A&E
Pianos Extraordinaire: Fallcoming Jazz concert to be released as live album this spring
By Haley Lynch ’17
October 20, 2016
Tags a+e
The annual Fallcoming Jazz concert, held Friday, Oct. 7, was a night that will be long remembered—and not only by those who were in attendance. In fact, this year’s concert served doubly as a performance and a recording session for an album that will be released in the spring by Arbors Records featuring the dueling pianists of the night, Dick Hyman and Rossano Sportiello. Each of these jazz legends is well known in his own right, and though Hyman is the older and better known of the two (Sportiello mentioned after the concert that, as a young pianist, he had always idolized Hyman and even referred to him as “a volcano of inspiration”), each demonstrated that he was a perfect match for the other. Together, they played some of the most inspiring jazz piano duets yet heard.
Following a cheerful introduction of the players by the Joe Williams Director of the Fillius Jazz Archive Monk Rowe, Hyman took the mic to introduce their first selection: an old Fats Waller classic called “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” After a more-or-less traditional first take, Hyman turned to the audience to explain, “Since we are doing a recording session here, as well as a concert, we’re going to do another take of that one, at a slightly different tempo… And we may be doing that sort of thing throughout the evening.”
Accordingly, they picked up again right at the beginning of the same tune. This time however, more than a change in tempo, there was a noticeable shift in approach; instead of the typical medium swing over blues form, Sportiello and Hyman chose to modulate the key chromatically every four measures. Performing a piece in this way is so conceptually challenging, it should be nearly impossible to maintain the kind of flow that’s necessary to keep an audience interested. Yet Sportiello (grinning widely) and Hyman (always stone-faced) managed to pull off this audacious rendition with a sense of swing that kept the audience’s feet tapping in spite of the unconventional note choices being made on stage.
Other highlights of the concert included an arrangement of two of Chopin’s Préludes—C Minor and G—into jazz tunes with more of a bebop/samba feel. This twist on the classical composer’s originals added a dramatic flavor that sounded like something Bernstein would’ve written for the stage. Later in the set, the duo also contrived an arrangement of “Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance” as a samba, which seemed mostly to surprise listeners (although its performance also gave the players a chance to show off their sense of humor, as one huge page turn in the middle of the song seemed to necessitate some out-loud counting from Hyman to keep the two in sync during this complicated piece). Sportiello and Hyman each contributed one of their own original compositions to the set as well, each stunning in its own right.
The true crowning moment of the night occurred about halfway through the set, when the musicians invited their audience to request tunes to be improvised on the spot. No need to ask twice; members of the audience were soon shouting the names of their favorite jazz standards. The pianists extraordinaire agreed upon “All the Things You Are,” “Georgia on My Mind” and “Fine and Dandy” from the plethora of suggestions. In each case, Sportiello and Hyman had no need to discuss their plans for the tunes before they started; they simply followed one another’s lead through the form, working out solo space and feel changes as they went.
The evening ended with a Jelly Roll Morton tune titled “The Finger Buster,” one of that great early pianist’s toughest tunes, usually used to intimidate other players during cut sessions. The piece absolutely lived up to its name that Friday night. Sportiello even somehow launched himself onto his feat as he leaned into the keys during a final flourish of downward-sliding scales to end the tune—and the night—dramatically and emphatically. As he fell back to the bench in breathless exhaustion, the audience took to their feet for a standing ovation. In his remarks wrapping up the concert, Rowe joked, “All that applause is going to sound great on that album” when it comes out in the spring. While this may be true, something tells me that no one is going to be buying the album to listen to the enthusiastic applause.