The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Florence Price: Sonata for Piano in E minor by Clipper Erickson

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

Florence Price: Sonata for Piano in E minor by Clipper Erickson Clippererickson.com Florence Price: Sonata for Piano in E minor! Clipper Erickson brings commanding insight to Florence Price’s 1932 Wanamaker Prize-winning masterpiece. Symphonic in scope yet tightly woven, the sonata draws its poewr from the fusion of grand Romantic form with the melodic and rhythmic language of African American spirituals and dance. Erickson illuminates every nuance of Price’s writing, revealing its vitality, lyricism, and structural ingenuity. Clipper Erickson, Pianist, Soul, Passion, Color, and Spirituality. Throughout his long career, Clipper has sought to uplift the music of under-represented voices in classical music, both old and new, alongside the great works of the past. His artistry continues to receive international critical accaim through recordings and performances in major concert halls. As a musical explorer and educator, he shares his insight and love through commentary along with performance.

You wanted the best... You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times.

Because you're about to go on a monster education role. rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks, Voss here from thecris Foss Show.com. What a lovely voice. What, yeah, an opera singer we got to do that. That was pretty good, huh? Who let the opera singer in here?

She's singing over me. I used to sing that line for the first 14 years. Hey, guys, welcome the big show, as always for my friends and family of the Chris Voss show, the Legions of the Chris Foss. Should we come up with a name for audience? I don't know. Anyway, refer to the show to your family, friends, and relatives. Go to goodreads.com, for Jess, Chris Christfoss,

LinkedIn.com, for Jess, Jess, Christfoss, 1, on the TikTok, and all those crazy places in the net. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it's not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today, amazing young man joining us on the show, and he's a pianist.

We've been talking about it on the pre-shows to wish. Yeah, okay. Pianist is a lot better, and you can kind of think about why. One's an only fan's entrance drug and one's a guy who plays the piano. Yeah, that's right. So that's correct because the instrument, the full name of the instrument is Piano Forte. It's an Italian word. And the word means soft, loud.

It's a keyboard instrument that you can play softly and loudly on. But they don't say Piano. So why would you say pianist? I don't know. There needs to be a congressional committee, investigation, maybe an international court at the Hague that needs to investigate this travesty of justice.

We'll wait for the lawsuits to play out. So we have Clipper Eriksson on the show with us today. He's described as one of the finest pianist, or pianist, which is the way you're going to. Pianist of his generation, a consummate musician. He's made his debut at age 19 in L.A. as a soloist with the

Young Musicians Foundation Orchestra and later studied at the Juilliard School, Yale University, and India University. While in India, he trained with the great British pianist or pianist John Ogden, whose dedication to the performance of new music and lesser known works of the past inspired Clipper to follow in his footsteps. He's proceeded to win top prizes in international competitions and now performs as a soloist with orchestras and in a recent. as a recitalist in venues, including the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Carnegie Hall, and Symphony Space in New York.

Welcome the show. How are you, Clipper? Well, I'm doing just fine, and thanks so much for having me on the show. Just a little correction. It wasn't India. It's Indiana. The state of Indiana. I didn't go to India. I've never been to India. He went to the University of India. Did I say that really? Yeah, yeah. I've got a camera. There's a camera in a cord, and if you watch my head, I'm dodging around it to read. It's Indiana, and it's not Indiana, Pennsylvania either. It's Indiana, Indiana, Indiana, Indiana University. Indiana University.

But, you know, I mean, there's still time. You still can go to India University. I mean, you know, there's always time to go to school. Yeah, I could get a second doctorate or something at the University of India. I don't know where that is, but it's in India. It's in India. It's kind of like Indiana, Indiana, Indiana. So Clipper, give us your dot com.

Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? Well, the main place to find out about me is my website, Clippererickson.com. So it's my name, C-L-I-P-P-E-R, kind of a crazy name. And after that, Erickson, E-R-I-C-S-O-N.com. So there you can find all of the other places I'm at on Instagram. You can find me on Instagram also and Facebook, and also on Spotify and all the streaming sites.

My stuff's up there, Pandora, Apple Music, all over there. Not on TikTok yet, but maybe that's coming, but they're all kind of hard to get used to. So I just started my Instagram actually last June. Yeah, so that's kind of a new venture for me, getting to, if you went with that. Yeah, so go to my website, look me up on Instagram, and my bio on Instagram is this fancy thing called Link Tree.

Link Tree has links to everywhere else I'm at. So I might put up an interview. I'll probably put up this podcast when we're done. Well, you get a copy. Yeah, you can get a copy. Some people just frame it, put it on the wall, you know. Yeah, I don't know. You're going to give me a poster?

Maybe we should come up with a Chris Fosho poster. Yeah, come up with a poster. I'll put it up next to my, you know, my concert poster. and things from... We can invoke the concert poster thing. We'll get the guy from Metallica who does the crazy Metallica posters for the concerts to come and do it. Maybe that would be interesting.

So that's it. What are we here to promote? We're here to promote your new album, Florence Price, Sonata for piano in E minor. Give us an overview. What's inside your new record? What's inside my new record is this marvelous piece by Florence Price. Now, if you don't know who she was, She was also an African-American composer in the early 20th century,

and her music was lost for a long, long time until people started playing her in the last five or ten years. She really got on the map when the Philadelphia Orchestra won a Grammy with their recording of two of her symphony. So that was a big deal. And I think there's been other Grammys out there with Florence Price's music on there. So it's something to be really well,

known in the classical world. And it's a really beautiful piece. It's a honey. It's very lush, melodic. It's got a lot of drama. Music is influenced heavily by Negro spirituals, that kind of language. And there's a lot of dance-like music in it as well. And a lot of showy piano stuff.

And I'm really excited about the release of it. It's coming out on Friday, February 6th. There's one movement out there now as a pre-release on Spotify and the whole thing's coming out on Friday. I did the recording in Switzerland on this marvelous Steinway piano. I picked it myself. Yeah, it was a nine-foot Steinway from 1915.

That's when they really built them then. Yeah, it's in a beautiful shape. And it had all ivory keys, a perfect set of ivory keys. Original ivories. But that also means that it cannot leave the country. It has to stay in Switzerland because you cannot pass customs. Oh, yeah. So you cannot move it anywhere because of the I think.

We came to tour with it if you wanted a tour with it. Couldn't do it. Can't get it past. There should be a carve-out exception. You'd think, but hey, you know, I don't make the rules. I just make the music. So it was a gorgeous piano and my recording engineer was just first class. She's Polish.

Malcarsata Albinska Frank. She was just a fantastic. She's really a co-creator when I was doing the recording. Gave me all sorts of wonderful suggestions, what was coming off and what wasn't. Try this this way. And, you know, she just was a delight to work with her. So I'm really excited about the release of this album. Really proud of it.

And I'm also celebrating the 10th anniversary of an earlier album coming out in November 2015 and that album was called My Cup Runneth Over, the complete piano works of our Nathaniel Dett. Nathaniel Dett was a composer in the early part of the 20th century, and I was the first one to do all of his piano music. And that album was awarded a Critics Choice by Gramophone, UK, and that's the top CD reviewing magazine in the world. Wow. So it's got an airplay.

It gets played all over the place, all over the country. So if you listen to classical radio, you may well run into it. It gets played. Oh, I get notice that's been played on public radio in places like Montana, Wilmington, North Carolina, Tennessee, all over, New England, all over the place. And also in BBC, on BBC. So it's a really cool recording. It's beautiful stuff. It's got about 750,000 plays on Spotify.

So check it out. It's really beautiful stuff. I definitely will. I love piano music. There's something that just soothes my soul. My grandmother's a pianist, pianist, and we played, she would play for me. It takes a while we get used to it, doesn't it? Doesn't it?

Yeah, yeah. I have, I'm just trying to move from having penis in. Fuck, I blew the joke. I moved away from having a small pianist envy to now I'm a pianist envy. All right, all right. That joke is flopped. All right. We're a bit,

but down, but down. Should have been a warning. Should have been a warning when I flubbed it the first time. It was going to bomb. That's okay. But no, I love piano music.

You know, there's something soothing about it. There's something calming to the soul. Sometimes when I'm really wrapped up and creating his madness and chaos, and whatever's going on, I'll put on some piano music. And it's almost like, I don't know, my brain just kind of melts and goes, ooh, it just becomes, you know, peaceful. And I find that I can think a little bit clearly to,

in fact, they have it up. I don't know if we can see this on the camera or how will this will show up, but they have it on my friend of the show, Cobas. So it's not Spotify, it's co-buzz, it's a service that gives you. you actually the highest quality. If you ever want high quality recordings, Kobuz has the best. And not crapple.

Don't do crapple people, Jesus, or Spotify for that matter. Although you might want them to do Spotify because you're doing really well over there. So that's probably a good idea. Well, the thing about Spotify is the artists make nothing. So I encourage you to go and listen to the most popular track is a very on,

the debt album is this very relaxing piece called Mammy. It's like rocking a baby to sleep. And if you listen to it a thousand times, I'll get enough money to get a cup of coffee. Awesome,

sauce. Awesome. Now, the other thing I was going to mention to you is on how come we can't get to this? On Cobas, yeah, the top most popular songs and from that album that you're referencing the 10-year anniversary album, My Cup Runnith Over.

And so that tells you who the most popular plays are. So they really love this stuff there. Now with her music, and I noticed there might be a couple other guys. I mean, with this other album, My Cup Runnith Over, it seems you sometimes find obscure people who play piano who maybe no one's heard of, maybe their recordings were lost. Is that kind of, you your modality? I'm a bit of an explorer. See, the thing about the classical music world is it tends to be very conservative. And there are this group of composers that have been sort of elected as the great composers.

So that's Beethoven, Mozart Bach and Chopin and all those people. And they're wonderful. But who decides that they're wonderful and everybody else is just sort of, no good or, you know, we want to just forgotten or whatever. So I'd like to rebel against that. I'd like to find music that people don't listen to and people don't play and bring that to a wider audience because there are really some gems out there that are overlooked.

And that's really been my modality for quite some time, starting with debt and now with Florence Price. Of course, she's a bit on the map now, but she was forgotten for a long, long time, unjustly. And I've got some other composers that I'm interested in in the Hopper, which who I want to record in the coming time. I'm getting very interested in Joseph Lamb. I don't know if any of your listeners know who Joseph Lamb was. Joseph Lamb was a ragtime composer, but he was an Irish Catholic.

So he kind of doesn't fit the mold. You usually think of, well, ragtime composers need to be, black, right? But not necessarily. So here's this guy who was friends with Scott Joplin, who was a great ragtime composer as well. And he just doesn't get the kind of notoriety and the kind of play that Joplin and others get. So he's the kind of person that I'm interested in to get, get this music out there. So I'm adding something to the musical conversation. And I get this from a professor I had at Indiana University. Indiana, not India, but Indiana University.

His name was John Ogden. John Ogden was probably the greatest British pianist of the 20th century. And he was crazy, really crazy guy, but just an absolute genius. But besides being crazy, he was a really genuinely very nice, gentle person. And he also was recording all sorts of people that others didn't play, like Carl Nielsen, and Alkan and Shimonovsky and people that you probably don't know. And he was recording all this stuff. And so he was a big influence on me. So ever since then, I've been wanting to follow in his footsteps.

So I think that's part of why I get into all these interesting rabbit holes and find all these treasures and things. and bring them out. It's really exciting. This kind of discovery. Now, for the young crowd, the Gen Ziers, what DJ plays on this album? What DJ? No DJs. It's just me.

Okay. Now, is there a USB plug that plugs the USB of the performance into the piano? Is that how it works? No, you're thinking like, well, actually, those things are around, like disclaimers, or Yamaha disclaimers. You can, they're like modern,

they're like modern player pianos. So you can play whatever on this thing on the piano. And it'll record it and play it back to you. I'm always making fun of the DJ folks, because I'm a classic rock sort of guy. And I remember there was one that actually did lose their USB and they couldn't do their performance at night because it's all pre-program.

That's, okay. Well, next time I make a flub and a performance, I'm just going to say, well, I lost my USB. Sorry. All right. I've got a hard-hitting question for you here as a pianist, pianist, something like that. A hard-eating question, was the fabulous Baker Boys a great piano movie or not?

The fabulous Baker Boys. I'm not sure I've seen that one. What? I've seen all the old ones that- You play piano. All the old ones that Rubenstein was in. Arta-Rubinstein was in a couple of old movies, like from the fiftries. Yeah, Arthur Rubenstein.

from the 50s? Well, I like the old guys. I've given you some homework here. Yeah, okay, I'll do that homework. It's a great movie. And it's a lot of jazz-ish piano playing. It's great storyline. Michelle Pfeiffer kills it, and the Baker Boys, the Bridges, killing it too.

So, you know, you mentioned that, you know, everyone knows the Bach. They know all the big names and stuff. But honestly, you know, and this is speaking for me as a consultant. I've heard those songs so many times that I just strive for something fresh and new. Like a lot of times, and I do this with Kobuz, they have a great radio curated lists of different things. So if you want, like, you know, calm, peaceful piano, you can, you can listen to all these songs and they've curated. They made this great curation list. Just about anything you want. In fact, I was listening to Megadeth right before I pulled your album up. So I'm going to go from

your album. Yeah, okay. Well, that's probably not going to go on to calm. It's a common vehicle with. Yeah. Well, I mean, was this Dave Mustang ever in your band? He seems to be angry at anybody who he was in bands with him. Yeah. Dave is from Metallica, that is. I'm a solo man.

I don't have anybody else in my band. All right. Maybe we can get Metallica to cover you guys or Megadeth or something. I don't know. Anyway. So, and so I'm constantly searching for really beautiful music, peaceful music. You know, when I'm when I'm at that, point where I want to choke somebody out to death, you know, neighbor, family member,

me. That was kind of me a couple hours ago to tell you. So I went outside and started breaking up some ice in my driveway. Ah, I was thinking you were going to say, well, I play piano to calm myself down too, but maybe ice is a better. Well, yeah, if I do that, then, okay, then I have to call the piano tuner. Oh, yeah. That's the one thing about piano.

I got to tune them every now and then. Yeah, I got tune them. And, you know, if I go too hard on it, then I start breaking stuff and, you know, then it gets expensive. What style of piano music would you say you're at? Are you more in the peaceful genre or you're in the, you know, let's bring the crap out of it to, you know, really theatrical highs and lows? I'm kind of, you know, I'm kind of into everything. but usually I gravitate to things that are more coloristic, more like a little bit more dreamlike,

a little bit more like they're painting pictures of something or telling a story rather than just something that's like banging the hell out of everything. And that seems to be what a lot of pianists nowadays do. Everybody plays Prokofiev a lot. And it's like Prokofioph, like you get to bang the hell out of things. And that's really how it should go. And, you know, I really liked that when I was young,

but now that I'm getting a little older, I want to have peace, and I want to be taken to a new place, a different place, because, you know, the world isn't that nice a place nowadays. That's why we enjoy music is kind of escape a little bit. Yeah, escape a little bit and fine meaning and comfort and healing. I think that's the most important thing. I have a music series that I do here where I live near Trenton, New Jersey, actually on the Pennsylvania side.

And I call that series Music for the Soul. I started it during the pandemic when everything was all crazy and people were stressed out. So people really needed a little bit of healing. And I started it online and now it's in person. So I have one of those concerts coming up this weekend, actually. So I offer music that is healing and beautiful, not something that's going to like scratch you and make you want to run for the exits. It's something that really is, it's going to uplift you and make you feeling better when you leave. Go ahead.

Yeah, so often on these concerts, I put together these unusual composers like Price and Debt, or Joaquin Torina who was Spanish, or Carlos Chavez who was Mexican, and I put them together with your standard Beethoven and Chopin pieces and kind of mix them up a little bit. So I think that's the way to go. Because after all, there's nothing like Chopin or Beethoven to get people in the door because they all want to hear something that they know. But then let's give them something that they don't know and open their ears a bit.

So that's what I'm all about. You know, the format you probably do, one thing I've really been enjoying, because with you in an event format, you probably, you know, you give people an intro or maybe some background on the song or the music. music or what you're doing. There's that interaction, right, that you have with your audience. I'm assuming you talk to the audience. I absolutely do.

That's a big thing that I do. I've done that for years. I always talk to the audience, even if it's about a piece that everybody knows, because there's always some aspect about it that is unusual, maybe that people don't know. And, you know, like, if I come out with Nathaniel Debt, then, okay, people don't know who he was. So let's talk about him and why he was important, what was special. about his life and his creation. So I give that to the audience.

And that really gets them involved in the music. They know what to listen for. They have the context of what it was like to live in the composer's lifetime. I'm kind of a history geek besides being a musician. So I like to find out about when these composers lived and what was their life like and what was the culture like and all this background, because it helps me interpret it

and understand it. And it also helps me talk to the audience about it so they can really get the feel of the music as well. You know, and the thing I was going to say on that is recently bands, and I think I saw I saw Metallical lead on this, I don't know if they were the first lead. I know Megadeth just did one. And I think, I don't know if a couple other bands are doing it yet. One of the challenges I used to have as a kid, and, you know, we're probably roughly about the same age, was you'd listen to an album. And, you know, back then, the only thing you'd have was the album. Like, you couldn't

research it on the internet. You couldn't, you know, you just had that artwork. And it made for really beautiful albums most times, you know, you didn't in favor, the gatefold ones or the trifold out ones, you know, and I would spend, you'd listen to the album and you, you know, look for clues or Easter eggs, or you just study the album covers. And sometimes, you know, you'd pass an album, you'd be like, that song, I don't like that song, I don't like that. Sometimes you don't like the whole album. And then sometimes you go back and you'll listen to it and go, wait, no, I really like this part or that song or this song.

But one thing I recently found, I went to the Metallica showing for their new album, and they put out a few shitty albums in a row. And so they've really been in the stink when it comes to albums. Yeah. And they put out their new album, and they did a movie theater opening. And so what they did is they created a movie where they not only played the album with visuals for the album, they hired some artists to do it, but they also introed every song. And what really, I was surprised at how important this was. And you know the work of this because you do it yourself.

But they talked about, okay, we're going to play this next song. Here's why we wrote this song or maybe some aspects of the song that we like. they basically would give you the story. Exactly. Then they would play the song. I love the whole damn song and album. And I think this new movie thing, I went to see Roger Gilmore,

who, a Pink Floyd guitarist, he did his movie. And I hated all of his soul albums, his recent ones, but he played a lot of those songs live from that. And I fell in love with him. Because just him telling the stories, him, you know, And to me, that's just that event style sort of thing is what more musicians should do. That changed your experience of the music, didn't it? It did. It did completely.

Like, I love those albums now. Like, I hated them before. Like, I wouldn't even listen to them before. And after I saw him play some of the songs live, I saw his daughter that he brought in. And you see the personal emotions of it, or maybe he would intro the song. And he'd be like, you know, we wrote this song about XYZ. or, you know, there's one song he introduced that I've always really liked, but I wasn't sure what the story was behind it. And, you know, he told the story was about an ex-wife or a wife and the heartbreak that went on with something along those lines.

And so that just, you know, we celebrate stories on the Chris Vos show because the owners manage a life. And it's how we kind of learn from each other. But, yeah, I love that format of the events, like when you go to the orchestra or to whatever. one thing I really enjoyed was going to the orchestra and seeing Casablanca, and I think they're doing Star Wars now. There's all sort of these great things that orchestras are doing now to get people out and listen to music again. Yeah, Star Wars is a big one.

So all the John Williams stuff is that John Williams is super popular. So there's nothing like the conductor coming out with a lightsaber, you know, to conduct the orchestra with, you know, things like that. It's really fun. But, you know, music tells us. the story. And if you don't know what the story is, you really are missing a lot. So songs get written, well, you know, you had a breakup or you just have the birth of the child or something really big has happened in your life and you're right, the music. That's what it's for. So when the

audience knows about that, then it changes the whole experience. I have a beautiful piece that I've I've been playing by a composer, a friend of mine who lives in Minneapolis. And he wrote this piece for his daughter called Rocking Ever Rocking. And it's about rocking his daughter to sleep. But his daughter has, his daughter has developmental disabilities. So it was, it's a very emotionally complex piece. And you're not going to understand why, unless you know what the background is, all these mixed emotions are, it's the tenderness and the joy, but yet the sorrow is all in that,

in that work, in that piece. And you're not going to quite understand that without knowing what his story is. So you have to tell that story. I think it used to be musicians were reluctant to clarify what some songs meant. You know, like for a long time, they wouldn't tell you what, you know, where songs like Stairward of Heaven, you know, in the background on that. and different other things, mainly because probably Leds up

and stole most of their music from other people. But... Well, so did he, really? Oh, yeah. They all steal from people. Everybody's creative swiping, I think, Tom Peters. Well, yeah, but the thing is, we have this sort of idea that, well,

music has to be original, and you can't borrow from anybody else because copyrights and so on. But back in Mozart and Box Day, it's like, well, you're writing a piece of music, And, well, hey, this piece by Vivaldi, hey, that's a cool piece. Let's use this little liquor, this little section from a Vivaldi piece, and let's just stick it in there or do a version.

It's like there's nothing really wrong with that back then. We think that it's wrong. But in past times, it wasn't necessarily wrong to borrow people's things. Yeah, and technically you always do. I mean, any great artists and musician usually, you know, they start by playing other people's songs, and they kind of add on to it. you know, and put their own flair or put their own thing on it. But, yeah, I think it's cooler.

I love seeing musicians now embracing social media and talking about the stories behind their songs and giving people the background. And it just adds so much more depth, I think, too, like you say, if you know the story of the song, you know, the piano is something I've always loved. It sinks to my parents' way through some piano lessons. I hated the instrument back then and failed miserably at it,

but somehow I was getting the quality, the resonance, and the value of it that I would appreciate later in life. And my grandmother, of course, was a great pianist, and she would have me sit at the thing and, you know, play chopsticks with her and stuff. So there's an endearment there. Yeah, and it's because it was time with your mother, see? Yeah, it's not just the music. It's the human connection. And I grew up with a piano in the home. I think that's, in fact, I think we had original ivy keys.

I'd have to check on that, but I'm pretty sure they were ivy because we cracked a few of them as kids being idiots. But the acoustic nature of instruments, especially the piano, is just something else. Like, I mean, I can handle synthesizers and electric pianos or whatever. You know, they're fine in their different venues. But there's something about the acoustics of like an acoustic guitar and acoustic piano, just the resonance that meat that resides in the back of that big piano through those huge strings passing through it. There's just something about the acoustics of it that you just can't really get with electronic music.

Yeah, you can't really. There's nothing like an acoustic instrument. You're absolutely right. Because it becomes part of you when you play it. There's not like electronics in between you and what you imagine in your ear and your expression and your feeling and your emotion and what comes out of the instrument. When you play a guitar, then you hold that, you hold that guitar, and it becomes part of you. It becomes part of it.

It's like your voice. And the piano, well, of course, the piano is just a big thing, so you can't really hold it. But still, you have the touch of the keys and the responsiveness of the keys. And when you play a great piano, like a Steinway or Yamaha or a Bosendorfer, then that's really the thing is how responsive the keys are to your touch. So then anything you imagine, it just comes out of the instrument without you consciously trying to make it happen. It just happens out of it.

Because then you're in the zone. You know, when you have to think about, oh, I want this, I want that. Then you're out of the zone. You have to imagine it first. It's an image in your head, and then you play, and through your body, through your fingers, and then into the instrument, then it comes out of the instrument. And that's what pianists spend all their time trying to do. It's not just about, oh, you move your fingers fast, and you can play all these notes. Well, I can make a robot to do that.

So who cares? Yeah. What you care about is how the expression of your heart. and your feeling comes in through your body through your fingers and into the instrument and comes out the other side that's what that's what we strive for how did you get involved in playing the piano and then eventually becoming professional was there something you attracted to it were you like me your parents made you go to you know i was kind of like you i had piano lessons when i was a kid like six or seven and you know and i was okay but

you know, I didn't practice that much. And, you know, I was an okay student. And I so badly wanted to play the theme from Batman. That was a big thing. I wanted to play the theme from Batman. Yeah, okay. So then that's the only thing I want to play. But later on, and at that point, I wanted to be a scientist. So I was really into chemistry.

So I was like doing chemistry experiments. And I think at that point, my parents decided, well, you better, like, move out to the garage. Because you're going to blow that. You're going to burn the house down. You know, so I got moved out to the garage. But somehow, when I was about 12 or 13, I got the buck because I was listening to a lot of recordings of the great pianists of the past. God, I want to do that. It's like, how did they do that?

How did they make the piano sound like that? And it was just like I was just like totally fired up. So then I would get up at 5, 36 o'clock in the morning and get a couple hours of practice in before school. And I was a late bloomer. I wasn't a prodigy. Like a lot of these pianists out there, it's like they're like playing a ring. They could have played rings around me when I was like 10 or 12 or whatever. I got students that could play rings around me when I was 12.

So I practiced like crazy. And then I got admitted to Juilliard when I was 17. Oh, wow. So I worked really hard. So practice does. does pay off when you're passionate about it. And so then I just got this idea that I wanted to be a professional musician. That's what I wanted to do when my father thought I was nuts.

And now I think I'm nuts. Oh, well, what am I doing this for? I don't know, sometimes I think, I don't know, it would be so easy, much easier to be a scientist. I don't know, maybe not. But it doesn't have the joy of music making. It's just something like when I really think about it, I know that I couldn't do anything else. Well, it's great that you found work at it and you make some money in it. Let's cover that again.

You had 11 albums from what I recall, rightly? Yeah, something like that. I think I lost count, but there's a lot of them. Have you probably done some collaboration on other ones maybe on top of the ones I see in your website? I've done, I have actually planned to do recordings of vocal music, a piano and vocal music. For instance, all of debt's vocal music. You know, so that's an idea of doing. And I have a CD coming out actually in March.

New music. I have a dear friend who lives in Switzerland. His name is Larry Altman. He's a jazz pianist. So he composes in a modern jazz style. And he wanted me to do a recording of vocal music with his favorite singer, whose Austrian. Her name is Isabel Pfeffricorn.

So this album is coming out in March. called Briefly. And it's all based on poems, some of which are poems that Lorry himself has written. Probably the most quintessential of this set is there are three songs about Ukraine on the set, and they're very intense and dark, necessarily so. But some of the rest of the album is very light. He has a beautiful arrangement of Over the Rainbow. He has a blue and green by Miles Davis, a version of that that's set to poetry.

So there's a lot of really cool stuff coming on that album. It's called Briefly. So it's very different from Florence Price. Florence Price is very much in the romantic idiom. It's more like the great romantic composers like Brahms and Chopin and so on. And this is more of a modern jazz thing. So I do do all sorts of different kinds of music. And the project I have coming up that I'd like to complete by the end of the year is called sonatas of the nations.

So I'm kind of into ethnic music a little bit. And it's very interesting to me how different composers from different parts of the world incorporate ethnic styles in their music. And especially in sonatas, because a sonata is kind of a strict form. It's rather cerebral and it's kind of ed music. So how does that link up with this ethnic, cultural expression? And there's a bit of a conflict there. But conflict is good because how you resolve that conflict is how you get a great artistic product. There has to be some sort of, if it's all just, otherwise you get AI music that has no conflict.

It sounds like AI music. AI music. Well, that's another topic. So this CD will be Florence Price and then combined with sonatus by Wilhelm Stunhammer, who is Swedish, and Joaquin Turina, who is Spanish, and Carlos Chavez, who was Mexican. So they all used their styles of music. Carlos Chavez was influenced by Native American, the Mastito style. So it's very percussive, very different from price. It's very percussive, intensely rhythmic, dissonant.

So it's really different. So I like all these different styles. So that's my project coming up. So I'm hoping to get that out the door, maybe in early 27, something like that. So if we want to be on the topic of AI music, this is evidently a new thing. I heard a piece for violin and piano that was written and performed by AI. So what about this? So you listen to this piece, and it's superficially very beautiful, but it goes nowhere.

It has no form. It has no structure. It just wanders. It has no element of surprise, or these are things that human beings have to write, because you can't, it has to be predictable enough to not sound chaotic. but if it's too predictable, then there's no spice to it. There's no emotion to it. So this balance of chaos and order is something that humans in their artistic products can produce.

But AI, I don't think can. At least not now. Yeah. Well, do you see, I guess we dove into AI on the show a lot? What do you see the future for musicians? A lot of musicians are angry and I think suing Open AI and stuff for using their music to, I forget what it's called, to program the AI basically, train the AI. That's the word.

Well, I did get the rights organization that I have, Sound Exchange, so that pays me royalties whenever my music gets used. They now have a list where you can sign and say, do not use my music for AI training. So I obviously signed to this. I do not want my music used for AI training. So at least people are getting wise to this. And musicians have a right to stand up for themselves.

Oh, yeah. They don't stand up for themselves. Who's going to do it? I mean, one of the bad things is these streaming sites. I mean, I'm very happy that people listen to my music, but it's not a way to make money. Yeah. Unless you're Taylor Swift.

So, you know, or maybe, maybe. me Megadeth, I don't know, but that's not why I do it. I'm not putting it out there because I expect to make lots of money. Yeah. Well, maybe you could date Travis Kelsey and maybe have some chiefs players at your concerts and maybe that would sell more tickets, I don't know. Or maybe wear one of those cute hot skirts that Taylor Swift wears, you know. She looks pretty awesome.

Can you set that up for me? I mean, the dress? Well, I could probably find a dress. You do the rest. I think the quarterback's got a girlfriend. So does Travis Kelsey. So maybe someone else on the chiefs. You could have to show up.

No, it is kind of interesting. Some of the best music seems to be the most disregarded. And some of the most acoustic and what would you call it, manual music that's performed by a human being as opposed to a USB and I don't know, some DJ buttons or whatever. It's human music. It's human music. I think this we're going to start turning you. By humans. Yeah.

Disclamer. This album was written and performed by real humans. That's right. We'll have to put that on my next album. This is all human done, you know. But it's, yeah, it's even before AI was a thing, you could actually, these recording softwares, I did. once I was accompanying a singer doing an audition tape.

And she was a little off key. So the engineer said, okay, this note's a little flat. Okay, now it's good. It's crazy what they can do. Just like, okay, really? Okay. But the problem is, okay, it's an audition tape. So you sound fantastic on the audition tape,

but then when you come in for the live audition and you're flat, well, then what? Yeah. Yeah. So I think we're all rebelling against this AI stuff. Like the newest thing that I've seen is AI headshots. Oh, yeah. So you can get a nice looking headshot with all your little pimples or wrinkles or something gone away.

But you just look like a pasty, like nothing. It's like you look like a donut. I don't know. They look like a person. They look like Barbie dolls. Yeah, exactly. mood and they don't have elbow wrinkles or

lines of their eyes. You're just like, you look like a plastic Barbie doll. Yeah, we see a lot of the community. Yeah, it's pretty fun. So as we go out, give people final pitch out to pick up your album and stay in touch with you for future stuff. Imagine your website maybe has a newsletter or something.

It absolutely does. So if you sign up for my newsletter, which you'll get as soon as you go on the homepage, I will give you free access to the Florence Price album. Oh, wow. So if you don't stream on Spotify or you don't want to pay to stream on Spotify, then you can listen to that for free if you sign up for my newsletter. And I don't, I don't spam people with newsletters. I send out six or seven a year, so you're not going to get all kinds of junk for me because that's, you know, that's no good.

So sign up and find out what I'm doing, what my next project is, or what the next next concert is or what I'm doing. Well, I'm excited. I'm going to play the album here when it get off and I already followed you on Kobuz. Free plug out here to Kobuz. Cobugs is, if you're a real audio file, one of the best services to tick and use when it comes to the quality of the music and the delivery of it. I'm a big audio file nerd. And, yeah, try a Kobus if you guys haven't. So I've got you followed as the artist on Kobus. Cool. Yeah, that way I'll get all.

your updates. I can just hit play and play like all your music and I'm good to go. And then I just signed up for your newsletter so people can enjoy it. You know, enjoy some of these classic music folks. Enjoy human music while you still can. When the AI overlords take over and I hear they are, they've started their own social media network and they're talking about us and the problems they have with us. And they've even started their own Bible, evidently.

So it's still going to be long. I think there's going to be a lot of pushback. I think so too. I mean, there already is. I mean, the word AI, what do they call it? AI slop. Yeah. There already is kind of this underlying backlash, you know, where everyone calls AI

slop because there's so much of it, so much of it is really bad still at this point. And I think the pushback is there. I think people see the writing on the wall. And, you know, I think hopefully there will be more value. I'm hoping so because, you know, you can replace me with AI on the podcast now, evidently. and you probably won't get them as funny or cool. Yeah, but they wouldn't be nearly as funny or cool. On the other hand, if you could get AI to give me six fingers,

like Ariana Grande, then I would be very happy. I would really help with the soap and a twos. How far is your spread? So my spread on my hand is almost 11 inches. I can do an octave plus two. Yeah, me as well. That's a call of 10. So that's 10 notes.

That's kind of, that's, that's, kind of standard. Most people have out that reach. Yeah. Now, of course, Asians often have smaller hands. Like a lot of my Asian students have difficulty with these big stretches. And then there are those people out there that

can put down like a 12th or something like that and like, yeah, I'm really jealous of them. Yeah. You know, it's like some of the jazz players, like Fats Waller, he had like hands like, evidently shaking hands with him was, they said like shaking hands with a bunch of bananas. He's like that huge hand.

I have a huge hand and I shook Anthony Robbins' hand. And he's really tall. I think he's got Indian in him and features. And I remember putting my hand into his hand. And I just watched it disappear in this black hole. His hand was so big. So I think that probably helps be a great, great piano player, right? Well, yeah, it doesn't hurt.

But then on the other hand, it doesn't give you soul. Ah! you got to have soul baby soul but you can't yeah all right so you can put down more more notes on the keys but okay what are the notes mean that's really what it's all about trying to think of the song you got to have soul anyway thank you very much clipper for coming the show it's been fun to have you I hope everybody checks out your music and enjoys it because we need more peaceful music and we need now these are these are some strange times we're in in 2026 and we need some peace a little bit of peace and quiet we need some peace and that's what's all about.

I'm not doing this to make a lot of money. I'm doing it to give people something that is going to really uplift their life. There you go. Thank you much, Clipper. Thanks for audience for tuning in. Did we get your dot-coms as we go out one last time? Or your link training?

Clipper-E-R-E-R-I-C-K-S-O-N. My name, C-L-L-I-P-E-R-C-K-S-O-N. And from there, you can go to my Facebook, YouTube, whatever, or you can go to all those places. Just look me up, my name. It's kind of the nice thing having a weird name like Clipper, you know? It's not like you're going to get somebody else if you put in Clipper Erickson. You're going to find me on Spotify, YouTube, all those places.

When you first scheduled, I thought you were from the Clippers, the basketball team. I was like, oh, that comes up a lot. Yeah, sometimes I get Google alerts like, oh, the Clippers are, you know, in the playoffs or whatever they're doing. What do I can do? No, that's like, yeah. So it's kind of, it's a funky name. There's a story.

There's a long story behind it, but, you know, you probably don't have time. Sounds like we should make that for another show. Yeah, I should do another show. All right, Klipperi, continued success with your work. Everyone, guilt, shame, and cajole your friends into signing up and subscribing the Christmas show. Go to YouTube.com, Fortress Christch, Christfoss, Facebook. Facebook.com, Fortress, Chris Foss.

LinkedIn.com, Fortezs, Chris Foss, all those crazy places. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. You've been listening to the most amazing intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning. consuming too much

of the Chris Walsh Show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult a doctor for any resulting brain lead. All right, Clipper. That'll be up.