Eldar Interview Aggregation
Eldar plays Jazz Alley next Monday and Tuesday, Dec 3 & 4. Been loving his most recent record, Breakthrough. Combines technical chops with musicality. The phrasings on the Irving Berlin tune “What’ll I Do” are gorgeous. And the Radiohead song “Morning Bell” is transformed as they take the basic idea and vibe and then explore. Cool linear notes come with the CD.
Pretty cool that one of his idols, Chick Corea, (see below for reference) gives him a shout out: “A sparkling command of the instrument – a wide and fine combination of musical approaches – new horizons for music. With my compliments and admiration.”
He’s given a bunch of interviews this year. Culled the best of them. Check it out.
First, from Huffington Post:
Who or what was an early influence on your music?
My mom and my dad. My dad introduced me to jazz. Oscar Peterson, Chick Corea, Bill Evans, and Miles Davis were among my first encounters with music. My mom is a classical piano teacher who taught me my very first lessons and remained an important teacher throughout my teens.
How would your childhood music teacher describe you?
Promising, yet stubborn and temperamental.
Then, from Keyboard Magazine:
The album opens with “Point of View Redux,” a track that seems to encapsulate your expansive pianistic persona. You’re able to conjure a myriad of sounds from the instrument, from roaring bass register vamps to cascading right hand lines and beyond.
Yeah. There’s also another element that’s less talked about but equally, if not more important, which is phrasing. The ability to control dynamics, time and touch can make music sound distinct and undeniably right. I strive for a consistency and evenness in my piano sound. I think that’s something that listeners will be able to recognize in my playing. So the presentation of the music is as important as the content. If you transcribed that song and gave the exact same notes to another piano player, it’s not going to sound the same because every musician phrases differently.
Besides classical music, what other kinds of music did you listen to and play while preparing to record the new album?
It was a wide range of things. I was listening to a lot of Billie Holiday and was tremendously taken with how she could phrase ideas. That was a huge point of interest for me, and I ended-up recording the song “Good Morning Heartache,” which she recorded as well. I was especially intrigued by how she sang ballads, and that propelled me to look through the repertoire of ballads when I was looking for material for the album. I wanted to record a jazz standard, but not something that was done too often. That’s how I ended-up choosing the tune “What’ll I Do” by Irving Berlin. It has a beautiful melody and really spoke to me.
You’re someone who’s known for having a great deal of technical facility at the keyboard. What do you having that kind of technique allows you to do?
Technical command is a default attribute after a musician spends time learning their instrument. So is melodic and harmonic understanding, as well as having a command of time and being able to execute ideas fluidly in it. There was never a time that I spent endlessly practicing Hanon exercises for hours on end. Never. My technical ability just comes from the sheer amount of time I have spent at the instrument playing – from the standards I learned as a kid, to playing Bach or learning scales, or learning new compositions. I think it’s important that people understand that this kind of technical facility is simply a default attribute of spending time at the instrument.
Sometimes you’ll hear someone say, “This musician has tremendous technical ability, but this other musician has creativity.” I think that’s totally subjective. I’ve always been a student of music, a student of the piano, and I genuinely enjoy playing the instrument and connecting with people. I care about the music I play, and I want to enjoy it as much as I want other people to enjoy it. For me, everything comes from a place of passion and respect for the music.
And, lastly, from Studio Jams:
Who were some of your early influences?
Oscar Peterson was the first piano player that I fell in love with. I love how he speaks. I love how he accents. And, of course, I love his facility on the piano. Chick Corea is someone I admire as well. Bill Evans was another piano player I enjoyed as a kid. And, of course, Bud Powell. Everybody is inspired by their heroes. But the end goal is when somebody comes up with a certain style and they stick to it and that’s them. That’s what makes me happy.
Do you think you can actually teach improvisation?
I think anyone can learn how to improvise. It’s almost like saying a question “can somebody learn a second language?” It’s totally possible. Jazz has a certain vocabulary that many musicians are familiar with. They come from certain familiar sources and those pieces of vocabulary come together in each musician and then the musician will expand the vocabulary for his own use and he will introduce certain “mannerisms” and just general “isms” that are individual to that particular player. So that’s the reason the language can be shared. The language has rhythmic aspects that will be mutual, plus melodic and harmonic aspects. Once those things are in place, music is not much different than speaking a language. There are things that can be pretty…that can be clever, that can be sad, that can be happy, that can be humorous. Musicians that understand the language can connect to those expressions easily.
How do you feel about Jam Sessions?
There are a lot of people that don’t go to jam sessions…even some well-known artists who might be, for whatever reason, reluctant to do it. I’ve always participated in jam sessions since I was a kid because I like the interaction and it forces you into an seemingly uncomfortable situation. It’s actually very comfortable when the musicians are good. In fact, last night I went to a jam session here in Philly because I wanted to socialize with musicians and I wanted to hear the music.
Music is so social by nature and one of the things that I’ve always found is that whenever a group comes together and when they make good music together, 9 out of 10 times they are going to be friends. It’s very rare to find two musicians, or three musicians if it’s a trio, making good music together and they’re not close to each other. And I mean close can simply be the points of view that are very similar. It’s the most basic feeling of how somebody interprets and perceives your rhythm. It begins there…how your sense of time is aligned for the other person. It’s the first thing that will develop and determine whether musicians are going to continue making music. It’s all very cool…and, in a sense, spiritual.
And here’s a taste of what he’s all about: