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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
There is very little improvisation on "The Melody at Night, With You."
So many people don't understand "The Melody at Night," because they think it's cocktail piano. So it was gratifying to hear someone say, "Nobody knows how hard it is to do what Keith did with that record." It's a lot harder to play softly. But after I made the record I thought, "We're gonna release this, and nobody's gonna hear it." What I was doing was not typical of what I'm known for, like improvisational virtuosity. There are no trappings. There's no echo. And some people made the mistake of thinking they were hearing the sickness. They think it's pale or something. But the record was actually a celebration of my recovery. I was in a state of grace. I was connected to the heart of these songs.
Some of the tunes were not even in my head when I sat down to play them. "Be My Love" was one of those -- not in my wildest imagination did I think I'd play that one. But obviously it was an emotion I was trying to get out. "The Melody at Night" was an ecstatic moment in my life. I look for that experience every time I play, but how often do you get it onto a recording?
You've been playing standards pretty exclusively for the past 17 years or so, ever since you formed the trio with Jack DeJohnette and Gary Peacock. But before that you had built up a repertoire of dozens of original songs. Why don't you play them anymore?
The biggest reason is, you don't have to be coming on stage saying, "We're playing our music." There's a possessiveness that goes along with that. A valuable player doesn't have to play anything new to have value, because it's not about the material, it's about the playing.
Take a player like Sonny Rollins -- he can play anything. If he's having a good night, and let's assume he is, then he completely transcends the song. And it's obvious that it's not about the material. Anyway, if you already have a piece of music ingrained in your body, why would you not play it?
But isn't the music you've written yourself the most deeply ingrained in your body?
No. Uh uh. One time I was listening to a piece of my own, and I said, "That sounds vaguely familiar ..." It wasn't a part of me. Your own music comes out of your head and emotions, but it's not etched in your system.
Do tunes have any meaning at all beyond how you play them?
Sure. We have to like them. For example, I don't play "Hello Dolly" with the trio.
How did DeJohnette and Peacock react when you told them you just wanted to play standards?
At first, when I said to Gary, "Let's just play standards; I wanna play things we already know," Gary was shocked for a minute. But when we started to do it, he got unshocked. I surmised, when I first proposed forming the trio, that just getting together every now and then and playing -- not rehearsing -- would be of value to them. I was right. And that's our approach. We really never know what we're gonna play when we get onstage. Gary likes to know what key we're gonna be in, but that's about it.
