to play?
1:13:04 What 3 albums would you recommend for a brand new listener of yours?
1:15:28 Wrapping Up
I’m very happy to introduce my guest today, Pianist, Composer, Teacher, and Music Scholar, Nicole DiPaolo! She is an online Adjunct Lecturer in Music at Indiana University, a faculty member at a Cleveland-area multi-teacher music studio, the Principal Theory Teacher at Liberty Park Music, an online-only video subscription-based music school, and a sought-after online instructor of piano, music theory, and composition.
My guest today is Musicologist and Music Theorist, Professor Adem Merter Birson! He is an adjunct assistant professor of music at Hofstra University. His primary research deals with the relationship between chromaticism and form in the string quartets of Joseph Haydn. We will talk about Haydn, partimento, sonata form and even get a little into some classical Turkish music.
I’m extremely thrilled to introduce my guest today, Grammy-nominated master fingerstyle guitarist Alex de Grassi. He has recorded 19 albums and in 1998, he was nominated for a Grammy for his album “The Water Garden”. The Wall Street Journal has called his playing “flawless” and Billboard hails his “intricate finger-picking technique with an uncanny gift for melodic invention.” His most recent album is 2020’s The Bridge, with Tropo Records. The Bridge is Alex’s first solo guitar recording in 17 years since Now and Then: Folk Songs for the 21st Century.
0:00 Start 0:49 Grandfather’s advice 2:10 Did your grandfather improvise and compose? 4:41 Did you have a musical childhood? 6:40 How did you transcribe fingerstyle arrangements by ear? 8:11 Did your grandfather’s technique inspire you to translate that philosophy to the guitar? 10:07 When did you write your first compositions? 11:23 How did you find yourself performing in London as a street musician? 13:27 Did you meet any famous future folk stars back then? 15:29 When did you decide to be a solo fingerstyle guitarist? 19:04 How do you create your sound? 20:06 What specific examples of guitar pieces steered your direction? 23:14 When you are composing, which comes first, rhythmic ideas, melodic ideas or harmonic ideas? 24:23 How long does it take to compose a piece? 24:52 What’s an example of a song you’ve written very quickly? 28:13 What’s your opinion of the metronome? 30:35 What are the easiest and hardest songs for you to play in concert? 33:11 Do you use music theory when you compose? 34:00 Did you study formal counterpoint? 35:51 Does your music require physical aids like acrylic nails to play? 38:04 Did you ever meet Leo Kottke and has he heard your music? 39:28 What about Bert Jansch? 41:15 Top 3 acoustic guitarists? 42:41 Top 3 jazz improvisers? 44:03 Top 3 classical composers? 44:34 What is your proudest musical moment? 47:11 What is your biggest musical regret? 48:04 When did your grandfather pass away? Did he get to hear your music? 48:24 What about your father? 49:38 What would surprise your fans about your music? 50:51 Which album or tracks would you give to a new listener to introduce them to your music? 51:42 Wrapping Up
I have the huge honor to welcome back to the program, the esteemed Professor Robert Gjerdingen, he is the author of the groundbreaking 2007 “Music in the Galant Style” which won the Wallace Berry award from the Society of Music Theory in 2009. He followed up that book with the excellent 2020 book “Child Composers in the Old Conservatories” and he frequently updates the great website partimenti.org which if you are interested in partimento, need to have that website bookmarked because it has a ton of great material and is constantly being updated.
I’m so happy to introduce my guest today, Musicologist and musician, Riccardo Castagnetti. We are going to be talking about his research in 18th-century music education pedagogy, focusing on the methods of Andrea Basili.
I’m delighted to introduce my guest today, Professor Massimiliano Guido, he is an expert in the fields of historical performance practice and improvisation. He is the editor of the book "Studies in Historical Improvisation: From Cantare Super Librum to Partimento" and he is going to talk to me today about a wide range of topics including counterpoint, partimento, music theory, music history, and much more!
0:43 What is your background? 2:46 Did you improvise at the beginning? 6:06 Did you learn any theory on the way to being a performer? 7:36 When did you switch to more historically informed methods? 9:01 What was the theoretical basis to Professor Bellotti’s approach? 10:51 Girolamo Diruta 15:04 Claudio Merulo 18:46 How did think about keys, modes and tonality back then? 23:17 Is it fixed that certain modes fit to certain points in the Catholic Mass? 28:20 The massive amount of melodies in the Liber Usualis 29:46 What is a vesper? 30:48 What do you mean by Seicento? 33:17 How have these older, historical methods of counterpoint instructed affected your students? 38:20 How difficult did the counterpoint go in terms of singing? 39:40 What skills do you get out of learning these older methods that can be applied to today? 41:48 H.A.B. Crawford’s trenchant quote 44:23 How would free composition been taught historically? 48:26 What are steps someone should take toward learning to improvise canons and fugues? 52:34 Do I have to know the terms like Tenorizans and Cantizans? 53:24 Bernardo Pasquini 54:22 What do you mean by Frescobaldi pushing the system to it’s limits 57:41 William Porter 1:00:34 Giorgio Sanguinetti and Partimento 1:02:17 Do these traditional methods stem out of the Catholic Church rather than Nationalism? 1:04:26 How did the Reformation and Counter-reformation affect the music of the period? 1:08:23 Who are your favorite composers for keyboard and organ from the late Renaissance? 1:12:25 Are there any composers that have been unjustly ignored but should be really known better? 1:16:41 Who are some historically informed performers that you like? 1:19:36 What tuning and temperaments do you feel are appropriate for the late Renaissance? 1:22:17 What do you make of Tonal Harmony, Chordal invertibility, Roman Numerals and function theory? 1:26:10 Future Projects 1:27:59 Wrapping Up
It’s a real thrill to introduce my guest today, the great jazz master of the vibraphone, Terry Gibbs! At 96 years old, Terry has worked with all the greats like Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, Buddy Rich.. just too many to mention! We discuss his excellent autobiography "Good Vibes", deep dive into Bebop and talk about a wide range of fascinating topics over his amazing career.
I’m very thrilled to speak to my guest today, guitarist, Nicola Pignatiello. He teaches at the Liceo Giordano Bruno in Rome and also at CESMI. This is the episode that all my guitarist audience members have been waiting for, and we will be diving deep into the topic of partimento on the guitar. He has recorded some really beautiful partimento realizations on the guitar that have received very positive responses from the partimento community and we will talk further about realizing partimenti on the guitar.
0:46 Background 1:41 Did you start with Classical Guitar? 2:07 Joining the conservatory at 15 3:08 What were your musical influences while growing up? 4:10 Was it 10 years of Conservatory? 4:25 Did you see yourself as a concert artist? 5:04 When did you discover Partimento? 5:50 Why did you take lessons with Enrico Baiano? 6:39 What recordings of Baiano did you like? 7:13 What happened in the lessons with Enrico Baiano? 8:01 What year was it when you discovered Partimento? 8:52 What made you think about combining partimento with the guitar? 10:53 How did you begin your development in partimento in 2005-2012? 13:47 When did people start playing 6-string guitars? 15:15 When in the 18th century did the 6-string guitar appear? 15:56 Fernando Sor, Mauro Giuliani and Ferdinando Carulli as representative of the 18th century style 17:35 What are the similarities between the Lute and the Guitar? 19:31 Were people realizing basso continuo on the baroque guitar or lute with strumming? 20:37 Why did you pick Giuliani and Carulli as models for partimento? 22:25 Solfeggi 22:48 What was in Giuliani’s style that had traces of the partimento lineage? 24:38 Mauro Giuliani outselling Beethoven’s piano sonatas 26:57 Does counterpoint easy to realize on the guitar? 28:41 Do you have to compensate when doing the Rule of the Octave on guitar? 30:15 How should someone start learning partimento on the guitar? 31:24 How similar are the different Rule of Octave versions among the 18th century guitar treatises 32:12 On having to transpose partimenti into more guitaristic keys 33:29 How do you prevent bad counterpoint on the guitar? 34:25 Cadences on the guitar? 36:14 When realizing figured bass, did the baroque guitar strum or using 3 voice textures? 36:51 Is that the same on the Classical guitar? 37:15 Learning with chord symbols on the guitar 39:00 Where Chord symbols originated from 40:26 Did they tolerate parallelism in guitar-type instruments because of the way they are constructed? 42:04 Did Fernando Sor have a method book? 42:52 What about dissonances on the guitar in partimento? 43:58 Bass Motions on the guitar 45:29 Nicola plays more Bass Motion examples 46:19 Bass Motions - Up a 4th down a 5th 47:06 Why is the guitar notated in treble clef? 48:00 What are some good treatises and manuscripts that would be relevant for partimento on the guitar? 48:43 Should we keep it to 2 voices on the guitar? 50:27 Is it heresy to try all these things on a non-classical guitar? 51:14 Can partimento be improvised on the guitar? 52:46 Free improvisation and composition on the guitar 53:52 How would you teach a young kid in the partimento-style of music education on guitar? 55:23 What about reading chords on the guitar in terms of Figured bass? 56:35 What about improvising on a very simple bass, how does that sound on the guitar? 59:24 How many ways can I color a simple progression on the guitar? 1:00:40 How do you development diminution on the guitar? 1:02:58 On the partimento bass lines being too difficult to realize on the guitar 1:04:41 How have your classical guitar colleagues reacted to your partimento realizations on the guitar? 1:05:51 What do you make of the rise in popularity in partimento over the last 2 years? 1:06:52 What do you think about South American classical guitar? 1:09:20 How do you analyze classical guitar literature? 1:10:59 Do you write figures or arabic numerals in circles when analyzing? 1:11:16 On the lack of historic models in realizing partimento on the guitar unlike the keyboard and the general difficulty 1:13:21 Felix Horetzky 1:13:57 Can you recommend any historically-informed classical guitarists? 1:15:47 On the passing of Julian Bream 1:17:06 Flamenco Guitar 1:18:21 Discussing Chord symbols and their related hand shapes 1:25:03 Wrapping Up
My guest today is jazz pianist, Jon Raney, he is the son of the jazz guitar great Jimmy Raney, and brother to Doug Raney. I am very excited to talk about his father's approach to jazz improvisation, opinions on music, music education pedagogy, and much more!
Davey Yarborough is a native of The District of Columbia who has been performing, and teaching for over 30 years. He is a flautist and saxophonist as well as a distinguished composer, arranger, bandleader, and teacher. He studied saxophone with the great Sonny Stitt for 2 years, and is the co-founder and Artistic director of the Washington Jazz Arts Institute. 0:49 How did you meet Sonny Stitt? 2:05 Why did Sonny ask those intimidating questions? 2:58 How old were you when you met him? 5:25 Do you remember your first lesson with him? 6:40 Are you supposed to learn the melody from a record or sheet music? 7:51 What did Sonny Stitt think of the Real book? 10:06 The lessons that Sonny would write down for Davey 12:06 Did he explain how he navigated through chord changes? 13:36 Were you supposed to memorize solos off solos? 14:45 How does he play so many notes? 16:52 How do we embellish the melody with more notes? 18:26 What does it mean to transcend the octave? 19:49 Did his curriculum evolve over the 2 years? 21:57 What do you think of the different modern jazz education methods? 23:38 What was Sonny Stitt’s system? 24:42 On not thinking about theory when playing 24:56 Thinking in terms of chords and 2-5s 26:04 Did he ever talk about his relationship with Charlie Parker or Bud Powell? 26:51 Did he know a lot of solos himself? 28:35 How would Sonny Stitt have discussed chords and harmony? 29:27 How do you play chord changes in jazz? 32:11 What is your definition of the basics? 33:29 What do you emphasize when teaching theory? 34:36 Billy Taylor 36:07 Do you remember your last lesson with Sonny Stitt? 36:46 Was Sonny Stitt a mean guy? 39:28 What did he respond to positively in lessons? 40:12 Did he have any rules in improvisation? 40:42 Did he identify himself as a bebop musician or jazz musician? 41:37 On Sonny giving him the freedom to develop his style 42:06 Who did Sonny Stitt like? 42:50 What could educators learn from your lessons with Sonny Stitt? 43:44 What were the most challenging parts of the lessons with Sonny? 44:08 Was there classical music influences? 45:23 Was he an opiniated person on music and did he share any opinions? 45:42 Did he teach composition? 46:21 Did he play the piano? 46:33 On teaching lessons without accompaniment 46:56 Washington Jazz Arts Institute 52:48 What is your proudest musical moment? 55:47 If you could go back in time and meet any musician who would it be? 56:38 Scariest or most nervewracking performance? 58:03 Final reflections on Sonny Stitt 59:53 Wrapping Up
My guest today is Pianist, Improviser, and Composer, Professor Noam Sivan! He is Professor of Piano Improvisation at the HMDK Stuttgart, and we will talk about his remarkable journey, his method to his improvisational craft, his new exciting Master’s degree programme in classical piano improvisation that he has created, and much more!
0:35 What’s your musical background? 1:21 Did you naturally improvise as a child? 1:56 Mother’s influence on creativity 3:25 Tell me about your formal music training in university 4:10 The influence of formal composition study in your undergraduate studies 6:16 Examples of apply a compositional technique in different musical languages 8:26 Did you face any pressure to become a modernist composer 10:00 What was your dream, to be a composer or performing pianist? 13:00 Masters degree 15:27 Studying with Carl Schachter 16:39 An example of Carl Schacter’s lessons in improvisation 17:42 What did your professors and peers think of improvisation during your student years? 20:25 Improvising cadenzas 21:06 Meeting Robert Levin 21:31 What did Robert Levin say about your improvising at the time? 23:17 What were the technical things that you worked on to take your improvisation to the next level? 26:30 What is your operating system behind your method of improvisation? 28:18 How did you choose the notes for your right hand improvisation? 30:03 How do you make sure your right hand is not creating contrapuntal mistakes when improvising? 32:55 What’s a good way to learn figured bass? 34:35 Do you need to study modern harmony to do what you are doing? 37:24 Studying with Milton Babbitt 40:34 Was the culture at Juilliard supportive of improvisation in Classical music? 41:24 Were the students you taught at the time completely new to classical improvisation? 42:33 What did Milton Babbitt think of improvisation and what you were doing? 43:37 Anecdotes of responses to your improvisations and classes in the early days 45:33 Did you receive negative feedback to improvisation? 48:17 Does being a composer and improviser give you an additional insight into interpretation of repertoire 50:03 Do you any comment on academic or competition style interpretations of repertoire? 52:47 When you have change your system of improvisation to accomodate more modern or contemporary styles of improvisation? 54:34 Do you still maintain the consonance/dissonance framework in a contemporary setting? 56:52 What is anchoring your contemporary improvisations, is it keys or the progression? 58:00 Are you thinking of intervals? 58:19 What tips can you give to more traditional improvisers to broaden their tonal palette into modern music? 1:01:43 Vincent Persichetti’s 20th Century Harmony textbook 1:03:44 How does a music educator grade student musical improvisations? 1:08:43 Professor Sivan’s new Masters degree programme on classical piano improvisation 1:11:19 How’s the reception to the Masters programme? 1:13:07 Do you require incoming students to have a background in improvisation? 1:14:38 How has the culture around classical improvisation now changed compared to when you began? 1:17:49 Professor’s Sivan album “Ambiro’s Journey” 1:18:48 What’s a good ratio for a modern performer’s recital pieces for improvised music, original compositions and traditional repertoire? 1:21:30 A memorable experience from your solo improvised piano recitals 1:24:21 Up to this point, what has been your proudest musical moment? 1:27:11 How are you different as an improviser today vs 10 years ago and how do you see yourself grow in the next 10 years? 1:31:31 Wrapping Up
My guest today is Music Scholar and Pianist, Professor Gaetano Stella! An expert on the subject of partimento, particularly partimento in the 19th century. We talk about the partimento tradition in the 19th century and his methods for teaching partimento in the classroom today.
What an honor to speak with my guest today, Harpsichordist, Organist, Keyboardist, Conductor, Composer and Improviser, Matteo Messori! He is the founder of the Cappella Augustana Ensemble and His latest recording is the complete harpsichord and organ works by Johann Kaspar Kerll, a new 3CD Box. We discuss the Bologna tradition, basso continuo, partimento, Padre Martini and Mattei, counterpoint, his partimento teaching method and much more!
I’m so pleased to introduce my guest today, composer, improviser, harpsichordist, and organist Nicola Canzano! He is the composer of his “First Book of Partimenti: Preludes, Fugues, Rondeaus, and Puzzles, Twenty Four in total through all key signatures”. He is also the founder of the upcoming NEw York and Montreal based group Nuova Practica, which focuses on composing and improvising in baroque and early adjacent music.
I am very thrilled to speak with my guest today, Academy and Emmy Award winning Film Composer and Conductor, Bill Conti! He is best known for his film scores including Rocky, The Karate Kid, For Your Eyes Only, Dynasty and the Right Stuff which earned him an Academy Award for Best Original Score. He was music director at the Academy Awards a record nineteen times. It was announced in June 2020 that Conti had donated his original scores to Louisiana State University.
My guest today is Professor Job IJzerman! He teaches at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. He is known for his popular book, “Harmony, Counterpoint, Partimento” Published by Oxford University Press in 2018.
0:38 Background 1:50 Did you improvise or compose growing up? 2:12 Did you have any experience with thoroughbass or basso continuo? 2:36 Two anecdotes that highlighted the need for harmony pedagogy reform at the conservatory for IJzerman 7:07 Being introduced to Robert Gjerdingen’s work and partimento in 2007 9:09 What steps did you take to put the partimento theory into practice 10:31 Can Partimento be applied to other styles than the Galant style? 12:33 How was the reception to your new method among students? 16:55 Where did you take your partimenti and solfeggi exercises from? 19:57 What duration is the course of study in your book designed to encompass? 20:43 From your observation, how does your new method compare with the standard conservatory method instruction in harmony? 24:27 Do you examples of students who studied harmony in a different but have converted to your new method? 25:57 How have your peers in the faculty responded to the method? 28:10 Do you receive emails from professors around the world about the book and what has been the reception? 30:23 Karst de Jong 31:22 Peter van Tour 32:16 Do you separate the study of Harmony and Counterpoint? 34:57 Should musicians who are learning music of the Common Practice Era study Renaissance music? 35:54 What are the differences and overlap among the Italian Partimento, and German and French Thoroughbass traditions? 38:01 German Thoroughbass and Italian Partimento 39:19 Music Schemata Theory and Partimento 44:46 Hexachordal 18th century Italian Solfeggio 48:30 How did you jump from the 16th century hexachordal solfeggio method to the updated 18th century version? 49:33 Mutating up vs down being different 50:10 Differences and overlap with Move-able Do and 18th century Italian Solfeggio 51:36 How should someone start learning 18th century Italian Solfeggio 54:30 What’s the way to learn how to mutate between Hexachords correctly? 55:43 Understanding which syllables are part of a melisma and long diminutions 57:32 When accidentals appear in the bass and the Solfeggio changes key, do you have to change all the notes of the hexachords on the spot? 59:14 Do you use the original names of the keys like C-solfaut? 59:34 Can you navigate through a Solfeggio with the correct syllables on a first read through? 1:01:58 What is the best way to learn Partimento? 1:05:53 Job IJzerman demonstrating some patterns at the piano 1:07:40 What’s the best way to learn Counterpoint? 1:08:26 Should you sing and play music extensively first before embarking on written counterpoint? 1:09:40 IJzerman’s method of teaching Counterpoint 1:11:29 Does this lead into 18th century and 19th century Counterpoint? 1:12:21 Should we learn music at the beginning with 2 voices or 4 voices? 1:16:38 Is Partimento practice and theory useful for learning and analysing the music of later styles? 1:19:42 Wrapping Up
I am so honored to be speaking to a great guest today, Professor Thomas Christensen. Professor Christensen is the Avalon Foundation Professor of Music and Humanities at the University of Chicago. His scholarly research focuses on the history of music theory and his most recent book is “Tonality in the Age of François-Joseph Fetis” published by the University of Chicago Press in 2019.
0:39 What’s your background? 1:41 What was the state of research in the history of music theory when you began? 2:52 How did you come to focus on Thoroughbass in your research? 4:30 What was the perception of Thoroughbass in the 70s-90s? 5:36 The different schools of Thoroughbass 7:01 What key differences are there among the French, German or Italian Thoroughbass traditions? 8:57 JS Bach and his views on Thoroughbass’ importance 10:17 When Thoroughbass first appeared on the scene, was the initial criticism of it justified? 12:40 Did Thoroughbass having nothing to say about melody like Mattheson says? 13:44 How should we view Rameau beyond his cartoonish image as the Fundamental Bass guy? 15:49 Did he separate his scientific, theoretical views on music with his practical side? 17:59 Rameau’s pedagogical heuristic to help students simply the total mass of chords into fundamental types 20:03 Fundamental chords being slower to mental analyze than simply reading from the given bass 21:27 Rameau’s practical nature as a musician 22:32 Why were CPE Bach and Kirnberger so hostile to Rameau? 24:56 Did chord invertibility originate with Rameau or earlier? 27:03 Was the rise of lots of new harmonies and chords naturally yield to a need to categorize chords into fundamental types? 29:20 Did Rameau speak of counterpoint in his treatises? 31:17 Rameau trying to reconcile his theories with the Rule of the Octave 33:07 The chord on the 6th scale degree connecting to the 7th scale degree being a problem for Rameau 34:15 Rameau’s influence in Italy 35:44 Were Rameau’s theories appealing because they were considered more scientific than counterpoint? 38:20 Why did you select François-Joseph Fetis as a subject of study? 40:24 Did Fetis teach according to Catel’s methods? 42:13 Fetis vs Berlioz 43:56 Did they have valid opinions in their dispute? 46:31 Fetis’ influence on later theorists and his key contributions 49:02 Some people say thinking in terms of Roman Numerals is vertically oriented but isn’t Thoroughbass practice the same? 51:07 Are Rimsky-Korsakov and Schoenberg correct when they say that the study of Thoroughbass is no longer needed? 53:37 Did Nadia Boulanger bring out modern tonality despite teaching older methods like partimenti and thoroughbass? 55:28 What do you think of your important research being influential for future partimento and thoroughbass enthusiasts? 59:10 Can we apply Thoroughbass to music like jazz and popular music without any issue? 1:01:13 On Letters and Chord Symbols being harder to calculate vs reading figures 1:04:39 What’s the best way to learn Thoroughbass? 1:06:05 Are there any Thoroughbass treatises that you recommend? 1:08:43 Wrapping Up
It’s a huge honor to have the great Professor Giorgio Sanguinetti return to the program for his 2nd appearance. He is the author of the award-winning book “The Art of Partimento” which was published in 2012 which won the Wallace Berry Award from the Society of Music Theory and today we will talk his new book “Le Sonate per pianoforte di Beethoven. Genere, forma, espressione” published by Libreria Musicale Italiana.
0:51 Why did you pick the subject of the piano sonatas of Beethoven for this book? 2:26 Did you play many of the piano sonatas yourself over your career? 3:38 Introduction to Beethoven’s piano sonatas 7:03 Did Beethoven play the sonatas live for audiences? or was it more for sale for private use? 11:35 What is the paradigm shift that took place? 15:29 How were the pianos in Beethoven time? 18:42 What should someone do to get better at sight-reading? 19:46 How did Beethoven play his own sonatas? 22:29 Did the Italians ever talk about form, how did they teach it? 23:38 How would Beethoven have thought about the form of his piano sonatas? 28:04 Beethoven and Adolph Bernhard Marx 31:01 Marx’s radical view of music theory 32:09 What were Beethoven’s politics? 33:52 The rise and decline of Formenlehre 37:36 What was the criticism of Formenlehre? 39:34 Edward T. Cone and the Sonata Principle 40:32 What were the essential differences between William Caplin and Hepokoski/Darcy’s theories? 42:45 What about Hepokoski and Darcy’s theory? 45:59 Hermeneutics 49:38 Religion and Hermeneutics 51:20 Topic Theory 54:13 Did Beethoven ever write introductory explanations about his sonatas? 55:50 Schemas 1:00:10 Beethoven’s metronome markings 1:02:26 Werktreue 1:05:22 Should performers today play the score of these piano sonatas with complete faithfulness to the intention of the composer? 1:07:01 How do you feel about the great surge in interest in partimento recently? 1:08:33 What’s the best way to learn partimento? 1:10:11 Is there a best starting collection of partimenti that beginners should start with? 1:12:12 How should someone learn written counterpoint? 1:13:31 Is partimento useful in the modern age with newer contemporary styles? 1:16:55 How should partimento be integrated into music education? Can it complement other theories or should it be taught on it’s own? 1:18:38 On Partimento not having to be an opposing method to other methods of analysis and music education 1:19:56 Wrapping up and upcoming events/projects
I am extremely thrilled to introduce my guest today, Professor of Music L. Poundie Burstein. He is a Professor at Hunter College College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and he is here today to talk to me about his excellent new book which has been getting rave reviews, “Journeys Through Galant Expositions”.
0:40 Background 6:38 Why was Form not a big area of interest in the 1st half of the 18 century? 7:50 When did the shift happen towards an interest in Form in history? 9:21 Do discussions of Form refer to all types of compositions? 9:50 Is there a lot difference in Form between types of instrumental music? 11:04 Who else influenced you in the study of Form? 12:02 What made you decide on the Galant period? 13:03 Joseph Riepel 17:08 Did Riepel’s work influence composers in the 18th century? 18:27 Would modern analysts of Form find mistakes in Riepel’s work? 20:49 Did the Italians talk about Form? 21:44 What reasons brought about the change in interest in Form in the 18th century? 23:03 Was Form influenced by Rhetoric? 24:00 How did improvisers in the 18th century think of Form? 28:38 Did the 18th century conception of Form relate more to Resting Points rather than formal containers or key areas? 32:31 How did musicians in the 18th century think about key areas vs today? 34:23 Does melody influence Form? 37:16 Heinrich Christoph Koch 40:16 What was the difference between Koch and Riepel? 41:11 Was Koch representative of a typical 18th century music theorist? 41:58 What other differences are there between the 18th century and today? 43:37 Koch changing his mind on punctuated V chords 46:13 How do Harmony and Counterpoint influence Form? 47:01 What is the trimodular block in Sonata theory and can you elaborate on your commentary of it? 51:12 Haydn’s Symphony No. 14 Mvt 1 53:24 How does your theoretical work help approach challenges in other styles of music? 56:43 Top 3 Galant Composers 57:32 What’s the weirdest Galant composition you’ve ever encountered? 58:45 If you could sit down with any theorist or composer in history, who would it be and what would you talk about? 1:00:13 Name 3 Galant compositions that you talk about in your book that you find really interesting 1:02:07 Upcoming projects 1:03:24 Wrapping Up
I’m extremely pleased to introduce my guest today, Emmy Award Winning TV and Film Composer, Bruce Broughton. He is the composer for films such as Silverado, Tombstone, The Rescuers Down Under, and written memorable TV themes including The Orville, JAG, Spielberg’s Tiny Toon adventures and Dinosaurs. He has been nominated 24 times for the Emmy and has won a record 10 times. His score to the movie Silverado was nominated for an Academy Award and his score to Young Sherlock Holmes was nominated for a Grammy.
My guest today is Harpsichordist and Fortepianist Professor Enrico Baiano. An award-winning international performer, Baiano has extensively recorded works by JS Bach, Johann Jakob Froberger, and Domenico Scarlatti to name a few.
He has published a method for the Harpsichord in 2010 and with Marco Moiraghi, published a book called “The sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti” in 2014.
00:48 Beginnings 2:25 When did you start playing keyboard instruments? 2:53 What made you decide to make music your career? 3:41 Did you get a teacher to learn the harpsichord? 6:57 How long did you study the harpsichord at the beginning? 7:37 What age were you while studying composition? 7:51 How did you learn composition? Was it the old tradition or new? 11:26 Did you listen to other styles of music growing up? 12:41 How you learned contrasted with the partimento approach 14:30 How extensively did you study with this older teacher? 14:53 Were these private lessons or at the conservatory? 15:43 Did you learn the modern methods of analysis like function theory and roman numerals? 17:09 Were you one of the few students improvising? 18:10 When did you get acquainted with partimento? 19:39 Italians not feeling proud of their heritage 20:36 Learn Fenaroli in 1982 21:49 Was there anything new in the partimento that you didn’t already know? 22:59 Are you able to distill music in the repertoire down to their basic forms? 24:24 Did you work on written counterpoint in your studies? 27:20 What is the difference between harmony and counterpoint? 28:46 What’s the difference between learning composition today vs back in the 18th century? 33:15 On the concern about the listen-ability of modern, contemporary music 36:35 the link between older music like Domenico Scarlatti and later composers like Brahms 38:56 Beethoven being very familiar with Scarlatti 43:35 What do you think about hexachordal Italian solfeggio system? 45:33 How should someone learn partimento? 46:33 On Durante, Zingarelli and others, having more difficult partimenti than Fenaroli 47:37 How should someone learn counterpoint? 48:34 What do you mean by Fux being “too late”? 51:17 Do you need a teacher to learn counterpoint? 51:42 Is figured bass still relevant in the modern age? 54:03 Chord Invertibility/Fundamental bass vs Counterpoint 57:45 On the question of certain chordal inversions not being equal 59:02 What do you think of Glenn Gould’s interpretations? 1:03:42 What’s the balance between learning repertoire and improvisation/composition? 1:05:50 What do you make of the amazing surge of interest in partimento and other older methods of learning music? 1:09:29 Do you use these older methods when looking at music like Ravel or Debussy? 1:13:07 Top 3 Pianists 1:13:32 Top 3 Partimenti composers 1:14:00 Top 3 Domenico Scarlatti Sonatas 1:16:59 Top 3 Pieces from Bach’s WTC 1:19:59 If you could meet any musician from history, who would it be and what would you talk about? 1:20:38 Do you play non-classical music for fun? 1:21:58 Upcoming projects and Wrapping up
My guest today is the famed virtuoso concert pianist and composer, Cyprien Katsaris. One of the most renowned concert pianists of both the 20th and 21st centuries, Katsaris has performed with the world’s greatest orchestras and recorded extensively over his storied career. We talk about his transcriptions, compositions, playing the Cziffra Flight of Bumblee live in front of Cziffra on TV, being told by the world's most powerful classical music agent not to play transcriptions, his famed sightreading prowess, and much more!
0:41 Did you always improvise, even when you were young? 2:32 Are you saying anyone can learn to improvise? 4:05 Chick Corea finding it harder to play his written music vs improvising 4:56 Studying at the Paris Conservatory 7:09 His teacher Monique de la Bruchollerie being the first western female to play Rach 3 in 1945 8:56 Would you consider yourself a musical great-grandchild of Alkan and Liszt? 11:26 Did you study with György Cziffra? 11:59 Cziffra being a great jazz improviser 16:22 Did you meet Cziffra personally? 19:45 Recording Cziffra’s transcription of the Flight of the Bumblebee 24:05 What did Cziffra think of your playing? 26:06 What motivated you to become a concert pianist who created your own transcriptions? 28:17 Did you ever face any pushback from attempting to play transcriptions? 32:13 The most powerful classical music agent in the world telling you not to play transcriptions 34:17 Why was there such a negative attitude towards transcriptions in the 20th century? 35:59 What is the difference between the modern, academic way of playing vs the traditional, older way? 39:39 Why do you dislike piano competitions? 44:19 Koji Attwood’s anecdote of your incredible sight-reading feat 48:23 How important is the metronome in practice? 49:47 How do you think about music theory? 52:04 What is your compositional process? 54:43 Does your ability to play any style come from absorbing it from playing repertoire? 55:50 What is your proudest musical moment? 56:22 If you could step into a time machine and meet any great composer from history, who would it be? 56:46 What are the 3 hardest things you’ve ever had to play? 57:03 What are the hardest concertos for you to play? 57:18 Do you play any other instruments apart from the piano? 57:33 Have you ever dabbled on the harpsichord, organ or electric keyboard? 57:57 If you could have done it all over again, what would you have changed about your career? 58:31 At what age did you feel that you had your mature conception as an artist? 59:25 Who are the top 3 greatest composers? 59:36 Name me your top 3 recordings that you feel most proud of 59:48 If someone wanted to hear your music, which 3 albums would you recommend? 1:01:32 Name me your 3 most important compositions 1:02:57 Do you listen to or play jazz? 1:03:47 How does Scientology influence your music or life? 1:05:15 Who are the top 3 pianists of the 20th century? 1:05:28 Wrapping Up
I’m so pleased to introduce my guest today, musician, vocalist and bandleader Emily Miller. A graduate of Berklee College of Music, She is the Creative Director for Boston Common Entertainment and Her debut album, "Stronger Every Day" was released in August 2020.
0:37 What are your earliest musical memories? 2:39 How young were you when you started formal lessons? 3:50 Were these classical piano lessons? 6:48 Describe your first voice lessons 8:58 What kind of music were you listening to growing up? 10:42 Were you always singing all the time? 11:39 What is your vocal range? 12:54 What does it mean when a singer is said to to have a multi-octave range? 14:23 Middle School Gospel choir experience 15:18 Did you do much sight singing? 18:50 How did you get introduced into jazz? 20:57 What sort of repertoire did you do? 23:57 How much can vocal training in a day can the human body take? 27:57 High school to Berklee College of Music 30:17 Berklee College of Music 34:52 Development at Berklee 38:27 The competitive nature of singers 43:38 Private instruction while doing choral training 44:24 What do you make of all these different singing methods out there? 47:34 How about your private instruction in Berklee? 48:56 What reforms would you suggest to make the department enrollment stricter? 49:30 What should you look out for in a good teacher? 52:10 Can adults learn to develop a nice singing voice? 53:32 New Album - Stronger Every Day 59:00 How do you feel, having completed your debut album? 59:57 Where can you listen to the album? 1:00:19 HOT SEAT - React to famous singer names 1:01:44 Top 3 Jazz Standards 1:02:16 Top 3 Male and Female Singers 1:03:46 What do you make of singers taking bebop melodies and adding words to them? 1:04:25 Top 3 Albums 1:04:54 What are the 3 hardest songs you’ve ever sung? 1:06:19 If you could collaborate with anyone in history, who would you work with? 1:07:51 What advice would you give to 20-year old Emily Miller? 1:08:51 Wrapping Up
It’s my pleasure to introduce my guest today, pianist, composer, educator, and researcher, Philipp Teriete. Today we will explore the improvisation and partimento in the 19th century, the great French music teacher Pierre-Joseph-Guillaume Zimmerman, Frederic Chopin's music education, the influence of German music theory in early ragtime and jazz composers and so much more! 0:38 What is your background and how did you come to your present areas of research? 4:40 Who was Pierre-Joseph-Guillaume Zimmerman? 5:55 Did he have any famous pupils? 7:27 What was Zimmerman’s training? 9:17 Was he a victim of the cult of genius? 10:41 Was Zimmerman consigned to historical oblivion before your research? 12:55 Partimento and Zimmerman 14:21 Zimmerman’s holistic approach to teaching music 17:00 How was Zimmerman different from someone like Fenaroli? 18:10 Zimmerman’s recommendation of solfege 19:23 Needing to read 7 clefs right at the beginning with Zimmerman 20:33 How long does it take to be acquainted with 7 clefs? 21:23 Zimmerman calling pianists who have no knowledge of harmony, “schoolboys” 22:37 Cherubini giving Liszt and Berlioz a hard time 23:05 Zimmerman rejecting Louis Moreau Gottschalk from entering the Paris Conservatory 24:09 Did Zimmerman teach the Rule of the Octave and Moti del basso? 24:35 Were these 19th century versions of these things? 26:23 Zimmerman’s method leading to free composition and counterpoint 29:00 Are Zimmerman’s technical piano teachings comparable to someone like Hanon? 30:56 Frederic Chopin, how did he learn music? 32:19 What’s the evidence for the claim that Josef Elsner’s curriculum was modeled after the Paris Conservatory? 33:27 Chopin studying 6 hours a week of counterpoint with Elsner 34:06 Chopin and the cult of the genius 34:51 Could he be considered a formally trained musician instead of self-taught? 35:47 Were these all treatises that Elsner used to teach Chopin? 36:14 Did Chopin know the Rule of the Octave? 36:43 What about Chopin and Partimento? 39:05 What was Henri Reber’s lineage of teaching music theory? 39:46 Were Henri Reber and Chopin good friends? 40:27 Chopin’s plan to write his own piano method 41:35 Why would Chopin ask a music theorist/composer to help him with his piano method 42:33 Was Chopin 100% focused on completing his method? 43:14 Chopin being very musically opinionated and yet asking several friends to finish his piano method 44:42 Friedrich Kalkbrenner’s negative image 47:33 People dismissing great composers as “inferior” 48:57 How would Chopin analyze his own music? 52:10 Francis Plante’s video recordings of Chopin Etudes at age 90 53:26 Ragtime - Do we have any evidence that Scott Joplin and Tom Turpin had any formal music training? 55:06 Do we know for sure that Scott Joplin had a counterpoint treatise in his possession? 58:32 The Leipzig Conservatory and Generalbass 59:13 Roman Numerals, Harmonic Function Theory, Generalbass and Counterpoint - a Nuanced take 1:01:34 Were Leipzig Conservatory students learning Stufentheorie and Generalbass at the same time? 1:02:45 Joplin’s counterpoint treatise containing many notes and annotations 1:03:56 On counterpoint being something that takes years to study 1:05:34 If you study counterpoint already, what’s the need for Stufentheorie or Roman Numerals? 1:07:30 Is Wagner influenced by the German theories of music? 1:10:33 Counterpoint vs chord invertibility 1:14:17 Wrapping Up
My guest today is one of the masters of jazz guitar and jazz education, Richie Hart. He has performed with some of the biggest names in jazz including Ron Carter, Jimmy Cobb, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Don Patterson, Jack McDuff, Freddie Hubbard, Hubert Laws, Houston Person, Etta Jones, just to name a few and is a professor of jazz guitar at Berklee College of Music.
0:37 Beginnings 4:41 Where was George Benson’s career at the time you met him? 6:08 Do you remember the first tune you played together? 6:47 George Benson asking you for the names of chords he was playing 7:47 Abandoning the Berklee method 9:34 How often were you taking lessons with George Benson? 9:57 What kind of things would George ask you to work on? 11:08 Does George Benson’s approach follow a lineage that goes back to Charlie Christian? 12:11 Is his concept simple or sophisticated? 13:24 What is the problem with the chord-scale theory? 17:08 What should you do if you want to get good at the Blues? 19:11 How many transcriptions should one know? 20:17 How would you analyze a solo by a master to help you create your own lines? 21:45 Do you standardize the chords of a blues form when learning the blues? 23:36 What about Blues forms that have extra chords like played by Charlie Parker? 25:47 Playing Cherokee at 400bpm, how do you think so fast? 28:09 How do you improve your sight-reading? 31:25 Why should we listen to players like Grant Green or Jim Hall? 33:54 Do you tap your foot when improvising? 35:11 Do you practice with a metronome? 36:36 Do you hum or sing when you improvise? 37:34 What do you think about using real books? 38:43 Jazz education drifting away from the original source 41:22 Should you practice a tune in all 12 keys or focus on sounding good in a single key first? 42:05 How about Cherokee in all 12 keys? 42:58 How are you different as an improviser today vs 20 years ago? 43:46 Do you find a commonality with jazz and classical music? 45:46 Reacting to Barry Harris’ statement that jazz is a continuation of classical music 46:32 What is your theory/pedagogy of teaching jazz improvisation? 52:42 Chords and Upper extension question 54:47 Top 3 Saxophonists 55:05 Top 3 Trumpet players 55:12 Top 3 Piano players 55:37 Top 3 Drummers 56:02 Top 3 Bassists 56:12 Top 3 Guitarists 56:19 If you could time travel and play with anyone in history, who would it be? 56:37 Top 3 classical composers 56:48 What’s the first album people should check out if they want to dive into your music? 56:55 Wrapping Up
My guest today is Concert Pianist, Composer, and Music Educator Rami Bar-Niv. Rami Bar-Niv made history by being the first, and so far the only, Israeli artist to perform in Egypt following the Begin/Sadat Peace Treaty. Praised as “Effective and Flamboyant” by the New York Times and “An Original major talent” by the Boston Globe, Bar-Niv is an international concert performer who has written two books, the first is the “Art of Piano Fingering” and the second his autobiography “Blood, Sweat, and Tours: Notes from the Diary of a Concert Pianist”.
0:55 Playing by ear, Improvising, and composing from age 5 3:38 What music did you listen to growing up? 5:46 Parents teaching their own children vs having a stranger 6:43 Were you a good practicer? 7:47 Studying harmony, counterpoint and theory at the conservatory 8:37 What is your theoretical approach to composition? 9:55 What was your education in counterpoint? 10:21 Did you use Hindemith’s textbook? 11:14 Did you take ideas from repertoire and absorb them into your compositional process? 12:22 Theoretical studies with Carl Schachter 13:06 How long did you study with Schachter and what’s your perspective on Schenkerian analysis? 14:11 Do you think of theory when composing? 16:05 Does your pianistic ability inform your composing? 18:27 What was your personal relationship with Carl Schachter? 19:04 Did you always improvise? 21:31 Improvisation vs Interpretation 23:59 Do hum when you play? 24:56 Do you have an interested in Jazz? 25:48 What the names of jazz pianists that you enjoy? 26:06 How would you teach improvisation to someone? 30:04 What is your method of teaching composition? 32:57 What do you mean by “knowing” a piece of music? 33:28 Did you face any professional or cultural pressure not to improvise in your career? 35:45 What is your position on cadenzas in piano concertos? 38:54 How did you come to creating your compositional voice? 40:40 The Art of Piano Fingering 43:12 Do you distinguishing between old fingering and new modern fingering systems? 45:06 Do some great composers like Beethoven write bad, non-idiomatic piano music despite being great composers? 47:38 Why is Opera the height of everything? 48:26 Would you consider yourself a self-taught composer? 49:44 How important is family to you? 50:45 Wrapping Up
A personal hero of mine is on the show today: 2-time Grammy nominee, Guitar Virtuoso, Tommy Emmanuel CGP (Certified Guitar Player)! His latest album is 2020’s The Best of Tommysongs, a double CD that features some of Tommy’s best original works with 5 brand new songs.
1:03 Nikhil’s personal musical journey starting with Tommy Emmanuel 5:01 How many solo’s did you learn off records? 6:38 Tommy’s advice for young musicians, “Get to Work!” 7:36 What do you mean by working 3hrs on a song? 8:53 Is it important to get the exact voicing when transcribing things off records? 10:58 Did you learn the complete solos of all these artists you mentioned? 12:00 What is your system for making sure what you improvise fits correctly on top of the chord? 13:06 Did your improvisational skill experience a general increase over the years or were there intense periods of practice at it? 14:37 Is it important to listen to singers? 16:43 Do you compose music like writing a song rather than guitar music 18:10 Do you play the piano? 18:46 Composing in a piano-like manner 19:24 Dixie McGuire 19:52 How long does it take to write a song? 21:20 Does the melody come first or the harmony? 22:07 What is your definition for a musical idea? 22:35 Does the melody dictate the form of the song? 23:58 Composing a song in 20mins and talking about inspiration 27:08 Do you have many sketches of incomplete songs in your archive? 28:37 The horizontal thought process of composing melody with chords/bass underneath 30:39 Tommy attempting to take lessons to learn how to sightread in the past 32:57 Economy in songwriting 34:25 What should someone look for when listening to a great song? 36:09 Chet Atkins, his influence and why he’s so special 38:01 Django Reinhardt 41:23 The Grammys 43:08 Do you have interest in arranging/orchestrating your songs? 44:05 What is your hardest song to play? 44:37 Performing live at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Singapore for billions of viewers 45:50 Do you find inspiration to compose music from physical things in life 47:49 Top 3 Jazz Guitarists 47:56 Top 3 Country Guitarists 48:03 Top 3 Blues Guitarists 48:11 Top 3 Pop Songwriters 48:21 Top 3 Film Composers 48:41 Top 3 Classical Composers 48:59 Top 3 Drummers 49:08 Top 3 Billy Joel songs 49:27 Top 3 Beatles Songs 49:40 Do you get musically inspired by books, movies, non-musical things? 50:54 The Endless Road Documentary, substance abuse past 53:04 The mystique around drugs to improve your creativity 54:24 The importance of good male role models in life 55:56 I Still Can’t Say Goodbye and the connection to the father 58:38 Are you religious or spiritual person? And does it affect your life? 1:00:11 Upcoming projects, albums and events 1:02:22 Wrapping Up
My guest today is Professor Peter Schubert. He holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Columbia University and is currently an Associate Professor at the McGill University Faculty of Music. He is the author of the textbook, “Modal Counterpoint: Renaissance Style” (Oxford University Press, 1999). and with colleague Christoph Neidhoefer he also co-authored “Baroque Counterpoint” (Prentice-Hall, 2005). He is known for teaching improvised vocal counterpoint in his classes.
My Guest today is Professor David Mesquita, he teaches ear training, sightsinging, Historical satzlehre Renaissance through to the Romantic at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. His research focuses on Spanish Music and music theory, as well as improvised counterpoint.
0:30 What is your background? 1:31 On learning both Fixed Do and Moveable Do growing up at the same time 2:19 Do you have Absolute or Perfect Pitch? 2:49 What repertoire did you use when studying solfege? 4:05 Students who have to solmize but were raised on Fixed Do? 4:32 Can you comment on the Kodaly method? 5:20 What do you think about Hexachordal solfeggio solmization? 6:54 Do you have a preference for a type of solmization? 8:31 How do you teach ear training? 11:36 Is all all aural or is sight singing involved as well? 13:19 How does someone develop their vocabulary in order to improvise counterpoint? 15:54 Does this take years to master? 17:01 How long are the example that you use in the classroom? 17:41 How would you teach a student who begins with zero knowledge? 19:43 What does Contrappunto alla mente mean? 21:48 Was Lusitano a theorist from Spain? 22:34 The Spanish Golden Age - Siglo de Oro 23:53 Is the Spanish Style very different from the Italian style? 25:37 What are the stylistic differences between the Spanish Style and others? 27:33 Were the writers like Soriano Fuertes writing from a perspective of Nationalism? 29:19 Did the Spanish Style go extinct like the partimento tradition? 30:51 Is Renaissance counterpoint useful or applicable for more modern styles of music? 32:01 What commonalities exist between Renaissance counterpoint and later styles? 33:02 Using Renaissance counterpoint as a good base for studying all tonal music 35:28 What are the different levels of expertise in improvised counterpoint and ear training? 36:50 What are the 6 levels of expertise? 38:07 Is improvised counterpoint a separate subject from written counterpoint? 38:39 What’s your opinion on Harmony and Counterpoint, are they two separate subjects? 41:33 Are Harmony and Counterpoint merging in some way today? 41:58 Is there any difficulty applying your process to later Romantic music? 43:58 Do you use different temperaments for different styles of music? 45:48 Do you have a particular frequency that you favor? 46:46 Do you get a physical sensation or awareness of playing in different tunings? 47:48 Does a keyboard in equal temperament sound out of tune for you? 49:04 talking about contrapunto.ch, a website to help practicing improvised counterpoint? 52:08 How do you use the website? 53:28 What’s the best way to learn counterpoint? 54:01 Is there more than 2 voices? 55:35 Available resources, links and teachers to learn counterpoint 57:29 How would you reform music education? 1:00:08 What remaining mysteries about the Spanish style remain for you? 1:02:17 Wrapping Up
My guest today is Music Theorist, Organist and Composer, Derek Remeš. He is known for his research into the pedagogy behind Johann Sebastian’s Bach method of composition and improvisation. He also is the admin for Facebook group that he started,”Composition and Improvisation in J.S. Bach’s Germany”.
0:36 What is your musical background? 2:37 Has anyone in Bach research looked at his craft of improvisation? 4:47 Do all organists have to improvise? 5:47 Did you have a background in improvisation before learning the organ? 6:45 The terminology of thoroughbass 7:49 Would Bach have used the term thoroughbass? 7:58 What do we know of Bach the teacher? Did he have many students and how long did he teach in his career? 10:09 How does thoroughbass relate to Counterpoint and did they talk about Counterpoint much? 15:18 CPE Bach mentioning that JS Bach avoided the “dry” exercises of species counterpoint 16:43 LM 4665, the anonymous manuscript that contained thoroughbass fugues 19:04 How did Bach begin teaching new students? 19:53 Did Bach expect strict counterpoint in thoroughbass? 21:06 How about parallel movement in the middle voices? 22:40 Did he stay with 4 voices or did he eventually shrink down to 3 or 2 voices? 25:17 Was there any instruction in how to write melodies? Like how the Italians practiced Solfeggio. 26:49 The Italian partimenti eventually had no figures, was that the same for Bach? 28:27 Did Heinichen, Niedt and Bach share the same conception of thoroughbass? 31:51 Heinichen updated treatise, after his trip to Italy and the connection to Bach 33:07 What are the differences between Heinichen’s first treatise and his later updated version? 39:35 Is Heinichen an innovator? 42:03 After thoroughbass, the student moves on to chorales 43:40 The same melody in chorales but multiple, different basses with figures 45:37 Did they use solfeggio syllables like Do, Re Mi, Fa Sol, La? 49:01 Modes vs Major/Minor 49:35 What temperament are we supposed to play Bach’s music in? 50:44 Going from chorales to fugues, when does the study of imitation happen? 53:56 Does being good at thoroughbass prepare you well for fugues? 54:51 Do you find that the study of thoroughbass has helped you in understanding tonal music of other eras? 56:09 What’s the best way in your opinion, to learn counterpoint? 57:46 How would you reform music education? 1:02:22 On the modern use of “tonal” as a flippant, pejorative 1:03:43 Wrapping Up
What a great thrill to be joined by a very special guest, Professor Rosa Cafiero of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, the department of History, Archaeology and Art History. She is here to talk about her latest book La didattica del partimento (a collection of nine essays, revisited and adjourned for the digital era). She is one of the great, early pioneers of Partimento research!
0:55 The word for department in Italian is dipartimento 1:23 On being a graduate of the San Pietro a Majella, Naples 1:56 Was the training there similar to the 18th century version of the conservatory? 3:16 Was partimento extinct? 3:59 Did you still get to learn partimenti in any way? 4:48 When did you get interested in exploring the Neapolitan methods? 5:46 Describe the history of Partimento research in the 20th century 8:39 How many documents and manuscripts were there in the library? 9:54 Have all the manuscripts been researched? 10:51 Are these expensive paper manuscripts free from mistakes? 12:44 What does sulla fortuna mean? 13:11 How did you revise your 1993 Carlo Cotumacci article? 14:30 Who was Carlo Cotumacci and why is he important? 16:48 How is Cotumacci’s “3rd Way” different from Leo and Durante? 17:31 The regole del contrappunto by Nicola Sala 19:37 On Nicola’s legacy and his reputation in counterpoint but also some criticism about his melodic ability 20:22 Francesco Durante’s harmonic theories 21:35 How did you revise the essay? 21:55 How hard was it to get these manuscripts today vs previous years 23:37 “Music of a new kind, music composed without rules” - Fenaroli 25:40 Did Fenaroli complain about mistakes in his publications 26:17 Was Naples aware of musical developments in other continents, such as the popularity of Haydn 27:56 Do we full biographies of these Neapolitans or do we just have scraps of information 29:35 How about letters? 31:04 Emmanuele Imbimbo in Paris 33:27 What does Practica mean? 35:10 But wasn’t Zarlino a theorist? How does that relate to practica? 36:32 Bianchi’s treatise on harmony 38:45 Was his treatise like Fenaroli’s regole? 40:45 How did Bianchi teach young children? 41:17 The criticisms of the Neapolitan school in the 19th century 43:49 The Neapolitan method vs the 20th century vertical approach to harmony 47:40 Are Harmony and Counterpoint two separate subjects? 48:30 Is the Neapolitan method only for the 18th century, or can the principles be applied to modern settings? 49:33 What mysteries still remain that interest you about this field of research? 51:10 Do you have a favorite composer from this period? 52:48 What’s your reaction to surge in interest in partimento today? 53:30 How about among your colleagues and peers? 55:04 Wrapping Up 55:52 When is the english version of your book coming out?
My guest today is Professor Mark Ferraguto, he is an Associate Professor of Musicology at Penn State University. He will talk to us about his very interesting book “Beethoven 1806”, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2019.
0:30 Can you describe your musical background? 1:36 What were the things that bothered you about the way Beethoven was discussed? 3:08 Was Beethoven himself to blame for this because of the way he marketed himself? 4:27 The bust of Beethoven in a Liszt painting 4:53 Beethoven anecdote arguing with a violinist 5:36 How did you come to choosing 1806 for research? 6:20 What are the 3 periods of Beethoven? 7:16 How do these non-heroic works of 1806 appear in his middle period? 8:34 Career-wise, how was Beethoven doing in 1806 9:37 What was Beethoven’s music education? 11:22 Was Beethoven a child prodigy? 12:16 Could Beethoven play the complete Bach Well Tempered Clavier as a child? 12:55 Was Beethoven aware of the growing culture of Romanticism around him? 14:05 Leonore Overture 15:13 Was Opera not really his thing? 15:47 How did Luigi Cherubini affect Fidelio and Beethoven? 16:50 Did Beethoven have good things to say about his contemporaries and what did he think of Cherubini? 18:00 Is there an Italian connection with Beethoven? 19:03 The 4th Piano Concerto and Violin Concerto and the terminology of the term “Virtuoso” 20:46 What are these new sources that might be of interest to Beethoven scholars? 22:17 How did the French Érard Piano affect the composition of the 4th piano concerto? 23:55 Is the Violin concerto a virtuoso piece? 25:11 What are the distinctive musical features of the 4th piano concerto? 27:25 Did the public want the virtuosity or something else? 29:13 Was Beethoven making fun of Russians with his Razumovsky String Quartets? 30:27 Were the criticisms of the string quartets modern or contemporary? 32:53 What does the learned style or approach mean and what is it contrasted with? 34:25 Were the terms stile antico used in the 18th century? 35:27 How famous was Joseph Haydn in 1806? 36:48 Is the 4th symphony a regression as compared to the 3rd symphony? 37:39 How did the French Érard piano lead to the composition of the 32 variations in C minor? 40:34 Is there an evolution in piano writing in these variations compared to his previous variations? 42:19 The Coriolan overture as a return to the Heroic 44:20 What’s the significance of the playwright and the Corialan overture? 45:25 What do you mean by the term Everyday Beethoven? 46:26 What were the most surprising things about your research? 47:38 How has Beethoven research changed over the last couple of decades? 49:17 Was Beethoven actually not deaf? 51:19 Can you recommend any sections from Beethoven’s music that people should listen to? 54:19 Wrapping Up
My guest today is the great Professor Ludwig Holtmeier, who is a music theorist, musicologist, pianist and the president of the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg!
0:23 What’s your musical background? 3:37 Did you have a typical classical training or did you ever improvise as a young musician? 4:18 Do you have perfect or absolute pitch? 4:29 Did you learn music theory and counterpoint as a young musician? 4:59 Moving to Freiburg 7:37 When did you discover partimento? 10:10 How did you break away from Riemannian theory? 12:36 How did you find these older methods? 13:24 Were a lot of treatises lost during WWII? 14:02 What was inside that library of note? 14:45 Continuing the story of how he discovered Fenaroli 15:50 Was it the Fenaroli Regole? 16:10 What date was that manuscript of Fenaroli? 17:12 Why did no one want to teach music theory at the piano at the University of Freiburg? 18:10 How did you fill in the gaps of information in Fenaroli’s regole? 20:57 Is Rameau one of the most misunderstood music theorists? 22:46 What are people getting wrong about Rameau? 27:01 How do you integrate partimento theory with the modern curriculum? 28:08 Is it based around Fenaroli or other teachers as well? 28:43 Do most students come to you not knowing anything about partimento? 29:21 What are some of the best exercises you use? 31:50 Are there theories that you exclude at the University? 33:31 How do you balance partimento with other theories in analysis? 34:42 How would you analyze the music of Wagner? 37:08 What do you mean by arabic numerals? 37:52 What is your perspective on Riemann? 43:22 How about Heinrich Schenker? 45:18 What’s the best way to learn counterpoint? 47:41 Should Harmony be separated from counterpoint? Should they be 2 separate subjects? 48:50 Do you have a preference for Fixed Do, Moveable Do or Hexachordal Solfeggio? 50:16 On Music Schema 53:46 What is the importance of David Heinichen in music theory in the 18th century? 54:46 Did he codify the methods of the Italians? 55:34 Did Bach use Heinichen’s treatise? 57:08 The intriguing unity of the methods of the 18th century 1:00:25 Can partimento and 18th century pedagogy help us understand newer composers like Rachmaninoff, Debussy and Ravel? 1:01:40 What is your advice for parents who will start music lessons for their children? 1:02:49 How can people find you and your work? 1:03:45 Wrapping Up
I’m so pleased to introduce my guest today, a real expert on early music, Harpsichordist, composer and singer, Dr. Elam Rotem.
In 2014, Rotem established the award winning resources website Early Music Sources. In 2016, he finished his PhD thesis with distinction ("Early Basso Continuo Practice: Implicit Evidence in the Music of Emilio de’ Cavalieri"), within a new collaborative program between the Schola Cantorum in Basel and the University of Würzburg, Germany. He is the founder and director of Profeti della Quinta. His most recent composition is the Lamentations of David, available on YouTube.
0:58 What was music scene like in the 16th century? 1:27 Who were the most famous musicians in the 16th century? 1:48 Were they so well known that everyone was copying their music? 2:25 Is Italy the main focus of interest? 3:19 What are madrigals? 3:59 Is an Italian madrigal different? 4:19 When was the Renaissance? 4:41 What was the standard form of counterpoint in 1600? Did any a significant theorist shape it? 6:17 Are treatises written often looking backwards? 7:20 How would have composers back then learned music? 8:20 Was their training more focused on improvisation and composition? 9:06 Hexachordal Solfeggio 10:44 Did they use more clefs? 11:36 Locating Fa on Fa Clefs 12:30 Did these think about cadences differently? 13:41 In any of the treatises did they talk about vertical chords? 14:56 What do prima pratica and seconda practica mean? 15:43 What were Artusi’s complaints with Monteverdi? 16:12 How did Artusi get copies of Monteverdi’s music before they were published? 16:47 How did Basso Continuo have an effect on composition when it came on the scene? 18:51 Did anyone criticize Basso Continuo when it appeared for the first time? 19:16 Do we distinguish between accompaniment and counterpoint? 19:50 Did Basso Continue subsequently explode in popularity? 20:25 If there were no figures, how did they interpret scores correctly? 21:03 Do we know how these musicians learned counterpoint? 22:33 Are there any historical counterpoint workbooks available? 23:45 Why was the major 6th considered the harshest interval in the renaissance? 26:28 If someone had absolute pitch, how would that work in the Renaissance? 27:23 Did you have to tune instruments on the fly if you had tunes in different keys? 27:50 Could you give examples of instruments not being able to match the flexibility of the voice in transposition? 28:26 Modes 29:58 Were these composers really only thinking horizontally and with consonances and dissonances? 30:35 What are some remaining mysteries of music in the Renaissance? 32:12 What are common questions you get about your work and research? 32:49 Is music of this period mainly vocal? 33:10 What pieces of music are required to know in order to get handle of the music of the 16th and 17th century and develop your counterpoint? 33:57 Are you singing syllables or just the notes? 35:25 What do you mean by compositional situations? 36:03 Should students study counterpoint rules from treatises? 36:57 How about the Thomas de Santa Maria treatise? 37:27 Can you learn faster with a master composer? 38:04 Has the art of counterpoint watered down with newer styles? 38:54 Do you feel that there’s different languages of counterpoint for different styles of music? 39:55 How did you compose the Lamentations of David? 40:53 How long did it take you to compose it? 41:24 Were you always a composer? 42:07 Can you describe your experience studying at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis? 43:34 Wrapping Up
My guest today is Professor John Mortensen, a leading performer, scholar and teacher in classical or historic improvisation, Steinway Artist, Fulbright Scholar, and is a professor of Music at Cedarville University.
His new book is “The Pianist’s guide to Historic Improvisation”, published by Oxford University Press.
Kate Boyd, Professor of Music at Butler University reviewed the book by saying,
"This book fills an important niche in the world of piano and keyboard pedagogy. In each of the chapters Mortensen encourages the reader's creativity, simultaneously exposing the musical building blocks used by some of the great composers and allowing the reader to apply those same compositional techniques to improvising in a stylistically-appropriate way.”
Noam Sivan, Professor of Piano Improvisation, Hochschule of Music and Performing Arts, Stuttgart reviewed the book saying, "Any language study based solely on reading without speaking, would be incomplete. Similarly, the study of improvisation is indispensable for learning music. In this important book John Mortensen wonderfully demystifies the creative process and presents a clear and gradual method for learning to speak the language of J. S. Bach and his contemporaries. Highly recommended!”
It debuted at #1 on Amazon’s Piano and Music Instruction category.
1:41 What was the landscape for books on classical improvisation before the publishing of his book 3:35 How long did it take you to write the book, and did you have to revise the book as new information kept coming out? 4:22 Who is the book written for? 5:37 Does the book lean Italian or German in it’s approach? 7:12 What prerequisites do you need to create a figuration prelude? 8:12 What harmonies do you need to know to start your figuration prelude? 10:01 How do you break up the chord and how many types of figurations that you can come up with? 10:46 The effectiveness of figuration preludes in getting newcomers to creating music right away 11:29 Why is Toccata chapter 2? 12:56 What’s the amount of harmonic knowledge you need to improvise Toccatas? 13:37 Do you teach cadences in the book? 13:57 The Rule of the Octave and how important it is? 16:08 Which version of the Rule of the Octave do you want students to start with? 17:50 CPE Bach’s multitude of Rule of Octave versions 18:51 Diminutions 21:19 What about 16th notes? 22:14 How do you avoid contrapuntal mistakes in improvisation? 23:37 Do you encourage students look at the piano literature and steal ideas? 24:23 Variations 27:48 What’s the way to develop melodic lyricism? 31:42 How do I finger all these examples in the book? 32:36 Friedrich Erhard Niedt and the suite 35:52 Imitation 38:30 Counterpoint 39:57 Is Counterpoint not being taught correctly? 40:57 Partimento 42:27 The benefits of partimento with regular music students 45:09 The overwhelming positive feedback to classical improvisation 46:00 How does the scene compare to 10 years ago? 48:17 Schemata 50:00 Interest in traditional Irish music? 50:51 The parallels between Celtic improvisation and Classical improvisation 52:28 On being denied visiting a University because the top professor could not improvise 53:44 Is a classical improvisation renaissance happening? 54:20 Publishing with Oxford University Press? 55:52 What are your thoughts on hexachordal solfeggio practiced by the Neapolitans as researched by Nicholas Baragwanath? 58:57 Wrapping Up
So privileged to introduced my guest today one of the greats, pianist, musicologist and educator Professor Tibor Szasz.
He has given over 1000 solo, concerto, and chamber music performances all over the world. His recordings of Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Schubert, and Bartók have been issued in the United States and Germany.
Tibor Szász holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in piano performance from the University of Michigan, and is a Tenured professor of piano at the Hoshschule fur Music Freiburg in Germany.
0:48 How old were you when you started playing the piano 1:42 Was it a weekly lesson or multiple times a week? 2:18 How many hours a day did you practice? 3:08 What kind of music did you play growing up? 4:25 Do you have Absolute or Perfect Pitch? 6:20 Did you get rid of your perfect pitch? 6:59 What do you make of different tunings? 10:31 Is there a difference between 440Hz and 432Hz? 11:31 What is your perspective of equal temperament vs other tunings? 16:57 Did you improvise as a child growing up? 19:49 Was there a prejudice against improvisation in your career? 23:04 Touring with Béla Bartók’s son in 1977 28:22 Was his son much older than you at the time? 34:11 Carnegie Hall debut in 1977 35:57 Did you meet Vladimir Horowitz? 37:49 What did Horowitz think about your performance of the Liszt Sonata? 40:09 Enraging Horowitz at a Q&A 41:07 Does being Hungarian give you greater insight into Liszt’s music? 42:32 Beethoven article about basso continuo in the Emperor Concerto 47:25 Did Beethoven abolish improvising cadenzas in concertos? 49:25 The disappearance of continuo in the Romantic concerto 51:55 Robert Levin’s reaction to your Continuo article and your relationship with him 52:20 Were there other concert pianists who could read figure bass? 55:31 CPE Bach who said that the Harpsichord’s absence could be felt if it didn’t play continuo 56:31 Do find that most pianists do not realize continuo notation in concertos in the modern age? 57:27 Isn’t Urtext supposed to be THE authentic musical text of the composition? 1:00:57 What is the definition of Il Filo? 1:02:49 What are these building blocks in Il Filo? 1:03:43 How do you get better at developing Il Filo? 1:05:27 How does a student learn basso continuo? 1:07:06 How would you reform music education? 1:10:07 Wrapping Up 1:10:47 Where can people find you?
We’re joined today by a great guest, Dorico Product Marketing Manager Daniel Spreadbury, to talk about the new release of Dorico, version 3.5 and the new Figured Bass feature.
0:22 The new feature: figured bass in Dorico 3.5 1:05 How is Dorico figured bass different in implementation compared to Sibelius, Finale, and other notation software? 4:38 On the greatness of the letter G being reserved for figured bass 6:14 Was figured bass a feature that was greatly requested? 9:30 F.T. Arnold as a reference for research for the Dorico team 9:46 Will the smart figured bass system work with other theoretical systems that don’t relate to fundamental bass 11:30 Can a jazz musician’s chords be converted into figured bass? 12:46 Do higher intervals like a 13th be shown? 13:39 Can you customize how the accidentals appear? 14:12 Would you be able to spell out voicings? 14:34 Is that a feature that might come out in a later version? 15:23 Are the French, Italian and German traditions of figured bass represented in Dorico? 17:10 When is the next release of Dorico? 19:34 Have you heard about Professor Nicholas Baragwanath’s upcoming book,”The Solfeggio Tradition”? 20:10 Wrapping Up
I’m thrilled to introduce my guest today, Harpischordist and Organist Professor Nicoleta Paraschivescu! She teaches the organ at the Academy of Music in Basel (AMS) and is organist at the church of St. Theodor in Basel.
In 2015 she received her PhD from the University of Leiden for her doctoral dissertation about Giovanni Paisiello’s Partimenti. She was awarded the hibou-Stiftung Prize in 2016 in recognition of her outstanding research on partimenti. She is an expert in partimento realization and has contributed to partimento research. Her latest album is Partimenti napolitani, featuring her realizations of the partimenti of Paisiello, Durante and Doll.
0:57 When did you start playing the keyboard? 2:42 Do you have Absolute or Perfect Pitch? 2:52 Did you take lessons from the age of 6 all the way to university? 4:14 Did you always improvise in your life? 5:43 What year did you discover partimento? 7:00 How did you teach yourself to realize this music authentically? 8:58 How did you come to choose Giovanni Paisiello as your main focus? 10:25 Paisiello’s high profile professional career 12:38 On Catherine the Great not being really a great lover of music 14:02 Do we have alot of documentation on Paisiello’s life? 16:00 The amazing discovery of a 2nd book of partimenti by Paisiello 18:13 Paisiello’s use of partimenti as counterpoint exercises 21:07 Partimenti as genre types 21:46 What did you mean by the bass line needing to be filled out? 24:25 Does the counterpoint notebook by Talleyrand have evidence of Paisiello himself correcting or giving model answers? 26:52 How extensively were intavolature used at the Neapolitan conservatories? 29:38 On the contrapuntal “mistakes” in the intavolature? 31:13 How should someone start learning partimento? 33:05 What’s good collection of partimenti for beginners? 36:33 What are some common mistakes that you’ve found students make when learning partimento? 37:59 How has been the reaction to your development in improvisation and partimento in the classical world? 41:29 What’s the difference in popularity of partimento today vs when you discovered? 42:48 On her album “Partimento napolitani” 44:31 What is your realization style? 46:28 What’s the best way to learn counterpoint? 47:36 On her recordings of Marianna Martines’ music 49:18 Can you give recommendations of good music that people can listen to 50:59 If you could change music education, how would you change it? 53:37 Do you find that you look at modern music differently now with your partimento training? 56:01 Do you have any use for roman numerals or harmonic functions? 57:22 So you don’t really use roman numerals? 58:14 Wrapping Up
My guest today is Peter Pullman, he is the author of “Wail: The Life of Bud Powell”. Receiving a Grammy nomination in 1994 for Best Album Notes on the album “The Complete Bud Powell On Verve” led Pullman to begin work on the biographical project. A truly exhaustive work, Pullman conducted 300 formal interviews, 500 informal ones, research in private archives, police records, FBI files, petitioning New York state psychiatric hospitals, fact finding trips to Europe. The book was a culmination of 12 years of work, and is probably the definitive book on the musician’s life.
0:55 Bud Powell’s first piano teacher 2:15 How long was Bud with his first teacher? 3:46 Was Bud acquainted with any famous musicians in Harlem? 5:14 Did Bud join any big bands? 6:41 When did Bebop begin and how did Bud get into Bebop? 9:05 When Bud meet Thelonious Monk? 11:09 Did the theoretical underpinnings of Bebop come from Monk? 13:34 Who was Jimmy Blanton? 13:58 How tall was Bud Powell? 15:10 When Bud told Billy Taylor that he was more interested in learning Charlie Parker’s style instead of Art Tatum’s 17:21 When did that conversation take place? 18:55 What was Bud’s relationship with Charlie Parker in the early stages 21:52 Do we know how much Bud and Charlie Parker played together 23:50 What about Dizzy Gillespie and Bud? 25:56 How did the seminal 1947 recording date (with Donna Lee and Buzzy) happen if it was so difficult to corral everyone? 27:05 Recording with Sonny Stitt in 1949 28:34 Can you date the peak of interest in Bebop? 30:51 Sonny Stitt and Bud’s mutual respect 34:22 The famous disastrous final gig with Charlie Parker and Bud Powell 37:45 Bud tearing into Charlie Parker in Lennie Tristano’s presence 40:23 Did Errol Garner refuse to perform right after Bud Powell? 42:39 Was tension between Oscar Peterson and Bud Powell? 45:15 Was Francis Paudraus, Bud’s close friend, an unreliable biographer? 47:28 Did Art Tatum and Bud Powell have a cutting contest? 49:34 Bud receiving a standing ovation immediately after his “Move" solo 52:57 What was Barry Harris’ relationship with Bud Powell? 56:05 Did Bud Powell watch a John Coltrane concert and did they have a connection? 59:38 How has the reception to your book been? 1:02:35 Nikhil’s interest in Bud Powell 1:06:29 Who was the most helpful interviewee in your research? 1:09:13 Wrapping Up
Returning to the program is Professor Robert Gjerdingen, Professor Emeritus of Music at Northwestern University’s School of Music. He is well known for his research in Music Schemata Theory, Partimento and is an expert in music of the 18th century.
His previous book was the influential 2007 book “Music in the Galant Style” and he has a new book out entitled,”Child Composers in the Old Conservatories: How Orphans Became Elite Musicians”. He is also very actively updating his new website partimenti.org
0:48 How did you come to write Child Composers? 2:43 Do you still conduct research in Music Schema Theory? 3:20 How long did you work with Alma Deutscher and what did you work on? 5:56 How do the elite child classical performers of today compare with the elite child musicians of these old conservatories? 8:22 What was the typical job description of a graduate of the Neapolitan conservatories? 9:44 Was fugal training overkill with regard to the work that the graduates would use in their professional lives in the 18th century? 11:24 What are the problems with Move-able Do in Solfeggio? 16:19 How were intavolature, beginning keyboard pieces, used at the conservatories? 18:12 What are some good, easy keyboard pieces that children today could use? 18:54 If I was a violinist, would I still need to sing and play the keyboard? 19:26 Even if I played guitar, cello, trumpet or any instrument I’d still be expected to sing and play keyboard? 19:37 Why did the Neapolitans place so much importance on singing? 20:23 How many hours a day did one of these child composers dedicate to music at the conservatories? 21:21 How many times a week would a class like partimento be taken a week? 22:04 Did Debussy study partimenti at the Paris Conservatory? 23:42 What is the difference between the Bologna and Naples traditions? 25:28 Henri Busser’s blackballing at his harmony entrance exam by Theodore Dubois 28:30 Did Rameau and his theories of fundamental bass have any influence on the Paris Conservatory? 29:46 If the Paris Conservatory was so emulated around the world and Walter Piston studied with Nadia Boulanger, why didn’t the old italian methods continue on in America in the 20th century? 32:58 Do things like submediants, supertonics then exist? 33:49 Are there modern theories of music with levels of harmony or is it just a serious study of counterpoint? 35:08 Are these 20th century college books of harmony just for learning “about” music and instead of real study of music would entail a serious multi-year course of counterpoint? 36:19 What is your opinion about classical music performance competitions? 39:14 How do these old Italian methods work with regular, non-prodigy children and people? 41:40 Have you seen a change in perception in music analysis with regard to music schema, partimento, figured bass over the years? 45:00 What about Heinrich Schenker’s popularity in music conservatories, didn’t he believe in counterpoint? 45:55 What’s your plan with partimenti.org? 46:11 Do you have new books and articles planned for the future? 46:28 Were you friends with Daniel Heartz who recently passed away? 47:33 Commenting on Music Schema with regard to form-functional analysis 48:46 How should a child start learning music?
I’m so pleased to introduce my guest today Harpsichordist, Improviser and Conductor, Professor Ewald Demeyere.
Professor Demeyere studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp obtaining his master’s degree for harpsichord in Jos van Immerseel’s class. On completion of his studies in 1997 he was engaged as a teacher of harmony, counterpoint and fugue by the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp. In 2002 he succeeded Jos van Immerseel as Professor of Harpsichord and he is also a professor at IMEP in Belgium.
A specialist in Early Music, Partimento and counterpoint, he was the winner of the CPE Bach Counterpoint Contest. As a recording artist he has recorded many albums including Tears, Harpsichord Laments of the 17th century, 18th century flemish harpsichord music, Telemann Les nations - Overture & Oboe concertos, Mozart’s Gran Partita, and many more.
Hey everyone, welcome to the Nikhil Hogan Show. I’m really excited to introduce my guest today, Professor John A. Rice.
Professor Rice studied music history under Daniel Heartz at the University of California, Berkeley (PhD, 1987) he taught at the University of Washington (1987–88), Colby College (1988–90), the University of Houston (1990–97), and the University of Texas at Austin (1999). More recently he has been a visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh (2010–11) and the University of Michigan (2012–13). He has received grants from the Alexander-von-Humboldt Stiftung, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Philosophical Society. He has written many articles, reviews of books and musical editions, entries in musical encyclopedias and dictionaries, and six books, one of which, Antonio Salieri and Viennese Opera, received the Kinkeldey Award from the American Musicological Society. Other notable books include “Music in the Eighteenth Century” and “Mozart on Stage” by Cambridge University Press.
He has lectured widely in both the United States and Europe. He has served as president of the Mozart Society of America and of the Southwest Chapter of the AMS and as a director-at-large of the AMS. He is an elected member of the Akademie für Mozart-Forschung in Salzburg.
He runs a great YouTube Channel called Settecentista that provides many great examples of Music Schema and other topics. His research can be found on Academia.edu
1:18 How did you come to your research? 2:00 Studying under Daniel Heartz 2:36 What was considered cutting-edge in music history research in 1987? 3:11 What’s the difference between Opera Seria and Buffa? 4:09 Do these genres stem from nationality? 4:40 How have views on Opera changed from a music history perspective? 5:47 How did Opera relate to popular entertainment in the 18th century? 7:03 On your Antonio Salieri project in Vienna 8:02 On the popular perception of Salieri vs his real standing 9:32 What was the contemporary reception of Salieri? 10:48 Essays on Opera 1750-1800 11:20 Was Opera the dominant popular entertainment at the time? 12:01 What does Settecentista means? 12:20 How did you get into Musical schema? 13:24 How did you find new schema? 14:10 What was the first new schema that you found? 15:20 Did you tell your professor that you named the schema after him? 15:31 The Lully schema 16:28 The Morte schema 16:53 How many times do you have to notice a schema before it becomes important enough to identify? 17:27 How does partimento relate to schema? 18:09 Are there more schema lurking out there yet to be discovered? 19:32 On the few attempts to apply schema analysis to Opera 20:33 Examples in opera where it’s difficult to apply current schema theory 21:45 On the ubiquity of rising lines in Opera, contrasted with the many falling line schemas 22:56 What was instrumental music used for in the 18th century? 24:11 The Monte-Romanesca 25:44 What is the sublime? 26:23 Does the rising nature of the Monte-Romanesca relate to that feeling of the sublime? 26:37 Analyzing the quartet in Idomeneo with schema theory 27:40 What are the limitations of schema theory? 28:27 What’s been the most surprising thing to you about your research? 29:08 Saint Cecilia 29:58 Who was Saint Cecilia and why is she significant? 32:34 Examples of musicians who were the first who started to use her as an inspiration 33:16 What text was used to accompany the music? 34:41 Where was that phrase found? 34:51 Why do you think she resonated with the musicians? 35:08 When did organs appear? 35:57 How widespread was her image? 37:14 Is she still invoked today in liturgy and music? 37:51 What is interesting to you about renaissance music? 38:57 Were musicians of the 18th century well versed in renaissance music and older? 40:36 Wasn’t Mozart more of a harbinger of the newer, more popular style? 41:29 Can you recommend some music that’s not well known but should be because it’s so great 42:27 What about great Operas that should be more known? 43:09 What do you have planned for 2020? 44:10 When will the new book be published? 44:20 Wrapping Up
I’m really happy to introduce my guest today, Professor Johannes Menke. In 2004, he received his doctorate with a thesis on Giacinto Scelsi at the TU Berlin.
From 1999-2009 he taught music theory and ear training at the Musikhochschule Freiburg and was also active as a radio author, organist and choirmaster. Since 2007 he has been Professor of Historical Theory at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.
From 2008 to 2012 he was President of the Society for Music Theory (GMTH). He is co-editor of the book series Sinefonia (Wolke-Verlag) and the journal Musik & Ästhetik (Klett-Cotta). His numerous publications deal mainly with questions of music theory and analysis, especially with regard to history and didactics. His focus is on the music of the 16th and 17th centuries. These are the book publications counterpoint I: The music of the Renaissance and counterpoint II: The music of the Baroque.
His work at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis includes subjects in the fields of Renaissance to Romantic music, Early Music, the History of Music Theory as well as supervising doctoral projects. He is also co-founder of the project series Klangwelt Renaissance and the Basel Forum for Music Aesthetics.
1:02 When did the State of Germany come about? 2:03 Was it originally divided by religion or culture? 2:39 Siefried Dehn 3:52 How was Dehn trained? 4:17 Had generalbass existed in Germany at that time? 4:58 On parallels with Italian partimento and their differences 5:21 Adolf Bernhard Marx 6:36 How did Marx learn music? 7:00 Was his training similar to Dehn’s training? 8:05 What artist would represent the ancient regime? 8:29 Why would Marx say these things when many of old German masters studied generalbass? 9:16 What kind of music theory was Marx trying to promote to replace generalbass? 10:08 Does that include Roman Numerals? 10:31 Who came up with Roman Numerals? 10:50 Marx’s nationalist sentiments 11:37 Ferdinand Hiller 12:33 The reception of partimenti and Fenaroli in Germany 13:42 The perception that partimento was deficient because it appeared to lack chordal theory 14:28 Did Marx win the music theory wars? 14:59 Did Marx have successful students of note? 15:33 Was Dehn nationalistic as well? 16:05 Richard Wagner before Weinlig 17:09 Who was Christian Theodor Weinlig? 17:37 Weinlig called himself a Maestro, an Italian term 18:05 Wagner’s recollections in his autobiography about his lessons 19:41 Wagner being a grandchild of the Bologna tradition 20:07 Would Wagner have composed thinking more along the lines of generalbass? 21:27 How do we know that Wagner liked Bellini? 22:07 Did the love for Bellini stay with Wagner for his whole life? 23:14 What was the reception of Italian music, such as Opera, in Germany? 24:15 Is the word partimento mentioned in Germany in the 19th century? 25:08 Did the lack of figures in partimento influence generalbass or was it more like bologna, which had figures? 25:38 Is there an equivalent for the Rule of the Octave in Germany? 26:53 Was Partimento hard to be accepted because it was an oral tradition and lacked detailed treatises 27:54 What were the famous harmony books in Germany? 28:44 Gottfried Weber 30:03 How did Mendelssohn learn music? 30:49 Was Johann Georg Albrechtsberger familiar with the italian methods or was he more of a generalbass-ist? 31:46 On generalbass being thought of as just accompaniment rather than a complete method of composition and counterpoint. 33:03 If I was a student in the 19th century, how would I learn to be a composer? 33:31 Do different cities in Germany have different music theory traditions? 34:30 Did Germany have an equivalent to Italian Solfeggio and the study of melody? 35:46 How do you learn music in the generalbass way? 36:55 Franz Liszt being part of the generalbass tradition through Czerny 37:25 Where did the newer, progressive methods of music theory come from? 38:24 So do these ideas come from the new ideas of chordal thinking? 39:22 How do the traditional ideas of generalbass influence modern music education? 40:35 With so many music theory methods, what should the modern music student learn? 41:56 Would you use roman numerals to explain romantic music? 43:07 What music would be good to analyze with chord inversions and roman numerals? 44:26 Would you expect a student to learn all the tools? 45:22 Upcoming articles and projects for 2020 45:50 Where to find Professor Menke’s work 46:12 How would you reform music education? 46:52 Should everyone learn generalbass? 47:10 Wrapping Up
I’m so thrilled to be able to talk to my guest: Professor of Music Theory and Cognition, Professor Vasili Byros.
Professor Byros is a tenured Associate Professor of Music Theory and Cognition at Northwestern University. He researches the compositional, listening, and pedagogical practices of the long 18th century, with an emphasis on the music of Beethoven, J. S. Bach, and Mozart, using a holistic methodology that combines perspectives from schema theory.
A prolific scholar, his research articles can be founded in numerous scholarly publications and journals. Examples include, “Thinking in Bach’s language, Teaching in His Shoes”, “Mozart’s Vintage Corelli,: The Microstory of a Fonte-Romanesca”, “Prelude on a Partimento: Invention in the Compositional Pedagogy of the German states in the time of JS Bach” and many more.
His article “Prelude on a Partimento” received the Outstanding Publication Award from the Society for Music Theory in 2017. Also in 2017, he was awarded the Charles Deering McCormick Professorship, Northwestern University’s highest recognition of teaching excellence and curricular innovation. Finally, Professor Byros is currently writing a monograph on Late Beethoven.
I am so delighted to be able to talk to the lovely Yuriko Byers, the wife of the late great arranger, composer, trombonist and musician Billy Byers.
In a career that spanned over a 100 movies, dozens of Broadway shows and arrangements for hundreds of TV shows, Byers is regarded as one of the greatest arrangers in music history.
He’s worked with the biggest names in music such as Quincy Jones, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Sarah Vaughan, Diana Ross, Count Basie, and really, too many to count. Perhaps even more impressive, is the legacy he’s left outside of the entertainment industry, with a stellar reputation as a good person, a wonderful loving family and many friends.
1:14 How much work did Billy Byers approximately ghostwrite? 2:50 Did Billy have to give up the piano in his youth because of early onset arthritis? 3:25 Writing in pen because it was easier on his arthritis 3:55 The Byers family 4:08 When did you meet Billy? 4:28 Are you a musician yourself? Is that how you met Billy? 5:20 Was Billy a down to earth type of person? 5:50 Who were Billy’s musical heroes and inspirations growing up? 6:46 Did he have a mentor or was he self taught? 7:45 Was it true that Billy’s father didn’t want him to do music? 8:12 Was the trombone his main instrument? 8:23 What was his history like before you were married? 9:57 Did you meet Billy in Vegas? 11:18 What were you studying in college? 11:36 Did you get married after that? 11:52 How many years were you married to Billy? 12:10 34 years of marriage 12:27 What was your family plan once you got married? 13:24 Why was it rough in New York at the time? 14:19 Was that the 70s or lates 60s? 15:26 Did he practice at home a lot? 15:44 Did he ever express any regret that he had arthritis? 16:32 Did he have perfect pitch? 16:47 In what way was perfect pitch not a blessing for him? 17:08 Writing music on a plane with no instruments 17:19 Was he a fast writer or did he take his time with it? 18:00 Did he have a schedule for writing, in the morning or night? 18:54 Was he a mentor to younger musicians? 19:19 On teaching Paul Newman to play the trombone for Paris Blues 20:07 Talking about Billy’s contributions to the movie The Sting 21:10 Johnny Mandel’s friendship with Billy 22:57 Who were Billy’s best friends in music? 25:20 Was he friends with Nelson Riddle? 25:36 On always being busy but still having time for family 26:20 Did he experience racism for being a white musician in jazz? 28:59 Dizzy Gillespie not caring about race 29:48 On recording two albums with Frank Zappa 30:43 Talking about Billy’s work in Broadway 33:32 Being a music director for big television specials 34:36 Going from Broadway to a Classical Orchestra 35:44 Did he go to all these award nomination ceremonies? 37:21 Talking about Joseph Curiale 38:28 Did Joseph Curiale meet Billy? 38:48 Talking about Sammy Nestico’s relationship with Billy 40:19 What did Count Basie think of Billy? 41:05 Working with Frank Sinatra? 42:07 What did Quincy Jones think of Billy? 42:29 On Quincy and Billy’s close friendship 42:45 Did Billy have an album or show that he did that he really found special 43:38 What were Billy’s favorite things to do in music? 45:51 How did he approach music with his kids? 47:42 On their successful family unit 48:38 What would be some good albums to check out to hear Billy at his best? 50:31 Did he have music that he personally enjoyed listening to? 52:12 Talking about Robert Farnon 52:33 Talking about Yuriko’s Yoga teaching career 55:04 More on the great example of the Byers family 57:17 Wrapping Up
We have a very special show today, returning to the show the master classical improviser Professor David Dolan, from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Also joining the program is Professor Henrik Jensen, from the Department of Mathematics at the Imperial College of London. He leads the Centre for Complexity Science, which engages in a range of research into the applied and fundamental aspects of complexity science.
For today’s show, we’ll be diving into the fascinating collaborative research that my two guests have doing for the last 10 years, involving studying the brain with improvised and non-improvised music and how it functions during each activity, quantifying improvisatory behavior, improvisation and communication between brains.
1:13 How did you come up with the idea of the project? 2:35 Talking about levels of synchronization 4:43 Deriving information from the EEGs 7:01 Were the musicians from Guildhall? 7:36 Talking about the instrumentation of the players 7:51 Did you need a harmonic player like a harpist to provide structure? 8:55 Talking about the selection of the music 10:55 Million dollar question: Is the brain radically different between improvising and non-improvising musicians? 13:09 What does the index mean? 14:06 Talking about the Strict phase and the Let Go phase 17:02 In the Strict phase, was the music sight read or memorized? 18:12 How is memory different between the two phases? 19:11 Talking about sustained attention 22:58 Is the brain being used more when improvising or less, is the brain more relaxed during improvising? 25:46 Discussing levels of comfort and familiarity with improvisation? 27:20 The difference in brain function in the speed of the improvisation 31:26 What is happening when the brain is undergoing a “magic moment”? 32:39 Did you tell the audience that the improvisation was a secret? 33:07 Talking about the listener’s experience during improvisation and non-improvisation 34:42 The Let Go portion had more interest in the listeners 35:29 If you could re-do the experiment with unlimited funding, what would you do? 36:48 If you had told the audience there was improvisation, would it have affected their answers? 38:19 Is the idea that Strict a left brain thing and Let Go a right brain thing a myth? 39:52 Is it just more fun to improvise? 41:53 What can you recommend people check out to follow up on this research? 45:21 Any other key takeaways from this research that we should mention? 46:30 What hypotheses do you suspect are the possible conclusions of this research? 49:37 Wrapping Up
What a delight to introduce my guest today, GRAMMY Award-Nominated Composer, Arranger, Conductor and Educator, Richard DeRosa.
Earlier in his career as a performer, DeRosa toured and recorded with Gerry Mulligan, Bob Brookmeyer, Susannah McCorkle, Jackie Cain & Roy Kral, Chuck Wayne, and Marlene VerPlanck. Other employers include Marian McPartland, Gene Bertoncini, Warren Vaché, Larry Elgart, Peter Nero, and vocalist Chris Connor.
Since 2001 DeRosa has arranged and conducted music for Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to feature Toots Thielemans, Annie Ross, Willie Nelson, Norah Jones, Cassandra Wilson, Roberta Gambarini, and Renée Fleming among several other notable artists.
In 2012 the WDR Big Band in Cologne, Germany, invited DeRosa to conduct and present his music in concert and subsequently he served as their chief conductor and musical arranger from 2014-2016.
DeRosa received a GRAMMY nomination for Best Instrumental Composition in 2015 for his big band composition “Neil” which is dedicated to Neil Slater, the director of the One O’Clock Lab Band at the University of North Texas from 1981-2008.
In October 2018, DeRosa was the featured conductor and arranger for the concert productions of Joey Alexander with Strings which premiered at Jazz at Lincoln Center.
DeRosa is a full professor at the University of North Texas where he is the director of jazz composition and arranging. His former teaching positions were at William Paterson University, Manhattan School of Music, and The Juilliard School where he taught advanced jazz arranging for studio orchestra. He is the author of Concepts for Improvisation: A Comprehensive Guide for Performing and Teaching (Hal Leonard Publications) and Acoustic and MIDI Orchestration for the Contemporary Composer (Focal Press) co-authored with Dr. Andrea Pejrolo.
2:12 When did you come to music? 3:06 Do you have absolute or perfect pitch? 5:00 What kinds of records did you grow up listening to? 6:41 Were drums the first instrument that you picked up? 7:52 Did your dad want you to be a great drummer or was more free and easy? 9:28 Was your father your first teacher? 9:53 Did you pick up the trumpet in school because the drum parts in school were too easy? 11:58 When did you start arranging? 15:19 Did you have any instruction in music theory in elementary school? 16:20 Did you look at big band scores to analyze them? 17:57 Is counterpoint a topic that’s very important to you? 21:31 Talking about the horizontal aspect of writing music? 23:54 Can you give an example of a student who perhaps thinks to vertically and the piece suffers? 25:49 How do you think of theory when you are composing? 29:15 How do you narrow down your musical choices when composing? 32:15 If you were writing for yourself, what considerations do you take? Using “Neil” as an example. 33:12 Was Neil Slater a mentor to you? 35:35 Are you a fast writer? 37:12 What’s the best way to develop orchestration? 40:09 How do you get to build that experience in orchestration? 44:01 How do you get better at composing or arranging? 46:36 What’s the best way to learn counterpoint? 48:54 Top 3 Jazz drummers? 49:26 Top 3 Jazz Trumpeters? 49:46 Top 3 Jazz arrangers? 50:59 Favorites composers for Jazz 51:33 Top 3 classical composers? 51:57 What was the hardest piece of music to arrange? 54:20 What was the easiest piece to arrange? 55:13 What’s your favorite instrument to write for? 55:30 Biggest regret in music? 57:06 Proudest musical moment? 58:04 If you could work with anyone in history that you haven’t worked with, who would it be? 59:29 What albums should the audience check out to start with your music? 1:03:24 Talking about Dr. Joseph Curiale 1:05:01 How would you reform music education? 1:09:57 Wrapping Up
My guest today is Professor of Music Theory, Lydia Carlisi.
She studied in Rome (Università di Roma 2/Tor Vergata) completing in 2010 a Bachelor Thesis on Leonardo Leo's Partimenti under the direction of Professor Giorgio Sanguinetti.
In 2015 she completed a Master in Music Theory in the class of Prof. Dr. Ludwig Holtmeier at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg (DE) with a thesis on Gaspare Selvaggi's «Trattato di armonia» (1823). During this time she was awarded a DAAD scholarship.
She worked at creating the Neapolitan canon project at the university of the arts Bern and she is now professor for music theory at the Conservatorio of Lugano, Switzerland. Her upcoming PhD thesis focuses on the French reception of Partimento.
1:02 When was the Paris Conservatory founded? 2:39 Was Italian music very influential in France at the time? 3:26 Did France have it’s own music tradition separate from Italy? 4:02 How and why was the Paris Conservatory founded? 4:56 What happened in 1799? 5:47 Emanuele Imbimbo’s background 7:12 Fenaroli’s popularity in France 8:38 On French music theory 8:52 Talking about Honoré Langlé 9:32 Was Niccolò Piccinni the first head of the Paris Conservatory? 10:23 Did the French government send people to Naples to procure Italian music materials? 13:27 Was the Paris Conservatory interested also in German music at the time? 14:10 Gaspare Selvaggi’s massive collection of Neapolitan composers 14:55 Did people like to collect music scores? 15:33 Did the Paris Conservatory copy the Neapolitan model of Solfeggio and Partimenti? 18:02 Was the Paris Conservatory Solfeggio different from the Neapolitan Solfeggio? 19:50 Did other conservatories around the world copy the model of the Paris Conservatory? 20:46 On the separation of subjects within the Paris Conservatory curriculum 21:05 On Luigi Cherubini’s background and training 25:30 Was the word “partimenti” found in any of the French texts 26:18 Did Partimenti get “reborn” in France in the middle of the 19th century? 27:28 How did they learn counterpoint in the Paris Conservatory? 28:07 Did Choron have any influence on the Paris Conservatory? 29:03 Was partimenti viewed as old-fashioned or incomplete according to François-Joseph Fétis at the Paris Conservatory? 30:22 Was the Paris Conservatory approach to harmony similar to the Neapolitan method? 31:02 Were only composers and accompanists the ones who practiced improvisation? 32:00 Who was responsible for the fragmentation of the Neapolitan method in the Paris Conservatory? 33:10 Did accompanists like Debussy learn how to do “partimenti”-like exercises? 34:20 Were accompanists only practicing chords? 35:48 What were the important pedagogical books that the students would use at the Paris Conservatory? 36:40 Did the Charles-Simon Catel book erase the Neapolitan view of harmony? 37:43 What do you teach at the mentiParti? 39:07 How is the Partimenti composition class different from a more orthodox composition class? 39:53 What books can you recommend to people interested in developing their compositional training? 41:08 How do you improve your written counterpoint? 41:26 What are some basics for counterpoint that beginners can use? 43:12 Is renaissance-style counterpoint useful for learning galant music? 43:48 Is partimento counterpoint considered strict? 44:29 Are fugues at the end of the counterpoint study? 45:54 How do you introduce orchestration into composition study? 46:46 What are some common mistakes when learning the Neapolitan tradition? 48:05 Do you have unlearn a lot of information when learning partimento? 48:27 Who are your favorite Neapolitan composers? 49:00 Do you have favorite Partimenti? 49:29 What is the future for Partimento research? 51:06 Did Bach have Durante scores? 51:35 Is Partimento theory applicable for the 21st century? 52:22 If you could reform music education, how would you do it? 53:43 Can you learn to compose as an adult or is it too late? 54:37 Wrapping up
I'm so pleased to introduce my guest today: Professor of Music Theory and History, Professor Nicholas Baragwanath!
His book “The Italian Traditions and Puccini”, a major study of compositional theory and practice in 19th-century Italy, was published in 2011 by Indiana University Press. It surveys the once commonplace fundamentals, methods, and formulas that were taught at Italian music conservatories, and explores their significance for composition through case studies from Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti to Verdi, Boito, and Puccini.
His upcoming book, "The Solfeggio Tradition: A Forgotten art of melody in the long 18th century", will be released in the summer of 2020, published by Oxford University Press.
1:17 What is your musical background? 1:35 What was your area of research in academia? 2:32 How did you end up researching solfeggio? 4:14 Authentic partimenti realizations tend to be rare but are solfeggi manuscripts complete by comparison? 5:16 Are there historical treatises on how to do Solfeggio? 8:03 Did they use “Ut” instead of “Do”? 9:49 What do you mean by 84, aren’t there just 7 clefs? 10:23 Would someone with absolute or perfect be bothered by this Italian solfeggio? 11:24 So does Italian solfeggio have similarities to moveable do? 11:36 If hexachord means six notes, where did that 7th note Si or Ti come from? 13:31 Are modes (like Aeolian or Dorian) relevant to solfeggio? 14:44 What are key differences between 17th, 18th and 19th century solfeggi? 16:20 Is solfeggio always tied with a bass? 16:59 How did students learn counterpoint and composition through solfeggio? 19:34 Talking about Solfèges d’Italie and how a single syllable could yield multiple notes of different pitches 20:49 Adding extra notes to Do and Re 22:05 Did the Neapolitan students study singing for 3 years or 6 years? 22:19 What is the difference between basic Lettura or note reading and l’arte del canto: Solfeggio cantato meant with graces? 25:32 Would these Neapolitan students be familiar with Music Schema like the Prinner? 26:28 Would you have to look at a lot of solfeggi examples to build that vocabulary? 27:21 What was the trickiest thing for you to learn, when you started doing solfeggio? 30:09 How should one start solfeggio training from the very beginning? 33:41 As a trained pianist, do you look at your old music scores differently with this solfeggio insight? 35:18 What’s the difference in style between the strict style solfeggi and the more popular style solfeggi? 36:37 Did you have choral training in your musical background? 37:05 What was the contemporary reception of Italian solfeggio? 38:12 Have you collaborated with people in historical performance regarding your research in solfeggio? 39:56 To prepare for your book, what should interested musicians and students practice and have prepared? 41:03 Going back to perfect pitch, would pitch matching be erased if someone learned the italian solfeggio way because of the similarities to moveable do? 42:06 Did they use “Do” or the letter “C”? 42:48 It’s a very moveable-doish sort of perception? 43:10 Is Italian solfeggio robust enough a system to tackle “progressive” 19th and 20th century music? 44:48 How does solfeggio tackle dissonance? 46:17 How did solfeggio die out? 47:43 You seem to have cracked the mastery of solfeggio.. are there more mysteries left to be uncovered? 50:46 What does it mean: singing the wrong pitch to the right syllable? 51:46 What musical tools and skills did you “discard”, as you’ve evolved as a musician? 53:38 Upcoming events 54:33 Wrapping Up
Hey everyone welcome back to the Nikhil Hogan Show, the show interviewing the best musicians in the world and what a treat today, I’m so thrilled to introduce my guest, Pianist, Composer, Arranger, and Teacher, Isaac Raz!
Isaac Raz holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Jazz Composition and Music Synthesis from the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA, and is a recipient of the Duke Ellington Award. He received his Master of Arts in Teaching degree in Music Education from Lehman College, Bronx, NY, and is a recipient of the Joseph Dellicarri fund award.
In 1993 he composed the musical score for the Emmy Award winning documentary film “Pioneer Women”. In 2000 Isaac worked with jazz record producer Teo Macero, playing keyboards and programming tracks for his “Impressions of Miles Davis” album featuring Vernon Reid, David Leibman, Lew Soloff, and Lincoln Goinnes. His arranging skills have been utilized on many pop music recordings, including Zomba Record’s gold selling R&B artist Joe. Isaac continues to work as a composer, creating music for film, TV, and educational applications. His Jazz and pop groups have played throughout the US and abroad featuring his own compositions as well as popular music of all styles.
In the NY Jazz scene, Isaac is an 8 year veteran of Barry Harris’ weekly tuesday workshop and a great proponent of Barry Harris’ method. He is the founder of Whole Music LLC, and runs a fast growing Youtube channel.
2:07 What’s your musical background? 3:06 Do you have Absolute or Perfect Pitch? 3:57 What was your development like in Berklee leading up to the Barry Harris workshop? 5:26 Are you talking about chord scales and modes? 6:47 What was your first day like in the Barry Harris masterclass? 8:25 Do you remember your first interaction with Barry Harris? 9:45 What happened in that 2nd year of going to the workshop? 10:39 Talking about Barry Harris’s identity 12:02 Does he include hard bop in his style? 13:51 What about the criticism of Barry Harris that he’s old fashioned? 16:28 On there being a whole more music left for people to write 17:34 The breakdown of the 6 hour masterclass and the improvisation section of the class 20:17 How should we break up Cherokee into scales? 22:09 What scales do we need? What kinds of minor do we need to learn? 23:21 What about the major and minor 6th diminished scales? 23:59 Is that the same as the bebop scale? 26:06 Is it used more for a scale outline or for theory and harmony? 26:48 How does he break up a tune with different line building materials? 30:47 On Barry Harris’ method having close parallels with Partimento 31:26 Are you able to listen to the classic bebop recordings and break them down? 32:17 On the criticism that Barry Harris is a Bud Powell clone 33:17 The diminished genealogy and the 4 related dominants 35:29 Altering the diminished chord to get different chords 38:08 How would you use these chords out of the diminished chord? 40:13 Would you thrown in the Dominant Diminished scale with 2 bars of a dominant chord? 41:17 How do you use these scale of chords? 42:52 Taking Cherokee as an example 43:35 Talking about 6th chord rules 45:31 Is this a framework to looking at Harmony? 45:59 What does Barry Harris think of the hard bop pianists like Bobby Timmons and Sonny Clark? 47:25 Funny jive moment at the Barry Harris workshop 48:15 On Barry Harris’ Big Band compositions 53:07 How do you get good at Jazz? 56:12 Talking about discovering Partimento 57:46 On Barry Harris being impressed by Partimento 59:32 Wrapping Up
I’m so happy to introduce my guest today, GRAMMY Award-winning Composer, Arranger, Keyboardist and Record Producer, Michael Abene!
In a prolific career spanning decades, Abene has worked with the biggest names in music.
He produced the Grammy winning projects “Digital Duke” featuring the Duke Ellington Orchestra and “The GRP All-Star Big Band-All Blues.” He also produced the Grammy nominated “The GRP All-Star Big Band” and “The GRP All-Star Big Band Live” and received nominations in the arranging category for all three big band recordings. Michael was also nominated for his arrangement of “America” from “Dave Grusin Presents West Side Story.” Some artists Michael has arranged, composed and/or produced for are Maynard Ferguson, Maceo Parker, Take 6, Billy Cobham, Eddie Daniels, Bireli Lagrene, Chick Corea, Buddy Rich, Dick Oatts, Dizzy Gillespie, The Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra, Dave Taylor, Patti Austin, The Metropole Jazz Orchestra, The Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, New York Voices, Ronnie Cuber, UMO Jazz Orchestra (Helsinki), Jazz Big Band Graz and the BBC Big Band.
In 2008, Abene arranged produced and conducted the music for singer Patti Austin’s album “Avant Gershwin”, celebrating the music of George and Ira Gershwin and picked up his first GRAMMY award for best Jazz Vocal album.
From 2004-2014, Abene was the chief composer and arranger for the WDR big band of Cologne, Germany.
He is the author of the book “Jazz Composition and Arranging in the Digital Age”, a book co-authored with Richard Sussman and published by Oxford University Press.
2:24 Family background 3:20 Do you have perfect or absolute pitch? 3:29 What records did you grow up listening to? 4:26 Self-teaching sight-reading 5:05 Band experiences as a youth 7:19 Did you have any mentors? 8:25 What sort of advice would they give to you? 9:22 Did you have a sound you wanted to copy or did you strive early on for an original sound? 11:04 Did you see a lot of live music growing up? 13:15 Did you visit NYC to watch the music scene there? 13:51 Describe a vivid musical experience that was formative to your development 15:22 On replacing Jaki Byard in the Maynard Ferguson Band 16:46 On not being happy with the recordings except for the “Blues Roar” 18:22 Was there a compulsion to be a modernist in the 60’s? 19:59 How did you self teach yourself harmony? 21:16 Would you test out your arrangements on the piano? 22:39 On transposed scores 25:09 What is the Michael Abene arranging process? 27:08 How do you grapple with form? 28:39 On integrating great players into your arrangements 30:34 How do you determine if something swings? 31:39 On Drums and the Rhythm section 33:36 What are the common mistakes for new arrangers in the modern age? 36:27 How do you get a Big Band to get the flexibility of a small group like Bill Holman? 39:18 How have you grown as arranger vs 10-20 years ago? 40:37 What is your compositional process? 42:40 Odyssey for Brass 45:20 On Orchestration 46:48 PFP, a Piece for Paquito 48:54 How would you balance an arrangement and a virtuoso player? 51:10 Avant Gershwin 52:24 How long did it take to put all those arrangements together? 54:00 Top 3 Trumpet Players 54:27 Top 3 Saxophone Players 54:46 Top 3 Drummers 54:58 Top 3 Guitar Players 55:05 Top 3 Keyboard/Piano Players 55:34 Top 3 Big Bands 55:51 Top 3 Big Band Arrangers 55:59 Top 3 Classical Composers 56:12 Top 3 Jazz Composers 56:38 Who are some arrangers who are not popularly known but should be known 57:29 Favorite instrument or section to write for? 57:37 Biggest regret in music and proudest musical moment 57:58 If you could work with anyone in history, who would it be? 58:32 What 3 albums should new listeners of yours check out? 59:29 Best advice for a new arranger 1:00:31 Wrapping Up
My guest today is the great Professor of Music, William Caplin!
Caplin specializes in the theories of musical form and musical cadence. His extensive investigations into formal procedures of late-eighteenth-century music culminated in the 1998 book “Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (Oxford University Press), which won the 1999 Wallace Berry Book Award from the Society for Music Theory. A textbook version, Analyzing Classical Form: An Approach for the Classroom (Oxford University Press), was published in November 2013.
In addition to writing many scholarly articles, Caplin served as President of the Society for Music Theory from November 2005 to November 2007. In March 2015, he was the Robert M. Trotter Visiting Professor at the School of Music, University of Oregon; In March, 2008, he was Visiting Professor at the University of Rome-Tor Vergata.
He is currently writing a large-scale book project entitled “Cadence: A Study of Closure in Tonal Music.”
1:55 How do we make sense of all the different theories of harmony? 3:46 On the lack of analysis on musical form 5:41 The different traditions music theory 8:03 Why did you select the “classical” period as the basis for your theoretical work? 10:04 Why did you not use German functional theory? 12:27 How is fundamental bass theory different from figure bass theory? 13:49 Do chords or bass notes have inner urges or functions to move? 16:42 Does the plagal cadence exist? 19:26 Where did the term plagal cadence come from? 20:03 Is it hard to find this plagal cadence in the 18th century? 22:08 Could you give an example of such a thing? 22:53 What are the different types of cadences? 24:17 Where does an evaded cadence go? 25:39 What about the abandoned cadence? 27:38 Do you depart from Ratz and Schoenberg in your theoretical work? 29:20 How would you analyze a Mozart or Haydn Piano Sonata differently from Ratz or Schoenberg? 30:56 Where have you found difficulty in applying your theory? 32:30 How about examples where the theory works great and one where it’s harder to use 36:10 Could you elaborate on the missing form functionality of Gjerdingen’s Galant Schema theory 38:43 Did Leonard B. Meyer have an influence in your work? 39:54 What are the differences in form between Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven? 41:43 How did Beethoven break the tradition of form? 43:14 What do you find are the common challenges for students tackling your work? 45:13 Does counterpoint have a place in this theoretical framework? 46:09 What music that you like, that has great form? 46:35 What does Sibelius do with form that intrigues you? 47:15 Talking about Simon Sechter 48:02 Talking about Robert Wason’s “Viennese Harmonic Theory from Albrechtsberger to Schenker and Schoenberg” 49:38 Kirnberger’s contradictory position on fundamental bass theory 51:42 Have you dipped into non-German theories of harmony and music analysis? 52:58 If you could reform music education, what would you do? 55:17 Could you recommend any harmony text books? 56:04 Mentioning the Analyzing Classical Form Website 56:56 Wrapping Up
I have a very, very special guest that I’m so excited to introduce, Angela Levey, who is the wife of the late great jazz drummer, Stan Levey!
We talk about how they met, their wonderful marriage, knowing some of the great jazz legends personally, Stan living and playing with Charlie Parker for a long time, Angela chasing Charlie Parker out of a club, being close with Dizzy Gillespie, recording his first record with Art Tatum, being friends with Max Roach, getting into trouble because of Sonny Stitt, Stan's amazing speed and many more amazing stories.
1:43 Talking about Dr. Joseph Curiale 2:16 How did you meet Stan? 5:50 Being hired at Birdland 6:28 Were you there at the very beginning of Birdland? 7:12 On Bud Powell on being a very snappy dresser 7:56 Did you get to talk to Bud Powell much? 9:47 On chasing Charlie Parker out of Birdland 11:23 More on Charlie Parker 12:33 Stan Levey is the only person who owed money to Charlie Parker 14:23 How long did you work at Birdland before the Sonny Stitt incident? 15:48 The Sonny Stitt snitching incident 16:39 Were your parents discouraging you from seeing Stan? 18:39 On going to jail actually helping Stan quit drugs 19:19 Talking about Dizzy Gillespie and how close they were 21:19 Dizzy Gillespie encouraging Stan to go back some money and leave the band 22:03 On the strange Benny Goodman experience 23:06 Stan being a boxer 24:12 Benny Goodman calling Stan again to perform like nothing happened after decades of no contact 25:07 Stan’s difficult life but stoic attitude to adversity 27:02 Stan’s first recording date being with Art Tatum 27:31 Did Stan recall that date? 29:02 On Stan being the person who’s played the most jam sessions with Charlie Parker 30:07 Dizzy giving Stan an endorsement to work for Oscar Pettiford 30:50 Stan’s friendship with Max Roach 31:41 How did Stan play so fast? 32:47 Victor Feldman’s recording of Bebop with Scott Lafaro and Stan 33:17 Recording “For Musician’s only” 34:02 On meeting Sonny Stitt again, post-jail 34:41 Did Stan’s clean life influence the musicians around him? 36:20 On Stan’s positive attitude towards family 38:31 How does Stan teach himself to learn so many things? 39:32 How long was Stan when he taught himself to sight read? 39:52 Stan reinventing himself as a studio musician in the west coast 40:48 On the amazing trajectory of Stan’s career 41:05 Who were Stan’s heroes? 42:39 The other side of Stan that was “ADD” 45:18 The redemption story of Stan’s life 46:22 Did Stan want his kids to learn music? 47:53 How does it feel to know that thousands of people are so fascinated with that period, that you lived in? 49:05 What albums should people listen to that demonstrate Stan’s playing? 50:28 Dizzy Gillespie complimenting Stan’s time keeping 50:56 Wrapping Up
We have a very special guest here today! Daniel Spreadbury, who is the Dorico Product Marketing Manager is here today to talk about Dorico 3, the latest update to Steinberg’s music notation software program.
1:01 Talking about condensing 3:19 Do you have a grand plan for features? 4:20 What kind of modern technology is being utilized in Dorico? 6:29 How many people work in the Dorico programming team? 8:00 Will the condensing feature be refined in later updates? 9:41 Soundiron’s Olympus Choir Micro integration 11:20 What’s the state of playback? 13:51 How’s the reception with Note Performer? 15:12 What’s your pitch to someone on Sibelius to switch to Dorico? 18:13 Talking about Alan Silvestri’s interview and are there other composers who use Dorico? 19:34 Is Dorico seeing more adoption in education? 21:01 With the excitement around Partimento, is figured bass on the radar for the next update? 23:12 What sort of learning materials can a new user find to improve their skill with Dorico? 24:57 Are some of the videos on the YouTube channel out of date? 26:10 What’s a common question that you get all the time that’s actually an easy fix? 28:57 When’s the next update? What’s the pipeline for 2020? 30:33 Wrapping Up
So happy to introduce my guest today, Classical Pianist, Music Theorist and Improviser, Professor Karst de Jong!
Karst de Jong studied classical Piano and Music Theory at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. In 1991 he was appointed as a professor of music theoretical subjects at the Conservatory of Amsterdam and the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. He specialized in piano improvisation and the relation between analysis and interpretation of the piano literature. Since 2003 he has been appointed professor of improvisation and composition-techniques at the ESMUC in Barcelona. He regularly gives concerts with classical and jazz improvisations, both as a soloist and with different instrumental combinations. He has performed concerts in various countries in Europe, the US, China and Japan. He published articles on improvisation and music theory and appeared at numerous conferences.
He is a cofounder and board member of the Dutch Belgian society of Music Theory and was an editor of the Dutch Journal of Music Theory. Karst de Jong has taught many masterclasses of improvisation at internationally renowned festivals. As an educator he was closely involved in two important European Erasmus+ strategic partnerships: METRIC, which deals with improvisation in the curricula of higher music education in Europe and NAIP, the European Master of New Audiences and Innovative Practices. He released two CD's with solo-piano improvisations, Improdisiac I & II.
During the first semester of the academic year 2019-2020 Karst de Jong will be a visiting professor at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of the National University of Singapore.
2:16 What’s your musical background? 3:20 Do you have Absolute or Perfect Pitch? 4:04 Were you always experimenting and improvising from the beginning? 4:48 What sort of things would you improvise? 5:36 What kind of music were you listening to growing up? 6:26 Did you receive a pretty standard approach to learning classical repertoire? 7:10 How many years did you have lessons? How many teachers? 7:57 What’s it like to grow up in Holland, musically? 8:59 Did you keep your improvising going into your teenage years? Did you also play jazz? 9:58 What was your understanding of theory growing up? 11:19 What was your music theory training like? 13:22 Did you agree with all the theory that you were taught? 14:05 What did your teachers do differently from conventional teachers? 15:03 How does the mind work differently in improvisation? 15:56 When did that insight click for you? 17:31 How do you get kids to integrate theory when they’ve never really thought about it? 19:26 What are the common mistakes students make when trying to learn to improvise? 20:03 What would students be trying to hear from you in call and response? 20:28 How would students know what would be the right response, in call and response? 20:47 Would a pianist play two hands? 21:34 As an example, what’s a challenge for another instrument? 22:16 After call and response, what’s next for students? 23:03 More on transposition 23:18 How about changing from the major to the minor? 23:30 Is there any implied bass to the melodic ideas you are playing? 24:21 Do string players imagine the bass while playing? 25:20 Are the counterpoint rules still in place during live playing? 26:05 What advice can you give to other teachers who want to run a classical improvisational model 27:34 What would you do in a 1 hour class with an ensemble? 28:34 Can you give an example of working on 1 idea 29:54 Talk about your new approach to harmonic analysis 32:56 Why did you choose the minor 3rd as a strong progression? 33:31 Is that the same with C to Eb? 34:46 How effective has it been with students? 35:40 How does someone learn music theory with the goal of practical composition and improvisation 37:28 How does this change your perception of traditional harmony 38:01 If a parent wanted to start their child’s music journey correctly, what should they do? 39:36 How should somebody look at a piece they’ve played, break it down and play around with it? 40:25 Would you analyze late romantic music with your new method of analysis? 41:09 What materials someone can check out online about improvisation in classical music? 43:05 Talking about YST Classified where Karst plays 3 jazz standards in a classical virtuoso style 44:09 Were those performances completely improvised? 44:45 Do you still maintain the basso continuo? 45:13 Do you have to maintain the jazz harmony? 46:12 How do you improvise in the style of Bach? 46:48 What kind of ideas do you commonly use? 48:00 Is counterpoint the basis of it all and what’s the best way to learn it? 48:52 What counterpoint resources can you recommend? 49:29 How would we start introducing improvisation into earlier music education? 50:30 How has the culture around classical improvisation changed over the last few decades? 52:18 How does the audience respond to improvisation vs standard repertoire? 53:52 Does the audience listen closer when the performer is improvising? 54:47 What do you see for the future of classical music? 56:02 Wrapping Up
I’m so thrilled to talk to my guest today, 3-Time GRAMMY Jazz Singer and 7-Time EMMY nominated Lyricist, Lorraine Feather!
As an artist she has recorded 12 albums. Her 2010 release, Ages, featured songs with her lyrics, and music by Eddie Arkin, Shelly Berg, Russell Ferrante, Dick Hyman and Béla Fleck. It brought Lorraine her first (2011) Grammy nomination, in the Best Jazz Vocal Album category. In 2013, her album Attachments was nominated for the GRAMMY for Best Jazz Vocal album. In 2015, her album Flirting with Disaster was also nominated for the GRAMMY for best jazz vocal album.
Lorraine has received 7 Emmy nominations writing for Television. Some of her credits include, Disney’s Dinosaurs and Pooh’s Heffalump Halloween, PBS’s Make Way for Noddy, the MGM animated film Babes in Toyland, Hasbro’s My Little Pony series. Some of the Film work she’s done includes The Jungle Book 2, The Princess Diaries 2, All Dogs Go to Heaven, the Lionhearts and much more.
Her latest album is 2018’s Math Camp. It was produced with longtime co-writer Eddie Arkin; with seven of the songs being written with Arkin and three with Shelly Berg.
2:10 What were some of the records that you grew up listening to that were influential in your development? 5:00 On hanging around famous musicians as a kid 6:20 Were you an avid reader and writer growing up? 7:34 Did you father encourage you to write? 8:42 What was it like studying with John Mehegan? 9:54 How much did you write as a child? 13:24 Did you ever take singing lessons? 14:33 When did you start writing lyrics to songs? 15:55 On writing for Full Swing 16:37 What was it like writing for that first album for Full Swing? 18:34 What notes did Richard Perry give you on your lyrics? 20:25 Did you ever take music theory lessons or study music? 21:17 Talk about writing your first album, “The Body Remembers” 24:39 What is the Lorraine Feather method to writing lyrics? 26:69 How did you write “Smashing Thirds”? 28:10 How long would it take you to write one of the Fats Waller songs? 29:21 When is the best time of day to write a song? 30:29 Do you rewrite a lot? 30:52 What do you look for in a co-writer? 34:28 How do you deal with writer's block? 35:10 What was the writing process behind Math Camp’s “I don’t mean to make a big deal of it”? 36:13 Did you write the lyrics before hearing the music? 38:08 How long did it take to write all the tunes in Math Camp? 39:10 What are the things that are important and interesting to you in lyric writing? 40:14 If you compare your current self to yourself 10-20 years ago, what’s the difference in your writing? 41:40 What was the most difficult song for you to write? 44:14 What was the easiest song for you to write? 46:03 What’s your biggest regret in music? 46:57 What is your proudest musical moment? 47:39 If you could go back in time and co-write with anyone of your choice, who would it be? 48:07 Who is your opinion, are the best lyricists in jazz and pop? 50:15 What 3 albums would you recommend a new listener to start with? 51:09 Can songwriting be learned? 51:52 What’s the best advice for someone who wants to get into the music industry? 52:54 Wrapping up
I’m so happy to introduce my guest today, Concert Pianist, Researcher, and Teacher, Professor David Dolan!
In his solo and chamber music performances, he incorporates improvisation into the relevant concert repertoire in repeats, cadenzas, as well as in preludes, fantasias, and improvises on themes provided by the audience.
In addition to performing worldwide, He is the Professor of Classical Improvisation and its various applications to solo and ensemble performance at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, David has been heading the Centre for Creative Performance & Classical Improvisation since 2005. He also teaches at the Yehudi Menuhin School. Since 2011 David is running a programme of classical improvisation applied to performance at the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM) in Melbourne based on annual intensive residencies.
1:46 what’s your musical background? 2:14 When did you start playing the piano? 2:48 What were you improvising when young, what kind of music was in the house at the time? 3:06 Did your parents improvise? 3:25 Did your first teacher teach you the basics of playing the piano? 4:37 Do you have Absolute or Perfect pitch? 4:54 Did you still maintain your improvisation while doing your standard piano training? 6:02 Did you listen to traditional Israeli or Arabic music growing up? 7:04 What style of Classical music did you predominantly play in your training? 8:12 Were you the only one growing up that could improvise among your teachers and peers? 9:00 Did Haim Alexander hear you improvise? 10:40 What materials did Haim Alexander use to teach you? 11:20 What was a typical lesson with Haim Alexander look like? 13:24 Was his music theory conventional or did he have his own method? 14:13 Was the ear training Fixed Do or Moveable Do 14:52 What were your Masters and PhD studies about? 17:08 How would describe angry speech in music? 19:01 What year was this research? 19:22 Did you have peers or colleagues that you could relate to and talk to regarding improvisation as a professional, or were you alone? 20:01 Do you know Robert Levin? 20:15 What was it like meeting Robert Levin for the first time? 20:40 Is it very rare to meet another improvising musician? 21:39 Is the scene much different from what it used to be? 22:00 The reason that you’re in the UK is because of Yehudi Menuhin? 22:47 What did you play at that concert, that Yehudi Menuhin watched? 23:54 What did Yehudi Menuhin mean by,”Survive this quartet”? 24:37 What did you make the quartet do, to teach them to improvise? 25:33 Given that you had been teaching classical improvisation since 1990, were you ready for any ensemble teaching situation? 26:41 Do you have set Classical forms or harmonic progressions to get students to improvise with? 27:34 What is a periodic structure? 28:38 How do you tell your students what notes to choose in the response portion of “Call and response”? 29:20 What do you mean by wrong notes? 30:00 Are the bass lines fixed or do you ask them to come up with their own? 31:03 Is this connected with basso continuo? 31:54 Is that how a string player can learn to improvise, by having the bass in their ear or mind? 32:39 Does that enable you to have multiple musicians performing at the same time? 33:34 How would a brand new student, who’s never improvised before, learn to improvise in their first year of Guildhall? 35:07 Let’s say they have no fear in improvising, what would they work on? 38:00 Is this all ensemble or solo? 38:34 Is the singing in solfege? 39:23 How do you distinguish between improvisation and composition? 40:42 What are some differences among the different classical eras? 43:02 So that is a lot of vocabulary to internalize? 44:15 Do you incorporate teaching other non-classical styles of music? 46:54 Has music changed and become more difficult from earlier eras, harmonically? 47:59 As an example, is Messiaen more complex than earlier music? 48:47 What are some common mistakes to learning classical improvisation? 51:38 If a parent is about to start their child learning music, how should they start? 52:52 What would you say to the thousands of children who are practicing for their graded music exams about the pieces they are playing? 54:40 Are there other things culturally that have changed in the music culture compared to previous eras? 56:55 What classical improvisation resources can you recommend for interested people? 58:43 If you could reform music education around the world, what would you do? 1:00:41 Wrapping Up
I’m so pleased to introduce my guest today, 6-time GRAMMY Award winning Trumpeter, Randy Brecker!
Randy’s worked with the biggest names in music, in Blood Sweat & Tears’ Original Line up, the Horace Silver Quintet, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Dreams, Hal Galper, and perhaps most notably the celebrated jazz/funk/fusion group: The Brecker Brothers. As a session musician, Randy has appeared on hundreds of albums including James Taylor, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Steely Dan, Frank Zappa, Jaco Pastorius and many more.
In 1994, Randy won his first GRAMMY for Best Contemporary Jazz Performance with “Out of the Loop”. This was followed in 1997 with a 2nd GRAMMY for “Into the Sun”. The next GRAMMY was for Best Contemporary Jazz album with 2003’s album “34th N Lex”. He Picked up his 4th GRAMMY, with a win for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album, “Some Skunk Funk” in 2006 and and his 5th for Best Contemporary Jazz album in 2008 “Randy in Brasil”. In 2013, Randy’s album “Night in Calisia” won the GRAMMY for best contemporary Jazz album. Randy is also an 18-time GRAMMY nominee.
As a solo recording artist, he has released over 20 albums. Randy’s latest album is 2019’s “Rocks” with the NDR Big Band, featuring performances by David Sanborn, Ada Rovatti and Frank Delle.
2:24 Did your father teach you growing up? 3:55 Do you have Absolute or Perfect Pitch? 4:47 How many hours did you practice a day as a kid? 6:06 How did you learn to improvise? Did you have a teacher? 8:34 Did you use Solfege or numbers when learning melodies? 9:25 Could you name some of the practice books and etudes that you used growing up? 11:10 Did you see a lot of live jazz music growing up in Pennsylvania? 12:34 Any vivid memories of watching the live shows? 13:54 What were your dad’s musical tastes? 15:58 What was it like to study in Stan Keaton’s Band Camp as a teenager? 18:17 Did all of these experiences build up your confidence as a youth? 19:36 What about that story where 30% of students failed a traditional harmony class in Indiana University? 21:22 What’s your opinion of music theory? 24:11 Describe your compositional writing process 26:52 Talking about his experience working with Stevie Wonder 28:26 How did you transition to more of a rock, R&B, funk and pop sound? 31:44 How long did it take you to develop your craft of composition? 33:42 Detailed explanation of how “Some Skunk Funk” was written 40:59 Talking about writing “Sponge” 43:09 How did you come up with groove for “Sponge”? 44:12 Where do you see jazz moving in the future? 46:52 Are you still studying music and what things are you working on? 48:33 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Sax Players 50:32 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Drummers 52:27 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Keyboard/Piano Players 53:09 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Trumpet Players 54:18 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Horn Section Arrangers/Writers 56:22 HOT SEAT: If you could have performed with anyone in history that you haven’t yet, who would it be? 57:04 HOT SEAT: What is your biggest regret in music? 58:54 HOT SEAT: Proudest musical moment? 59:51 How would you reform or change music education? 1:02:04 Upcoming projects 1:03:42 Wrapping up
I’m so pleased today to talk to my guest today, Music theorist, historian, pianist and singer, Dr. Marco Pollaci!
Following his studies as a pianist and singer, he graduated in a "Liberal arts - Music and Performing Arts degree - " from the University of Tor Vergata in Rome with Dr. Giorgio Sanguinetti and went on to receive his PhD in Music from the University of Nottingham in 2018.
Dr. Pollaci's research focuses on eighteenth and nineteenth-century opera and music history. He is interested in sketch studies, music theory and music analysis. Further research interests include Partimento Studies and Italian compositional practice in eighteenth and nineteenth century music.
He is currently working as an assistant researcher for a Partimento project for the Department of Musicology of Pavia. He runs the popular Facebook Group, "The Art of Partimento".
1:52 What’s your musical background? 4:16 Are these articles and books you mentioned new? 5:13 What were the gaps that people had in understanding before? 6:25 Talking about the German and French influence in the Neapolitan Partimento tradition? 7:57 On the secretiveness of the Neapolitans 9:20 Did Fugal writing lessen as 19th century Romantic harmony took over? 11:46 Was writing Opera the main goal for young Italian composers? 14:15 Who were the “Giovane Scuola” (Young School)? 15:59 Weren’t the Young School more associated with the Milan tradition rather than the Neapolitan tradition? 20:41 The Romantic view of composers and Bellini 22:06 What kind of training did Bellini undergo? 22:45 The famous teachers of Naples 24:58 Can you see traces of Partimento Exercises in Bellini operas? 26:28 On Bellini being greatly admired by his contemporaries 27:28 Talking about the Bellini revival with Maria Callas 29:33 Can Bellini’s famous long melodies be connected with the Partimento tradition 32:53 Does the Paris Conservatory have a similarities to the Partimento tradition? 35:07 How did Germany harmony affect Partimento? 35:58 Talking about the separation of Counterpoint and Harmony 37:46 How did the Partimento tradition change with 19th century Harmony 40:19 Can you analyze 19th century romantic music with a Partimento lens 42:17 Using the Prelude to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde as an example 43:24 Talking about Giuseppe Verdi 46:15 Was Italian music as or more influential than German music during the 18th and 19th century 47:32 What has surprised you about your research? 48:44 Did non-Italian composers absorb these musical patterns without the Neapolitan training? 50:41 Was it difficult to access the Neapolitan archives because of their secretive reputation? 53:15 How much material is in these archives and is there a lot more left to study? 54:42 Do you have favorite Partimenti exercises? 55:19 What’s appealing about Durante? 56:43 How widespread were Fenaroli’s exercises in Europe? 58:09 On the progressive difficulty of the Fenaroli partimenti 59:28 How can partimento assist in understanding music of the 19th century? 1:01:17 Should we still keep Roman Numerals and traditional tonal analysis 1:02:29 Wrapping up and Upcoming projects/events
I am so delighted and honored to be able to introduce my guest today, Trombonist, Alan Kaplan!
Kaplan has long been one of the top studio trombone players in Los Angeles. I am so delighted and honored to be able to introduce my guest today, Trombonist, Alan Kaplan! He has played on the scores for nearly 1,000 movies and thousands of television episodes. He has also been the featured trombone soloist on more than 1,000 cartoons.
His recording credits vary vastly from Marvin Gaye to Johnny Mathis to Madonna to Placido Domingo to Sarah Vaughan to Oingo Boingo to Whitney Houston to the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Josh Groban, Michael Buble, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Lady Gaga, and countless more.
In January of 2002 Alan released his first solo album. It is a beautiful collection of standard ballads arranged for a thirty piece orchestra called Lonely Town. In August of 2012 He released a new CD called “Secrets of Hoyt’s Garage”. In 2017 Alan released three play-along albums for Music Minus One. “Ballads for Trombone with Orchestra”, “Standards for Trombone”, and “Mostly Mozart Arias”.
1:55 What music did your father put on for you as a child? 2:44 Before the trombone at 8, what was your musical life like? 3:14 Do you have Absolute or Perfect Pitch? 3:48 Who were your first teachers, and what did they teach you? 4:39 Were you aware of famous trombone players growing up? 6:26 How many hours as a kid did you practice a day? 6:44 Were you interested in improvisation as well, at the beginning? 7:01 How long were you with your 2nd teacher? 7:34 Did your development really shoot up, studying with Bill Tole 7:48 What bad habits did he fix? 8:07 What kind of music were you studying at the time? 8:30 What etudes would you recommend for new students? 9:07 Studying with Roy Main 9:49 What made Roy Main so special? 10:44 How long did you spend with Roy Main? 11:05 Is that when you started to learn to improvise? 11:38 How did you learn to improvise? 12:53 How did you end up working with Buddy Rich at 19? 14:11 Did you audition for him? 14:43 How did it feel working for Buddy Rich? 14:52 Were you aware of Buddy Rich’s temperament and reputation? 15:13 What was your personal relationship with Buddy Rich? 16:32 How long did you spend with the Buddy Rich band? 17:16 Is Buddy Rich the greatest drummer of all time? 17:38 Did working with Buddy Rich give you more confidence in the industry? 18:07 Any interesting conversations or memories with Buddy Rich? 19:04 What’s a systematic way to develop great ears? 19:48 What do you think of transcribing? 20:15 What made the movie “Silverado” so special to you? 22:19 Describe what it was like as a beginning session musician, how did you fare? 23:57 As your sight reading was already good, were you just focused on the musicality of the playing? 24:52 Do you get to interact with the composers or conductors about the music that you are playing? 25:31 Talking about how John Williams conducts 26:42 Do you like to listen to your work in the movie theaters? 28:40 Are there more recognizable Alan Kaplan moments in other movies? 29:51 Where did the famous stock cartoon trombone sounds come from and how did you get so prolific in cartoons? 31:55 Talking about playing on the Simpsons 32:10 Talking about the famous Simpsons title theme 32:50 Do you remember most of the sessions that you’ve worked on? 33:12 Talking about the hit Disney animated feature films of the 90’s 33:58 Are you friends with Alan Menken? 34:20 Who are the people that you hang out with the most in Hollywood? 35:35 Were there projects that you worked on that you were previously already a fan of before 37:03 What was it like on Die Hard? 38:37 Working on Godfather 3 39:11 Talking about his debut solo album “Lonely Town” 40:51 Talking about arranger Joseph Curiale 42:16 How long were the “Lonely Town” recording sessions? 42:47 Talking about his next album “Hoyt’s Garage” 43:44 Is the trombone a difficult instrument to play? 44:53 How long were you attending the rehearsals at Hoyt’s garage? 45:14 How did you select the arrangements that appeared on the album? 46:13 What are some special memories of the rehearsals at Hoyt’s garage? 47:05 Talking about the fun of the rehearsals 47:44 What were the most difficult arrangements that Hoyt brought out at these rehearsals? 48:41 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Saxophonists 49:10 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Trumpet Players 49:25 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Guitarists 49:34 Did you know Joe Pass? 49:55 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Drummers 50:06 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Keyboard/Piano players 50:21 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Trombone Players 50:44 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Film Composers 50:57 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Classical Composers 51:07 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Film Scores 51:30 Talking about the Incredibles 2 film score 51:54 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Cartoons 54:34 HOT SEAT: Top 3 TV shows 54:56 Scariest moment in the studio 56:30 Name a special experience playing for a big artist 57:18 What’s your proudest musical moment? 58:17 Name a movie that you would have liked to play on but didn’t get a chance to 59:26 What advice can you give to a young musician who wants to make music their career? 1:00:20 Wrapping Up
It’s my pleasure to introduce my guest today Music Theorist, Performer and Music Historian, Dr. Giorgio Sanguinetti!
Sanguinetti teaches at the University of Rome-Tor Vergata. He gives classes and seminars in many prestigious European and American institutions, such as the Orpheus Institute in Ghent, the university of Leuven (Belgium), the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (Switzerland), the NUI in Maynooth (Ireland), the CUNY Graduate Center (New York), Northwestern University, Indiana University at Bloomington, and the Boston University.
For the winter semester 2012 he taught at the Schulich school of Music at McGill University, Montreal (CA). He was the organizer of 7th European Music Analysis Conference, Rome 2011. He has written several articles and essays on the history of Italian theory from 18th to 20th century, Schenkerian analysis, “analysis and performance, form in 18th century music” ,Opera analysis, and has worked intensively in the rediscovery of the Italian partimento tradition. In 2012 Oxford University Press published his book “The Art of Partimento: History, Theory and Practice”.
Sanguinetti is also a moderator on the fast growing public Facebook Group “The Art of Partimento”.
2:16 Tell me your musical background 3:08 Why did Partimento die out? 4:51 Was Fenaroli a well known name in Italy in the modern age? 5:59 So even in Italy, Partimento faded away? 7:49 Was the Paris Conservatory influenced by the Naples tradition? 8:27 Why was the Prix de Rome considered a big deal for a winning French musician? 9:05 Can we pinpoint when Partimento got replaced in the 19th century? 11:43 Are there still plenty of archival material and manuscripts left in the Naples conservatory libraries? 13:52 Are there still old masters alive in Italy who practice Partimento or is it extinct? 15:37 Do we know exactly what Naples conservatory students studied over 10 years? 17:48 Talking about free improvisation 19:41 Do we have marked exam papers in these Naples conservatories? 21:10 What was Spontini’s failed exam about? 21:24 How many Naples conservatories were there? 22:09 Were all the Naples conservatories different in their approaches in learning Partimento? 23:59 Did Haydn probably get the pure Neapolitan course of study from Nicola Porpora? 24:56 How was the Bologna tradition of music education different from Naples? 26:49 What was Rameau’s influence on the Neapolitan tradition? 28:47 How is the Rule of the Octave different from modern triadic harmony? 30:55 How rare are authentic realizations of Partimenti and what conclusions should we draw from them? 32:50 How was a student supposed to learn diminutions? 34:58 How is Imitation important in the Partimento tradition? 36:47 How should a child new to learning music learn Partimento from the very beginning? 40:33 Was Beethoven a subscriber to Choron’s compendium of Italian treatises? 42:36 What are some common mistakes when trying to learn Partimento? 43:07 What are the 3 phases of playing Partimento? 45:13 What new things have you discovered since the release of your 2012 book “The Art of Partimento”? 48:10 How do you think people should analyze music? 50:07 Who are some great Italian composers who should be ranked alongside the great German masters like Bach and Mozart? 51:37 Talking about Vincenzo Bellini and Giuseppi Verdi 52:59 If you could reform music education, what would you do? 54:03 Upcoming projects 55:20 Wrapping Up
My guest today is the internationally acclaimed pianist, organist, harpsichordist, composer, conductor and improviser, Dr. Rudolf Lutz!
Lutz was organist of the church Sankt Laurenzen in St Gallen from 1973–2013, and conductor of the Bach-Chor St. Gallen from 1986–2008. Rudolf Lutz is a former lecturer for improvisation at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, and has taught thorough-bass at the School of Music in Basel and oratorio studies at the Zurich University of the Arts.
A respected composer; Lutz’s sinfonia for cantata BWV 158 by Bach and his Christmas oratory “An English Christmas” are critically acclaimed. In 2017, his cantata in homage to Luther – a work commissioned by “Deutschlandfunk Kultur” – received its world premiere at Wartburg castle. In 2018, his second cantata based on a traditional Swiss hymn, also received its premiere.
Lutz is the artistic director and conductor of the J.S. Bach Foundation. Their Choir, Orchestra and Vocal soloists are in the process of performing the complete vocal catalogue of Johann Sebastian Bach, performing 12 cantata concerts a year and this massive undertaking is estimated to conclude in 2027.
So thrilled today to introduce my guest, who is returning for his 2nd appearance on the show, saxophonist, composer and educator, Aaron Gratzmiller!
An active performer, Gratzmiller has shared the stage with notable artists such as Kurt Elling, Antonio Hart, Robert Villera, and Matt Savage among others.
He currently co-leads the Pearcy/ Gratzmiller Jazz Quintet, a project that combines traditional hard bop jazz with modern elements. Their debut album 2018’s “Over the Edge”, has received critical acclaim in several online publications including Something Else, Jazz..u, Audible Addixion, and Vinyl Chapters, and Gratzmiller played tenor, alto, and soprano saxophones on the album, composing 6 of it’s 10 songs.
Within the field of education, He is the founder of Union Lesson Studios, a new teaching business.
He is Director of Arts and Education for the New England Jazz Enrichment Foundation, which seeks to “serve [New England] communities by providing opportunities for the exploration of the world of Jazz”. The foundation organizes and runs the Worcester Jazz Festival in addition to other community programs.
1:58 Update on the Quintet 2:14 Finding new listeners as the landscape for jazz has changed 3:19 How has touring changed? 4:09 Using the album as a calling card 4:21 What’s the state of modern jazz? 5:55 Do we need break the form of traditional jazz 6:28 Can you see the saxophone appearing in other genres apart from jazz? 7:36 Do you have a favorite type of saxophone in the woodwind family? 8:25 The influence of Dexter Gordon 9:04 How do we change the culture in music so that the listening audience knows what’s happening in a song? 10:47 Students selecting music based on popularity rather than the music itself 11:50 Students liking the timbre of electronic music 12:44 Have you seen students get more understanding of music through music education? 13:42 On people needing lyrics to be able to follow a song 14:54 The philosophical answers that great musicians give to musical questions 15:56 On music being a craft rather than a mystical art 16:40 How much does music theory factor into your playing and composing? 17:47 What’s going on in your mind when a solo begins? 18:33 Entertaining the audience visually vs sonically 19:54 Have you felt the need to explain the music to the audience 21:22 What’s the current trend in music education? 23:10 How do you teach ear training? 24:21 What system do you use for solfege? 25:01 Do you keep chromatic notes with the same syllables? 25:27 Do you find fixed Do useful for advanced things or is it more of a training aid? 26:15 On Wayne Pearcy’s approach to ear training? 27:26 On Matt Savage and his ideas about music and music education 29:00 Best advice on ear training 29:49 What’s a good first step to working on improvisation? 30:48 Talking about the New England Jazz Enrichment Foundation and the Worchester Jazz Festival 31:47 On bringing in big names to the show 32:54 On playing in a big band 34:03 On big band music growing in musical stature in it’s history 35:12 Does everyone improvise in a big band or just select people? 36:01 When did the first sophisticated, modern big bands appear? 36:55 Is there any crossover of orchestral classical writing into big band? 38:01 Talking about saxophone quartets 39:25 What do you think of competitions in music? Is it good for music? 41:27 Do you find it odd that there’s no improvisation in classical music? 42:13 Shouldn’t you avoid changing the notes of a learned piece, in order to honor the great musician? 43:26 If you have a masters degree or PhD equate you to being a great musician? 44:36 What is your response to someone who wants to have 45:47 On the criticism that jazz musicians don’t have the technique of classical musicians 46:31 Jazz wasn’t always afforded the same respect as concert music in the past 47:36 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Jazz Pianists 48:15 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Tenor Saxophonists 48:37 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Alto Saxophonists 49:13 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Jazz Standards 49:53 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Blues Heads 50:27 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Rhythm Changes 50:47 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Jazz Contrafacts 52:10 HOT SEAT: Scariest moment in music career 53:37 HOT SEAT: Proudest musical moment 54:40 HOT SEAT: What’s your opinion on fusion music 55:39 HOT SEAT: Top 3 Classical Composers 56:17 HOT SEAT: If you had to pick a different instrument as your main, what would it be? 57:22 HOT SEAT: Favorite trumpet players? 58:18 HOT SEAT: If you could go back in time and meet any musician, who would you meet? 59:12 HOT SEAT: same question but give a jazz musician 1:00:00 Final plugs 1:01:44 Wrapping up
Tobias Cramm studied fortepiano with Edoardo Torbianelli and Geoffrey Lancester in Basel/CH (Schola Cantorum) and Canberra/Australia and holds a Bachelor of Arts in musicology and social sciences from the university of Basel. He has been involved in exploring partimento-based approaches to improvisation and composing as a performer, researcher, and teacher since 2010.
Cramm is gaining a stellar reputation as a music teacher with a proven track record of teaching some truly astonishing students.
From July 7 to July 16, 2019, Tobias will be running a summer academy “MentiParti 2019” for exploring improvisation and composition based on the Neapolitan Partimento method in Basel, Switzerland with other faculty members including Lydia Carlisi, Peter Van Tour and Ewald Demeyere.
1:57 - What’s your background in music? 3:51 - Did you have a study of Figured Bass while playing Organ? 4:42 - When did you seriously begin studying improvisation? 6:31 - How did Rudolf Lutz practice improvisation before Partimento-based methodology and schema? 7:44 - How would Rudolf Lutz teach you these Partimento methods? 9:07 - What’s the youngest age that you accept students? 10:03 - What is your approach to teaching young children? 11:47 - Do you use any books when teaching? 12:08 - What specific musical concepts would you start off with? 13:59 - Do these melodies tie to Solfeggio? 15:05 - Do you teach Solfeggio or solmization? 15:22 - Does it matter if a student has Absolute Pitch? Does it change how you teach? 16:02 - When do you introduce new keys to students? 17:02 - Week to week, what kind of things do you want your students to work on? 18:22 - Can you give an example of solutions that students come up with? 19:50 - What Partimenti would you recommend for students to tackle first? 21:06 - Since there any many things to learn, what is a good order of things to learn in Partimento? 24:26 - Is it a mistake to memorize the Rule of the Octave without really understanding the individual voices? 25:23 - How do you deal with parallel 5ths and octaves? 26:47 - Can you explain how you improvise with your students on Skype? 27:59 - How do you tie these improvisations to Partimento? 30:02 - Is this kind of improvisation only for advanced students or can even beginners do this? 30:53 - This kind of improvisation is very approachable with a little practice 31:23 - What kind of things you need in order to do this kind of improvisation? 34:16 - How do you develop the ability create diminutions? 36:12 - What are some common mistakes students make when learning Partimento? 37:49 - What’s your approach to teaching composition? 39:34 - How does Partimento inform the way you teach repertoire? 40:47 - Can you give an example of taking a piece and creating variations or new ideas? 42:12 - mentiParti 2019 and how it’s run 45:14 - Are you seeing a big growth in interest in Partimento? 46:08 - How does Partimento affect how you teach popular music? 47:31 - On 20th century music being based more on stacking 3rds 49:25 - How would you reform music education? 51:58 - Wrapping up
What a delight to welcome back onto the show for the 2nd time, the great jazz saxophonist and composer, Dr. Charles McPherson!
An incredibly prolific artist with a career spanning decades, McPherson has performed on over 70 recordings, both as a leader and sideman with practically all the greatest names in jazz.
Most recently McPherson was honored for his 80th birthday and played at a special double concert: "McCoy Tyner and Charles McPherson at 80” at Jazz at Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis on April 5 and 6 of this year.
He also appeared at the Kennedy Center honoring his lifelong friend, Stanley Crouch at the NEA Jazz Masters Tribute Concert.
The resident composer for the San Diego Ballet, McPherson premiered his new ballet “Song of Songs” for this season.
1:27 - How did the tunes at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Concert get chosen? 2:32 - What was your tune selection process? 3:21 - Did you know Sonny Stitt? 5:52 - Sonny Stitt’s competitive nature 9:29 - Can you share any anecdotes of competitive cutting contests? 10:38 - How does your thought process change in a cutting contest? 11:48 - Bebop and Classical improvisational duels 12:30 - Studying with classical technique with a classical saxophonist 13:13 - Are you a good sight reader? 13:30 - Are you more of an ear-player? 13:55 - How did you develop the ability to sing anything you play, and how do you do that while playing at the same time? 17:03 - Talking about the Jazz Trumpet Player Lonnie Hilyer 18:20 - How did Lonnie Hilyer build his harmonic concept? 18:38 - Did Lonnie Hilyer play the piano? 19:32 - Who were Lonnie Hilyer’s trumpet heroes? 20:12 - Joining Charles Mingus at the same time 21:08 - Were you nervous joining Mingus? 21:27 - Being aware of Mingus’ reputation 21:44 - Story of Mingus ripping apart piano strings with his bare hands 22:13 - On feeling the pressure of playing with Mingus 23:12 - When did you feel really confident about your abilities? 23:51 - Did working with Mingus supercharge your development? 24:21 - Did Mingus give you suggestions on how to play? 25:54 - Did you know the lineage of the saxophone players older than Charlie Parker? 27:17 - Which of the older generation of saxophone players should people check out 29:05 - What are the downsides of modern Jazz education? 30:08 - The individuality of older saxophone players 30:54 - Did Charlie Parker think in terms of modes? 31:39 - Is it important how we name the knowledge? 33:31 - Did Jazz get watered down post-bebop? 37:40 - Did you listen to all the music of the ballet literature? 38:05 - Was dancing the most important element while writing the music? 38:56 - How did you conceive of the orchestration? 41:35 - Do you have to revise much of the music with the choreographer? 42:58 - How long would it take to write each song? 44:36 - How did it feel performing it? 45:08 - What do the dancers do when you are improvising? 46:42 - What’s your relationship with Stanley Crouch? 47:27 - Stanley Crouch praising McPherson in the New York Times 48:37 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Trumpet Players 49:04 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Bass Players 49:12 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Drummers 49:21 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Tenor Saxophone Players 49:36 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Alto Saxophone Players 49:46 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Blues Tunes 50:38 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Rhythm Changes Tunes 50:49 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Pianists 51:45 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Ballads 52:15 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Medium tempo tunes 52:55 - Meeting Bud Powell 53:14 - The difficulty of talking to Bud 53:20 - What did Mingus think of Bud? 53:57 - What’s the hardest tune you’ve ever written? 54:10 - The tune that was most difficult to write? 54:43 - What was the easiest tune that you wrote? 55:06 - What 3 albums of yours would you recommend a fan check out? 55:35 - If you could hang out with Charlie Parker, what would you ask? 56:26 - Wrapping Up and Goodbyes
On today’s show, I’m so thrilled to talk to the amazing Pianist, Composer and Improviser, Charlie Albright!
Hailed as “among the most gifted musicians of his generation” with a “dazzling natural keyboard affinity” who “made quite an impression” by the Washington Post, American pianist/composer/improviser Charlie Albright has been praised for his “jaw-dropping technique and virtuosity meshed with a distinctive musicality” by The New York Times, and his “extravagance that had showmanship but never felt cheap” with his “ease and smoothness that refuses to airbrush the music, but animates it from within” by the Philadelphia Inquirer. Recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and Gilmore Young Artist Award, Albright won the Ruhr Klavier Festival Young Artist Award presented by Marc-André Hamelin (Germany) and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions.
In addition to performing, Albright is sought after as a speaker, masterclass instructor, teacher, and competition judge. His debut commercial recording, Vivace, has sold thousands of copies worldwide and the first of a 3-part Schubert Series of live, all-Schubert recordings was released in 2017.
Recently, he made his Main Stage Carnegie debut with the American Symphony in January, and just returned from the Bergen International Festival in Norway (he was asked to fill in for Lang Lang after an injury in 2017, and returned for a sold-out solo recital and to do the honors of performing the yearly Grieg Concerto at Grieg Concert Hall.
1:45 - Did you go to piano on your own as a child?
3:17 - Do you have perfect pitch? Can you play anything you hear?
3:45 - Did you play piano for pleasure or did parents make him practice?
4:38 - Did your piano teacher help train your ear?
6:07 - You can play the organ?
6:18 - When did you start to compose and improvise?
6:58 - Did you know theory at the time or was it all by sound?
8:15 - What kind of music did you listen to growing up?
9:13 - Favorite records or albums or artists growing up?
10:27 - Was it a shock to learn to read after playing by ear?
11:53 - What pieces did your teacher assign to you?
12:55 - Did playing Chopin influence your creativity?
14:01 - Do you have knowledeg in figured bass?
14:58 - The drawbacks of music theory
16:20 - Does the sound come first instead of the analysis?
16:27 - Did you experiment with music, harmonically?
17:42 - Do you take ideas from pieces you play?
18:10 - Give an example of taking an idea from a piece of music
19:33 - Can you imitate composer's trademark sounds?
20:26 - How did the training in Harvard and New England Conservatory influence you?
22:11 - What did the teachers do to develop you?
23:04 - What's been the reaction of your peers to your improvisation?
24:22 - How much time do you devote to repertoire vs improvisation?
25:44 - How did you feel about the music theory study at university?
26:12 - How did the music theory influence your approach to composition?
27:16 - When did you start seriously composing?
27:58 - Meeting Yo-Yo Ma for the first time
29:33 - Were you an undergraduate at the time?
29:53 - What was the rehearsal like?
30:41 - Was Yo-Yo Ma aware of your improvisational ability at the time?
31:33 - Did you feel like changing notes in the score for the concert with Yo-Yo Ma?
32:03 - Any interesting Yo-Yo Ma anecdotes?
32:57 - What is your temperament like? Do you get nervous?
36:34 - Talking about Marc-André Hamelin
37:49 - Was was the phone call with Hamelin like?
38:13 - Substituting for Lang Lang in a concert
39:30 - What do you think of Grieg and his music?
40:24 - Talking about improvising cadenzas
41:38 - What is going through your mind when you improvise in a cadenza?
43:17 - Main Stage Carnegie Hall debut with the Vivian Fine Piano Concerto
44:29 - Performing Jerry Lee Lewis' "Great Balls of Fire" as an Encore at Carnegie Hall
46:41 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Jazz Musicians
47:36 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Classical Composers before 1900
47:59 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Etudes
48:12 - HOT SEAT: If you could improvise with anyone in history, who would it be?
48:30 - HOT SEAT: If you could meet Chopin, what would you ask him?
49:05 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Composers after 1900
49:16 - HOT SEAT: Proudest Music Moment
50:24 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Piano Concertos
50:49 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Small Piano Pieces
51:18 - Do you know many of your concert pianist peers in the world?
52:45 - Do you know Lang Lang?
52:53 - HOT SEAT: Top 3 Concert Pianists
53:21 - Talking about Emanuel Ax with the Avery Fisher Career Grant
53:47 - Advice on Classical Improvisation
55:47 - How to get started with Classical Improvisation
57:45 - Upcoming projects in 2019
58:36 - Social Media Links
I’m so delighted to talk to my guest today, Musicologist, Music Theorist, Composer and Educator, Peter van Tour!
He is the author of Counterpoint and Partimento: Methods of Teaching Composition in Late 18th century Naples 2015, The Editor of a 3 volume series entitled, “The 189 Partimenti of Nicola Sala” published 2017 and has published many peer-reviewed articles.
He earned his Phd in Musicology/Music Theory at Uppsala University, Sweden.
He is also a Moderator of a popular, fast growing Facebook Group called “The Art of Partimento” which is dedicated to the compositional school of Naples and the art of partimenti, a very rich resource for interested people.
He has an upcoming book coming out: ““The Italian Fugue: Investigated through Young Apprentices in Eighteenth-century Naples and Bologna.”
2:00 - What's the latest research on Partimento?
4:17 - Did Neapolitan students have to sing for 3 years before playing instruments?
5:08 - What type of solmization did they use?
7:15 - How difficult does Solfeggio get?
8:10 - Where do we get Solfeggio exercises?
8:48 - Is Solfeggio unaccompanied or accompanied?
9:36 - Do Neapolitan students keep singing after the 3 years?
10:43 - Differences between Southern and Northern Italian pedagogy
11:20 - Does everyone have to learn the keyboard when learning Partimento?
11:56 - Was it common for students back then to play a little keyboard, even if it wasn't their main instrument?
13:40 - Is the Neapolitan approach to Counterpoint different from Fux?
15:06 - How do the Neapolitan students navigate the rules of Counterpoint without getting bogged down?
16:33 - Cadences, Rule of the Octave, Bass Motions
19:02 - Are Cadences about Chords moving or something else?
20:21 - The 3 types of Cadences and their variations
21:42 - How do you know when to raise the 6th and 7th degrees of the melodic minor scale when using it in Partimento?
22:58 - Written Counterpoint vs Performed Counterpoint
27:08 - What's the average amount of Partimenti that would accumulate in a student's notebook?
28:06 - Is the Partimento method applicable to modern tonal music?
29:15 - The drawbacks of typical music analysis
30:09 - How early can a student begin improvising and composing using the Partimento method
31:02 - The Clef's that you should learn for Partimento
31:36 - There are no G clefs in historical Partimento manuscripts
32:10 - Peter's music pedagogical recommendations
34:10 - Is it possible to self-teach counterpoint?
35:21 - Is the Paris Conservatory tradition related to the Partimento tradition?
36:41 - How would you teach a music student from the very beginning with Partimento?
38:00 - What materials are good to start with for Partimento?
39:35 - Using Partimento towards non-partimento based compositions
40:27 - Talking about Gjerdingen's Schema
41:06 - What surprised Peter most about his Partimento research
43:34 - During the 18th century, were Italians composers famous across Europe?
44:42 - Richard Wagner and the Progressive nature of Partimento
45:58 - Beethoven and Partimento
46:39 - The modern reaction today to the recent research in Partimento
47:41 - Talking about Peter's upcoming book, The Italian Fugue.
48:56 - How good were the Italians at Fugal writing?
51:26 - Who were some famous Italian masters of the fugue?
52:06 - The School of Leo vs The School of Durante
54:39 - Did they write or improvise Fugues, or do both?
55:30 - Upcoming projects
56:22 - Mentiparti 2019 teaching
What a treat we have today, my guest is the illustrious Scholar of Music History, Theory and an expert of music in the 18th century Galant style, Dr. Robert Gjerdingen! Dr. Gjerdingen received his Bachelors in Music Composition from the California Institute of Arts, his MA in Music Theory and Ethnomusicology from the University of Hawaii and his PhD in Music history and Theory from the University of Pennsylvania.
He is the author of numerous scholarly articles and reviews in prestigious music journals such as the Journal of Music Theory and Journal of New Music Research.
In 2007, Dr. Gjerdingen published Music in the Galant Style with Oxford University Press to great acclaim and winning awards such as the Wallace Berry Award from the Society of Music Theory in 2009.
I’m so delighted to introduce my guest today, acclaimed Classical Pianist, Composer, Improviser, Musicologist and Conductor, Robert Levin!
An international performing concert pianist, he has performed throughout the US, Europe, Australia and Asia. As a recording artist, he has recorded for DG Archiv, Decca, Deutsche Grammophon Yellow Label, SONY Classical and more.
Levin is renowned for his restoration of the Classical period practice of improvised embellishments and cadenzas; his Mozart and Beethoven performances have been hailed for their active mastery of the Classical musical language.
In addition to his performing activities, Robert Levin is a noted theorist and Mozart scholar, and is the author of a number of articles and essays on Mozart. His completions of Mozart fragments are published by Bärenreiter, Breitkopf & Härtel, Hänssler, and Peters, and have been recorded and performed throughout the world.
In 2016 he was inducted as Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is currently the inaugural Hogwood Fellow of the Academy of Ancient Music for 2017 and 2018.
My guest today is GRAMMY Award-winning Country Guitarist, Redd Volkaert!
Volkaert is well known for his long tenure in Merle Haggard’s band, The Strangers, as the successor to Roy Nichols. A master of the telecaster, Volkaert, has played and recorded with many top artists such as Brad Paisley, Dolly Parton, Vince Gill, Albert Lee, Merle Travis, Eric Johnson to name a few.
In addition to the many records he’s appeared as a sideman on, Volkaert has recorded several solo albums including Telewacker, No Stranger to a Tele, Twangbangers - 26 days on the road, For the Ladies and Reddhead.
In 2003, Volkaert was nominated for a GRAMMY for Best Country Instrumental Performance for Spaghetti Western Swing with Brad Paisley and in 2009 he won the GRAMMY for best Country Instrumental performance on Cluster Pluck, again with Brad Paisley.
I’m really delighted to introduce my guest today, Tony Award-nominated Composer and Lyricist for Broadway, Film and TV, Laurence O’Keefe!
His Broadway credits include "Bat Boy: The Musical" which has received over 1000 productions worldwide, Legally Blonde: The Musical, which was nominated for 7 Tony's including Best Original Score, Heathers: The Musical, which was nominated for Outstanding Music at the Drama Desk awards.
Laurence has won the Ed Kleban Award, the ASCAP Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award, and a Jonathan Larson award for his music and lyrics.
We’re so privileged today to talk to a real master and legend of the guitar, the great Arlen Roth!
Roth has toured the world and recorded with countless acts such as Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, John Prine, Phoebe Snow, Levon Helm, Ry Cooder, John Sebastian, Janis Ian, Eric Andersen, The Bee Gees and many more.
He has released 15 albums, including ones such as All Tricked Out!, Slide Guitar Summit and Toolin’ around Woodstock with Levon HELM.
His most recent album is Telemasters, released late 2018, featuring Roth in duets with other Telecaster masters such as Brad Paisley, Vince Gill, Steve Cropper, Joe Bonnamossa, Brent Mason, Albert Lee, Johnny Hiland, Jack Pearson, to name a few. It is produced by 2-time GRAMMY award-winner Tom Hambridge.
Within the sphere of music education, Roth is popularly known as the creator of the famed Hot Licks Video instructional series, which has sold in excess of 2 and a half million copies. His current online lessons and blogs for gibson.com have over a million followers and he has helped create over 1000 online lessons and blogs for Gibson guitars.
My guest today is legendary Jazz Guitar Virtuoso and Composer, Jimmy Bruno!
At the age of 19, Bruno became the youngest member of the Buddy Rich Orchestra touring the world and this led to engagements in the orchestras of Frank Sinatra, Anthony Newley, Doc Severinsen, Lena Horne and many more.
Over the years, he has shared the stage with a who's who of legendary and highly regarded musicians: Joe Beck, Bobby Watson, Jack Wilkins, Tal Farlow (at Farlow's 75th Birthday Concert), Howard Alden, Christian McBride, Curt Elling and many more!
Jimmy has recorded over 13 critically acclaimed CDs, including "Sleight of Hand," "Like That," and "Polarity" (with Joe Beck). His most recent CD "Maplewood Avenue”.
Downbeat magazine in 2009 — named Jimmy as one of the top 75 guitarists of all time!
As a music educator Bruno is the creator of the independent online jazz guitar school - The Jimmy Bruno Workshop.
2:07 - Talking about his father who played on the hit "Guitar Boogie Shuffle" 2:09 - Influence of musical family 3:26 - Were you drawn to the guitar? 4:10 - Do you have perfect pitch? 4:31 - How much help did your father give in learning the guitar? 5:45 - Influence of Philadelphia on your development? 8:50 - Did your father know many famous musicians? 9:31 - How did you end up practicing violin etudes on guitar? 11:00 - Was Armando a classical musician? 11:41 - When did you learn to improvise before taking jazz lessons with Al Stauffer? 15:48 - Why Al Stauffer was fond of Jimmy 15:59 - Why would a guitar player take lessons from a bass player (Al Stauffer)? 17:28 - Dennis Sandole and Al Stauffer student rivalries 19:14 - What do you think about guitar tablature? 20:05 - Are you a good sightreader? 23:42 - How long did it take to improve your sightreading? 25:13 - Why was Buddy Rich throwing drumsticks at auditioning guitarists? 28:30 - World Tour with Buddy Rich 29:28 - Personal relationship with Buddy Rich 31:10 - Having a good hardworking attitude while working with Buddy Rich 31:54 - Was Buddy Rich the greatest drummer of all time? 33:24 - Working with Frank Sinatra 35:53 - Transposing Songs 37:07 - Frank Sinatra to the Italian-American community 38:26 - Working with Liberace 40:32 - Did you get to talk or hang out with Liberace? 41:39 - Talking about Hank Garland 42:53 - Personal relationship with Hank Garland 43:49 - Talking about Tal Farlow 44:36 - How big are your hands? 45:00 - Talking about Joe Pass 45:57 - Joe Pass Stories 47:20 - What did Joe Pass think of your playing? 48:38 - Talking about George Benson 50:17 - Hot Seat: Top 3 Jazz Guitarists 50:44 - Hot Seat: Top 3 Jazz Pianists 50:50 - Hot Seat: Top 3 Jazz Drummers 50:59 - Hot Seat: Top 3 Bass Players 51:10 - Hot Seat: Top Saxophonists 51:29 - Hot Seat: Top Trumpet Players 51:40 - Hot Seat: Top 3 albums that you've recorded 51:53 - Hot Seat: Proudest Musical Moment 52:00 - Playing Moonlight in Vermont for Johnny Smith 52:36 - Economy Picking vs Alternate Picking 53:53 - How do you develop perfect technique? 54:47 - What's your opinion of Berklee Chord Scale Theory? 55:13 - Talking about Barry Harris trashing modes 55:34 - What's the best advice to be a good musician? 56:25 - How do you develop a good ear? 56:49 - Upcoming projects
My guest today is the exciting, up-and-coming composer, sound designer and guitarist, Joe Kataldo!
Kataldo is the founder and audio director of Mad Wave Audio, LLC, an audio production company that specialize on game audio.
Some of the work he’s done is music and sound design for "The Last Night", a post-cyberpunk video game set in a world with a deep, vibrant vision of the future, HyPerParasite, an Italian Twin Stick shooter, and sound design for the company Spaces Inc.
Kataldo regularly composes music for "H3VR", a room-scale gun simulation VR experience for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, one of the top selling VR Games on Steam in 2018.
Kataldo is a graduate of Berklee College of Music and the Conservatory of Napoli and holds degrees in music and composition.
What a delight to introduce my guest today, GRAMMY Award-winning and Oscar Nominated Composer, Arranger and Pianist, Roger Kellaway!
Kellaway has recorded more than 250 albums. He’s worked with artists such as Duke Ellington, Elvis Presley, Carmen McCrae, Barbra Streisand, Quincy Jones, Yo-Yo Ma and many others.
Kellaway’s most prized television credit is, “Remembering You”, the closing theme for the popular television show, “All in the Family”. Composed in 1970, it is still being heard on TV around the world. He has written (and conducted) twenty-nine film scores including Barbara Streisand’s “A Star Is Born”, for which he received an Academy Award nomination. In 1988, Kellaway was received a GRAMMY Award for best arrangement on an instrumental for his music on the album “Memos From Paradise” for Eddie Daniels.
In 2010, Kellaway received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, the New England Conservatory of Music.
My guest today is composer, pianist and music historian, Dr. Robert Greenberg!
Dr. Greenberg has composed over fifty works for a wide variety of instrumental and vocal ensembles, and his works have been performed all over the world.
A “Steinway Artist,” Dr. Greenberg has also received many other honors including three Nicola de Lorenzo Composition Prizes and a Koussevitzky commission from the Library of Congress. He has been profiled in various major publications, including The Wall Street Journal; Inc. magazine; and the London Times.
Dr. Greenberg is popularly known for his over 550 lectures recorded for the esteemed education company The Great Courses, including popular courses such as “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music”, “How to Listen to and Understand Opera”, “Great Music of the 20th Century” and many other great ones.
We talk about his early years in music, his training in music composition, many interesting perspectives and anecdotes on music history, His stellar work on the great courses, his music and so much more!
My guest today is 6-Time GRAMMY winner, 28-time GRAMMY nominee, 2 time Oscar Nominee, Composer, Arranger and Producer, Jorge Calandrelli!
Calandrelli has arranged, produced and composed for artists such as Tony Bennett, Lady Gaga, Celine Dion, Madonna, Yo-Yo Ma, Elton John, Quincy Jones, Sting, Paul McCartney, Shakira, to name a few. Particularly, his celebrated 30-year association with Tony Bennett has yielded 13 albums, 6 GRAMMY nominations and 2 GRAMMY awards.
As both composer and orchestrator, Jorge Calandrelli, has been involved in films and television. His most recent TV score “The Rain” co-composed with Kuni Murai, a four hour docudrama, premiered in 2010 for Japan Television. Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon”; Steven Spielberg’s "The Color Purple"; Stanley Kubrick’s "The Shining”; “Sola”; "The Great Mouse Detective" and many more.
ASMAC (The American Society of Music Arrangers and Composers) honored Calandrelli with the 2014 Golden Score Award for Arranging, the highest award that could be given to an arranger in the USA.
Country music legend, GRAMMY Award-winning multi-instrumentalist, known for his harmonica playing, Charlie McCoy, joins us on the program for the first time!
A fixture in Nashville studios for over 50 years, Charlie worked with some of the biggest names in music such as Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Vince Gill and many, many more. For a 15 year stretch, he did more than 400 sessions a year. A grand total would number more than 12,000 sessions.
He won the GRAMMY in 1972 for “The Real McCoy” for Best Country Instrumental Performance, in addition to a total of 7 nominations He’s been awarded the Country Music Association’s “Instrumentalist Of The Year” two times and over his career he has recorded 42 solo albums. In addition, he served as the music director for 18 years for the syndicated television series, “Hee Haw”.
In 2009, it was announced that Charlie would be inducted into the Country Music Hall Of Fame along with Roy Clark and Barbara Mandrell.
1:51 Would you sing in 4 part harmony as kid in your family? 2:50 How big is your family? 3:06 Was your mom a trained musician? 3:27 Talking about the amazing church in Buffalo 5:26 Do you have Absolute Pitch or Perfect Pitch? 5:31 Did your parents ever ask you to practice? 6:32 Talking about “Oh Happy Day" by Edwin Hawkins 7:20 What did you mean by conservative? 7:40 Talking about Alan Johnston and his wife Shirley’s influence 9:03 Being very self taught, did you take things from records and peers? 10:30 On listening to Earth, Wind & Fire and Stevie Wonder when young 11:13 How would you work out songs by ear that you heard? 12:13 On the influence of Gene Puerling and the Hi-Los 12:54 Did you own a record player or listen on the radio? 13:26 Was that around the same that you met Mervyn Warren at Oakwood? 13:37 What was a typical day like at Oakwood with Mervyn Warren? 15:10 When was the very first time that you started arranging? 15:45 Was it true that you actually majored in business and computer programming? 17:29 What did you mean by your own rules of Harmony with Mervyn Warren? 19:11 Working with Ray Charles 21:05 What did Ray Charles mean by not wanting to choose a particular song, was it the music or the lyrics? 22:00 What did he think about the music you were creating, harmonically? 22:39 Working with Quincy Jones 24:19 How do you think of lyrics? 25:43 Do you work better in the morning or the evening? 26:39 How much listening have you done in your life? 29:19 Describe the influence of jazz in your music 30:56 Working with Ella Fitzgerald 31:25 Talking about Al Jarreau 33:27 Arranging “Seven Steps to Heaven” on The Standard, with Al Jarreau 35:15 Who are your favorite jazz instrumentalists 36:19 Do you play any other instruments? 36:48 What’s it like working with Stevie Wonder? 38:54 What are you still learning in music? 40:33 How are you going about learning music theory? 41:27 Do you listen to classical music? or film music? 43:06 Talking about the album “Iconic” 44:59 Talking about the track “Back in Love Again” 46:13 Talking about the track “Can’t Stop the FeelinG” 47:27 How is the Mark Kibble today different from the Mark Kibble of 10-20 years ago? 47:55 Have an example of a song or album that shows you going crazy with the harmony in your younger days? 49:42 Is there anyone that you would have liked to work with in the studio in history? 50:43 Upcoming projects 51:58 Wrapping Up
Our guest today is multi-GRAMMY Award-winning singer, arranger, composer and producer, Mark Kibble, of the famed American vocal group Take 6!
With a career spanning over 25 years, 16 albums, 10 GRAMMY awards, 10 Gospel Music Association Dove awards, and 3 gold albums, Take 6 is the most awarded a cappella group in history, performing with some of the biggest names in music such as Ella Fitzgerald, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Don Henley, James Taylor and many more.
Their most recent release is 2018’s “Iconic”.
We talk about his musical development from young, his approach to arrangement, harmony, working with Ray Charles, Quincy Jones, Stevie Wonder, Al Jarreau and so much more!
I am so delighted today to introduce my guest, GRAMMY Award-winning Composer, Producer and musician Paul Avgerinos!
When Paul Avgerinos graduated from the Peabody Conservatory of Music in 1980, as a full scholarship honors student, he had already performed with Isaac Stern, Jean Pierre Rampal, The Beaux Arts Trio, and many other great classical artists. After graduation, Paul served as principal bass of several major symphony orchestras around the world, and gave solo recitals as well.
Expanding into more popular genres, Avgerinos toured as a bassist with Charles Aznavour, Liza Minelli, and the jazz legend Buddy Rich. Seeking to further his original composition and develop his childhood passion for electronic music, Paul built Studio Unicorn, a comprehensive digital/analog recording studio, in 1984.
This led to becoming a major figure in the field of New Age music and Avgerinos has recorded over 24 CDs in the New Age genre. In 2014, his album Bhakti received a GRAMMY nomination for Best New Age album. In 2015, Avgerinos’ album Grace won the GRAMMY award for Best New Age Album.
As a composer, Avgerinos has also worked on over a 100 film, TV and cable projects for HBO, PBS and Lifetime, among others.
He most recent album releases include 2016’s “Amma - Devotional Songs to the Divine Mother”, 2017’s “Home: Where Everyone Is Welcome - a collaboration with Deepak Chopra and Kabir Sehgal” and 2018’s “Mindfulness”.
GRAMMY award-winning Classical guitar virtuoso Jason Vieaux is our guest for the first time today!
Vieaux, “among the elite of today's classical guitarists” (Gramophone), is the guitarist that goes beyond the classical. NPR describes Vieaux as, “perhaps the most precise and soulful classical guitarist of his generation.” Among his extensive discography is the 2015 Grammy Award winning album for Best Classical Instrumental Solo, Play, from which the track “Zapateado” was also chosen as one of NPR’s “50 Favorite Songs of 2014 (So Far).”
In 2012, the Jason Vieaux School of Classical Guitar was launched with ArtistWorks Inc., an unprecedented technological interface that provides one-on-one online study with Vieaux for guitar students around the world.
Vieaux has taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music since 1997, heading the guitar department since 2001. In 2011, he co-founded the guitar department at the Curtis Institute of Music, and in 2015 was invited to inaugurate the guitar program at the Eastern Music Festival.
Pat Metheny has composed a 4-movement suite for Vieaux which will be premiered later this year. Finally, Vieaux is in the midst of recording a new Bach album on Azica records.
My guest today is MacArthur Foundation Genius award winner and one of the top composers around today, Bright Sheng!
A MacArthur fellow and proclaimed by the foundation as “an innovative composer who merges diverse musical customs in works that transcend conventional aesthetic boundaries”, Sheng has created an oeuvre that is not only with Asian influence but also with strong synthesis of Western musical tradition which makes his work distinctive and original. Sheng himself admits: “I consider myself both 100% American and 100% Asian.”
In September of 2016, in a co-production with the Hong Kong Arts Festival, with sold-out runs at both places, the San Francisco Opera premiered Sheng’s commissioned opera Dream of The Red Chamber featuring a libretto by David Henry Hwang and Sheng, based on a beloved Chinese novel by the eighteenth century writer Cao Xueqin. He conducted a three-city tour of the production in China.
In addition to composing, Sheng enjoys an active career as a conductor and concert pianist, and frequently acts as music advisor and artistic director to orchestras and festivals. He is currently the Leonard Bernstein Distinguished University Professor at University of Michigan, and the Y. K. Pao Distinguished Visiting Professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology where, in 2011, he founded and has been serving as the Artistic Director of The Intimacy of Creativity—The Bright Sheng Partnership: Composers Meet Performers in Hong Kong.
He was born in Shanghai, China and moved to New York where he pursued his graduate work and studied composition and conducting privately with his mentor Leonard Bernstein.
Our guest today is the renowned composer, oboist, poet and teacher Samuel Andreyev!
Andreyev studied composition with Allain Gaussin in Paris, then at the Paris Conservatory, where he obtained a masters degree in composition under Frédéric Durieux, and a prix d’analyse under Claude Ledoux. He also studied electroacoustics at IRCAM from 2011-12. His composition Night Division was awarded the grand prix of the Concours Henri Dutilleux in 2012. In the same year, he was awarded a one-year residency at the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid.
Frequently sought after as a guest lecturer, Samuel Andreyev teaches privately and in many conservatories and universities across Europe and North America.
Samuel Andreyev’s music is performed throughout the world by ensembles such as Esprit Orchestra, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, les Percussions de Strasbourg, HANATSU miroir and many others. His most recent book, The Relativistic Empire, was released in October 2015 from Bookthug. His most recent potrait CD, ‘Music with no Edges’, was released by Kairos Records (Vienna) in October 2018. Finally, Samuel runs his popular YouTube Channel also contains interviews, music analysis and music.
Chris Dzengelewski and I ask Samuel about his music, his style of composition, his views on the contemporary music of today and much, more!
In today's episode, we talk to violinist Nicholas Mann, who is the Chair of the Manhattan School of Music String Department and a Juilliard Faculty member. We talk about the legacy of his late father, 4-time GRAMMY winner and Juilliard String Quartet Founder, Robert Mann and his recently released posthumous memoir, “A Passionate Journey”!
Over a 50 year period, Robert Mann led the Juilliard String Quartet playing almost 6,000 performances all over the world, scooping up 4 GRAMMYs and sharing their distinctive sound with such notable figures such as Glenn Gould, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein and even Albert Einstein.
His incredible career is chronicled in “A Passionate Journey: A memoir” also written by Robert Mann and available for purchase. “A Passionate Journey” is a collection of both spoken and written words in the form of essays, letters, lectures, and interviews from various times in his life, offering an engrossing glimpse into a life filled with musical milestones and the mind of a musical giant.
I am joined again by my good friend Christopher Dzengelewski and we chat to Nicholas about his father's incredible musical legacy!
In today’s episode of the Nikhil Hogan Show, I’m excited to talk to GRAMMY-nominated singer-songwriter, musician, guitar virtuoso and producer Raul Midón!
Along with releasing 10 studio albums as a solo artist, Raul Midón – dubbed “an eclectic adventurist” by People magazine – has collaborated with musicians such as Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder and Bill Withers, along with contributing to recordings by Queen Latifah, Snoop Dogg and the soundtrack to Spike Lee’s She Hate Me. In 2017, Midon received a GRAMMY Award Nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album for his album "Bad Ass and Blind".
His latest album is If You Really Want, released on Sept 14, featuring the talents of GRAMMY award-winning Dutch ensemble, Metropole Orkest, under the direction of Multiple GRAMMY winner, Vince Mendoza.
We go in-depth into his amazing musicianship, his songwriting process, great insights into music education, his latest album "If You Really Want", and much more!
Wow, what a guest we have on today’s show: 4-time GRAMMY Award Winning Producer, Musician and Songwriter, Larry Klein!
Klein has worked with artists such as Herbie Hancock, Tracy Chapman, Madeleine Peyroux, Walter Becker, Luciana Souza, Melody Gardot, Pink, Seal, numerous albums with Joni Mitchell, Robbie Robertson, Bob Dylan, Don Henley, Warren Zevon, Celine Dion and many others.
He produced the GRAMMY Award winning 2007 Album Of The Year, and Best Contemporary Jazz Album Of The Year, “River: The Joni Letters” with Herbie Hancock. Previously He won the GRAMMY for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album for Both Sides Now in 2000 and the GRAMMY for best pop album for Turbulent Indigo in 1995.
We talk about how he learned music, his musical influences, his views on songwriting and production, music education and so much more!
We’ve got an amazing guest today, Academy Award-winning Composer, Elliot Goldenthal!
He’s the composer for films such as Alien 3, Interview with the Vampire, Heat, Titus, Public Enemies, Batman Forever, Demolition Man, Final Fantasy the Spirits Within and many more.
Goldenthal’s original two-act opera Grendel, directed by Julie Taymor, premiered at the Los Angeles Opera and was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in music.
Goldenthal has composed music for more than a dozen theatrical productions including Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass, which received five Tony nominations including Best Musical, and Original Musical Score.
Goldenthal recently composed the music for the Netflix-produced film, Our Souls at Night. In October 2017, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia premiered a trumpet concerto written by Goldenthal. He also composed the original music for M BUTTERFLY starring Clive Owen on Broadway in the Fall of 2017.
We talk about his background and training, studying with legendary composers Aaron Copland and John Corigliano, his approach to composition and style, his upcoming projects and much, much more!
On today’s show, we talk to 2-time GRAMMY Award winner, Drummer, Bandleader, Producer and Educator, Peter Erskine!
He has appeared on 700 albums and film scores, and has won two Grammy Awards, plus an Honorary Doctorate from the Berklee College of Music (1992).
50 albums have been released under his own name or as co-leader. He has played with the Stan Kenton and Maynard Ferguson Big Bands, Weather Report, Steps Ahead, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan, Diana Krall, Kenny Wheeler, Mary Chapin Carpenter, The Brecker Brothers, The Yellowjackets, Pat Metheny and Gary Burton, John Scofield, and has appeared as a soloist with the London, Los Angeles, Chicago, Frankfurt Radio, Scottish Chamber, Royal Opera House, BBC Symphony, Oslo and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras. Peter premièred the double percussion concerto Fractured Lines, composed by Mark-Anthony Turnage, at the BBC Proms with Andrew Davis conducting, and has collaborated frequently with Sir Simon Rattle. He also premiered the Turnage opera “Anna Nicole” at the Royal Opera House in London. Turnage has composed a solo concerto for Peter titled “Erskine,” which received its world premiere in Bonn, Germany in 2013, with a US premiere at the Hollywood Bowl with the LA Philharmonic. Peter has been voted ’Best Jazz Drummer of the Year’ ten times by the readers of Modern Drummer magazine and was elected into the magazine’s Hall of Fame in 2017.
Peter has recorded five albums with the band Weather. He won his first Grammy Award with their album ’8.30’. He won his second Grammy Award as the drummer of the WDR big band in Köln along with Michael Brecker, Randy Brecker, Vince Mendoza and others for the “Some Skunk Funk” album
Peter produces jazz recordings for his record label, Fuzzy Music, with 4 Grammy nominations to its credit. Peter is also an active author with several books to his credit; titles include “No Beethoven (Autobiography & Chronicle of Weather Report),” “Time Awareness for All Musicians,” “Essential Drum Fills,” and his latest book (co-authored with Dave Black for Alfred Publishing), “The Drummers’ Lifeline.” He has also authored a series of iOS Play-Along apps suitable for all instruments.
Peter is Professor of Practice and Director of Drumset Studies at the Thornton School of Music, University of Southern California.
Christopher Dzengelewski and I talk about his incredible career with the Stan Kenton Orchestra, Maynard Ferguson, Weather Report, Steely Dan, Joni Mitchell, talks about his drumming method, names his favorite musicians and much, much more!
On today’s show, I’m excited to talk to Tony Award-winning orchestrator and 5-time EMMY award winning-composer, Larry Hochman!
As co-orchestrator with Stephen Oremus on the Book of Mormon, Hochman has won the 2011 Tony Award for Best Orchestrations and also the 2011 Drama Desk Award. He has also been a 7-time Tony Award Nominee for Best Orchestrations for productions such as “A Class Act”, The 2004 revival of Fiddler on the roof, the Scottsboro boys, monty python’s spamalot, something rotten, the 2016 revival of She Loves Me, and the 2017 revival of Hello Dolly.
As a composer, Hochman has written acclaimed works such as Songs of Freedom: A celebration of chanukah, American Dream (co-written with Laurie Hochman), Shomeir Yisraeil, In Memoriam, Reason to be Thankful and Meditation. He has also composed music with Marc Elliot for the original musical Perfect Life, based on the book by Laurie Hochman, directed by Barbara Schuler.
He has also orchestrated for numerous solo artists such as Sir Paul McCartney, Audra McDonald, Hugh Jackman, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Eric Idle, Barry Manilow, Marvin Hamlisch, Mandy Patinkin and Betty Buckley. Additionally, Hochman has written numerous commercial jingles and provide orchestrations for 18 films.
We talk about his development as a musician, his approach to composition and orchestration, his work on the Wonderpets, his award winning work in musical theatre and much, much more!
On today’s show, I’m excited to talk to legendary hip hop and punk producer, composer, arranger and keyboardist, Ronnie King!
Ronnie King became known for his analog Moog keyboard and Hammond organ: A sound that has been sampled and copied countless of times in hip hop and popular music. He has worked on records that have sold millions of units.
We talk to Ronnie about how he got started in music, his work with Hip Hop legend Tupac Shakur, working with popular punk bands such as the Off Spring, artists such Mariah Carey, Tyrese, Rancid, Pepper, Snoop Dogg, his great insights into the music industry and much, much more!
Our guest today is 3-time GRAMMY winner, 6-time Country Music Association Musician of the Year, violinist, composer and educator Mark O’Connor!
As solo recording artist he has sold over 2 million CDs. In 2000, O’Connor won the GRAMMY for “Best Classical Crossover Album” for “Appalachian Journey” with Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer. In 2009, O’Connor won a GRAMMY for “Best Instrumental Soloist performance (without orchestra)” for “Journey to the New World”. The O’Connor Band took home the 2016 GRAMMY for “Best Bluegrass Album” for their debut album “Coming Home”. As a session musician he has appeared on over 500 albums recording with numerous artists such as Dolly Parton, James Taylor, Paul Simon, Randy Travis, The Judds and many more.
He is the founder of the O’Connor Method, a new method for strings which the New Yorker has called “an American grown rival to the Suzuki Method”.
Christopher Dzengelewski and I talk to Mark about how he developed his remarkable musical ability from childhood, his revolutionary Mark O’Connor String Method that’s all the rage amount violin students, his views on music education and much, much more!
Our guest today is one of the top orchestrators and arrangers in Broadway and Hollywood, 2-time Tony Award-winner, Michael Starobin!
On the Stage he’s been involved in some of the most acclaimed productions of all time including Sunday in the Park with George, Rags, Birds of Paradise, Falsettos, My Favorite Year, A New Brain, Assassins (which won the 2004 Tony Award for Best Orchestrations), Next to Normal (which won the 2009 Tony Award for Best Orchestrations) Queen of the Mist, and many more!
We talk to Michael about how he learned his craft from his early days, his acclaimed work as an orchestrator, arranger, and music director for some of the best known productions on Broadway, his style and method, his upcoming projects and much, much more!
GRAMMY-nominated singer, songwriter, producer, Howard McCrary, joins the show for the first time!
In 1985, He co-produced the album “So Good” and was nominated for a Grammy for “Best Gospel Performance, Male”. In 1987, he was given ASCAP’s Duke Ellington Award for most promising writer in gospel music and was commissioned to write the piece “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” for the Brooklyn Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra.
He was featured as a background vocalist on Quincy Jones’ best-selling “Back on the Block”, as well as arranging vocal parts for the song “Keep the Faith” on Michael Jackson’s 1992 multi-platinum set Dangerous. He began working with Chaka Khan in 1993 as keyboardist and musical director. Later, he worked with Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer on the film The Power Of One.
McCrary moved to Hong Kong in 2005 and has become a major figure in the Chinese music scene, performing with the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, conducted by Maestro Hubert Yan in 2008. He returned to Qinghai for a repeat performance in 2009 for “Green Peace for China” where he composed and performed with the acclaimed José Carreras and The China National Symphony Orchestra a song “Hear My Plea”. In 2013, McCrary performed at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre in his debut concert “Peace and All That Jazz” with full orchestra. In 2014 he premiered his first piano concerto Black Butterfly with the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra.
We talk to him about his GRAMMY nominated album So Good, working with Michael Jackson on Keep the Faith, Working on Quincy Jones’ bestselling album Back on the Block, being music director for Chaka Khan, his move to Hong Kong and much, much more!