Jim Baker’s Music and Food for Thought

My first work for piano solo, Nothing and Everything with timing at nearly 22 minutes, contains sound-on-sound t inspired by NY pianist and teacher Lennie Tristano. The recording is on a 6′8″ piano prepared with coins, credit cards, supplemented with a variety of piano tuning supplies. 

The title evokes wisdom of the interconnectivity of everything. In this piece, I looked to capture a back-and-forth of the natural flow of experience that swings from solid form to that of being more than a physical body, and then back. The guided imagery is programmatic.         

Nothing and Everything begins and end with fingers and hands pressing down strings inside the instrument. In addition, there are elbows, forearms and fingers on the keyboard. The structure and forward motion are realized through theme and variation. The tonal and color elements resonate overall with romanticism, along with these more modern works:

• Turkish Mambo, Lennie Tristano, The New Tristano Atlantic (1956). This great jazz musician and teacher, overdubbed his innovative piano playing, a technique later used by Bill Evans in the albums Conversations with Myself and More Conversations with Myself, all of which influenced my approach to tape looping in the piece Nothing and Everything.
•  Stars, Pentagram No. 3″ Release (1926), Dane Rudhyar (1895-1985), the French expatriate astrologer and ‘ultra-modernist’ twentieth century composer. In 1940, the brilliant William Masselos discovered early piano works by Rudhyar, who said ”In performing these PENTAGRAMS, and in general all my music. The pianist should think of the piano as a miniature orchestra capable of producing a great variety of sonorities and impacts.” Massellos Plays Mayer and Rudhyar CRI CD 584.
•  Richard Strauss composed Four Last Songs based on the poetry of Herman Hesse (Spring, September, Going to Sleep) and Joseph Eichendorff (At Sunset). The soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf with George Szell conducting the Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, render the music’s deep humanity with a warm radiant tone - clear voice melding with the instruments is an inspiration for my music. Among other recordings of these four masterpieces, check out Great Recordings of the Century, Strauss: Four Last Songs EMI Classics 7243 5 66980 2 0.
•  Straight No Chaser, Gil Evans band, The Complete Pacific Jazz Sessions, is available as part of Blue Note’s Collector’s Choice series. Hear Gil’s piano as the band drives ahead with complex textures and really exceptional solos. This recorded performance is one of the finest contributions to the art of big band writing and performing. My collection and ear is full of Gil’s music throughout this entire career.

What these jazz piano masters say shows up in what I hear for the piano:

• Viper’s Drag, Fats Waller, piano solo,  If You Got to Ask, You Ain’t Got It!  Thomas ‘Fats’ Waller composed stride piano display pieces such as Handful of Keys, Valentine Stomp and Viper’s Drag, which I worked on copying from the 78 RPM player next to a blond-wood Baldwin Acrosonic.
• Get Happy, Art Tatum, piano solo, The Definitive Art Tatum. One way to approach to Art Tatum is to listen to the whole performance, then repeat with a focus on the right hand, and then repeat with attention to just the left hand, and finish up by putting together whatever you can hear. Repeat these three steps 100 times! Or, if nothing else, dig when he reaches deeper down into the beat starting at :36 and later with his driving left hand swings against the thrilling high-end. If you are up for more, follow Get Happy with the tone clusters that open Aunt Hagar’s Blues. Trace his sweet swing base, precise left hand moves, fast octaves, stop-time then solid-time, complex opposing hands, graceful tone and smashing tone clusters!     
•  Autumn Leaves, Erroll Garner, piano solo, Concert by the Sea, recorded September 19, 1955 at a lovely church in Carmel, CA, where the piano was so way out of tune. However, that just does not matter when the music triumphs through this playing!
•  Round Midnight, Cal Tjader, Concert by the Sea. Tjader’s combo opened the second Monterey CA Jazz Festival in 1959 with an acclaimed concert. Lonnie Hewitt’s performance in a smaller piano trio setting is one of my favorites of this classic by Thelonius Monk, tied with Carmen Sings Monk.
•  All the Things You Are, Andre Previn, piano solo. Dig all the wonderful, crazy things you are on Andre Previn Plays Songs by Jerome Kern, recorded in February and March of 1959. From Andre Previn Plays Harold Arlen, at about the same time on Contemporary Records, you’ll enjoy his humorous That Old Black Magic. I sight read Previn’s music for piano to pick up his approach to the instrument. Fun challenges! 
• Poinciana from the Ahmad Jamal Trio on The Legendary Okeh & Epic Recordings shows the great use of space and silence, tension and release, and dynamics had an acknowledged influence on Miles Davis.
• Two recordings from the awesome jazz pianist Don Pullen, New Beginnings and Live … Again, have been an ongoing inspiration.