>>PREVIEW
NEW CALGARY INTERNATIONAL JAZZ FESTIVAL: THE RE-BIRTH OF THE COOL
KENNY WERNER
Wednesday, June 21
Beat Niq
Few current jazz musicians can claim to have such a far-reaching reputation as pianist Kenny Werner. Werner is a performer, teacher, writer and philosopher, and his philosophy is the centre of a new Artist Share website that goes live this month.
This philosophy that drives him and has influenced so many started when Kenny took piano lessons from Madame Chaloff in Boston. It was a life- changing experience.
"She was completely different," says Werner."For one thing we spent the whole time that I was working with her just working on a completely different way of just touching the piano. I had never worked with any teacher on just touching the piano and frankly we never got past that."
Since then, Werner’s music has been deeply influenced by Chaloff’s instruction and he has also pursued something deeper in his performances – ecstasy.
"I expect it every time I play because I think that you can program yourself," says Werner. "You know just like you touch certain things and you have an immediate feeling of titillation and you touch certain other things and you have a feeling of responsibility or inhibition or contraction. If a person can convince themselves that touching their instrument is the same sensual pleasure as touching whatever else they were touching then they will have that experience.
"It’s an experience that I expect to happen and I have worked on it. The way you work on it is you play the instrument in the simplest way and you just listen to it until the sound of it fills you up and then you notice you’re feeling a kind of quiet ecstasy…."
Werner is the first to admit that this kind of experience isn’t possible with every combination of musicians. It did work, however, for 14 years with Werner’s trio in the 1980s, featuring himself, Ratzo Harris and Tom Rainey. Critics of the time credited them as being one of the most innovative trios to play together. When they separated in 1995, it seemed unlikely such a group could be re-created.
"When I do a trio, it’s got to be a special thing, says Werner. "I don’t just play trio like a piano player with a rhythm section. It’s got to be people I can really interact with and I also write pieces that sometimes for most musicians, are frankly quite hard to play."
Since 1999 though, Werner has connected with the prodigious talent of young East Coast musicians Ari Hoenig and Johannes Wiedenmueller.
"I was so excited to have a trio that I knew could be that special again, that I started calling places where I was supposed to go, like playing house rhythm sections or universities where you played with the faculties and stuff, I told my manager, ‘Call them all up and tell them I’m not coming unless I bring my trio,’ The whole thing changed."
Werner seems to have found yet another magical combination of talent for his Calgary appearance. For the Calgary gigs he appears with vocalist Claudia Villela.
"We’re a co-led group, which is very unusual," says Werner. Usually I don’t like me just going out as a hired hand or anything, but when I improvised with her I found her improvising so intuitive that she could make anything out of anything. She qualifies for this realm of inspired and evidently very highly linguistic type of musician." |
Copyright ©2006 FFWD. All rights reserved.