Hey Improvisers, When I was a teenager, living in Stamford, Connecticut, the local jazz celebrity was a bassist named Phil Bowler. In addition to playing local gigs, he also played with major jazz stars such as Horace Silver and Wynton Marsalis. I vividly remember riding my bicycle to downtown Stamford one sunny afternoon in the ... Read More The post A musical dream come true: Performing with jazz bassist Phil Bowler appeared first on Keyboard Improv ..read more

Hey Improvisers, After teaching and performing in Alaska at The Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival,  I’m writing this on the flight back to New York City. Wow – the two weeks flew by! Here are a few reflections upon the experience. 1 The most difficult aspect of learning is to just get started. Once we do ... Read More The post Reflections from the 2024 Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival appeared first on Keyboard Improv ..read more

Hey Improvisers, I arrived in Fairbanks. Alaska last evening to begin my annual 2-week stint performing and teaching at The Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival. I’ve been coming up here each July since 1999 and have even taught here three times in January. Even through I don’t start teaching classes until tomorrow, I feel refreshed by just being here. I’ve been looking at my class rosters to see who has returned from past years and which names belong to newcomers. I’ve been in touch with the other performers to discuss collaborations. Even just driving around town has been fun. It’s very stimulatin ..read more

Hey Improvisers, Although the marketing machine that is the recording industry likes to pigeonhole both musicians and listeners into narrow genres, the truth is that we all generally enjoy a wide spectrum of music. Case in point: Taylor Swift The general narrative regarding Swift is that she started out as “Country” and then suddenly switched to “Pop.” And yes, on the surface, this is true. Yet if we dig a little deeper, we soon discover other musical elements in her music as well, such as a classical influence. I first became aware of the classical strain in Taylor’s music the first time I he ..read more

Hey Improvisers, Over the years, I’ve noticed that many adult piano students tend to think about piano lessons a little bit backwards; they think that their goal is to practice throughout the week in preparation for the piano lesson itself. At first glance, this seems like a good way to approach lessons. You practice diligently throughout the week in order to play well for your piano teacher. Makes sense, right? Well… yes and no. This attitude can work well if the thought of having to play well during your upcoming lesson inspires and motivates you to joyously sit at the piano every day and wo ..read more

Hey Improvisers, I recently came across a headline in an online newspaper that promised to help the reader build good habits. Basically, it was about how to keep New Year’s resolutions. While I did expect the article to speak about healthy eating, exercise, and such, I was shocked to see “practicing piano” listed as the most difficult habit to form. Practicing piano as a “difficult” habit? How could that be? After all, nobody ever had to tell me to practice piano. As a child, I would simply sit down and play piano whenever I felt like it, and as a teenager, I dedicated myself to three hours of ..read more

Hey Improvisers, Thanks to everyone who has asked me about my Journey Through The Real Book video series, which I’ve now resumed. Here’s the backstory: When you live in a New York City apartment, it can be tricky to move a piece of furniture across your living room, especially a grand piano. I found this out in a big way over the past year, when I decided to move my piano a mere 8 feet across the room in order to give my videos a new “look.” Well, those 8 feet might as well have been 80 feet, since one challenge after another presented itself. First, I had to finish painting the walls of my li ..read more

Hey Improvisers, Do you ever play with other musicians? If you do, you know the joys of shared music-making. One player inspires another, and everyone benefits. But if you haven’t yet made that leap, it may feel terrifying. We receive many benefits from jamming with our musical peers, and they go way beyond what I’ve hinted at above. And they may be different for each of us. One thing is for sure: if you find the right person or people to make music with, you’ll have fun, improve much more than you otherwise would, and become part of a cultural lineage that goes back thousands of years. It’s d ..read more

Hey Improvisers, Perhaps my favorite line from my book, The Inner World of Piano Improvisation, is: “Everybody wants to sound like Miles Davis, but no one wants to play fewer notes.” I love that line, because it’s so true. Whether we play rock, jazz, pop, blues, or classical improv styles, we’ll sound much better if we simply play fewer notes. However… playing less notes is usually the last thing many pianists want to do. Why? Because they don’t trust it. It feels more trustworthy to string together all the licks they’ve been practicing, or to ramble on and on with run-on musical sentences. Mi ..read more

Hey Improvisers, I’d like to share a very special video I made, when I sat down and interviewed the wonderful pianist Tedd Firth. I’ve known Tedd for a few decades and it’s been a pleasure to see him go from “young new pianist on the NYC scene” to “accompanist to the stars.” Tedd is a fabulous musician as well as a nice person, and I had a lot of fun interviewing him for this video. Since there is usually only one pianist in the room at a time, it’s a real treat to get to hang out with a pianistic colleague and “talk shop” like Tedd and I did here. The conversation was based on the topic of my ..read more