You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Being (Ill) Prepared for the Gig

Episode Date: June 14, 2019

We've all been there. Peter and Adam talk about being not quite ready for a gig. And if you're in the St. Louis area and are interested in seeing Fire Shut up in My Bones, go here for ticket information: https://www.opera-stl.org/season-and-events/productions/fire-shut-up-in-my-bones-2019. And check out Adam's notes below:

Hey, Pete. Hey, Adam. You know what I'm doing today? What? Jazz opera. Jazz opera. Hey, I did that the other day. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I'm Adam Manis. And I'm Peter Martin. You're listening to the You'll Hear a podcast. Daily Jazz advice coming at you. Coming at you today, sponsored by SoundSlice. Hey, we love SoundSlice. We use SoundSlice around here. SoundSlice is an amazing music notation resource where you plug in any video, whether that's, you know, you can send it from your phone, YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia. What else you guys?

got everything works. Yeah. And then you can notate it in SoundSlice if you'd like. You can upload your own music XML files. Yeah. If you use Finale or Sebelius or wherever. And then you tap that thing in and you can watch the music go along exactly with what's being played. And then they have that whole community where you can check out transcriptions of some pretty

famous solos and some pros that upload their own stuff. There's a whole bunch of stuff over at SoundSlice. Yeah, it's really the aspiring jazz musicians dream, as well as a number of other different genres as well. Our experience, of course, with it as most as, you know, with jazz solos and performances, we have extensive use of it on Open Studio and it's just, as you say, truly a dream. I want a sound slice sticker. That's what I need here. Adrian, hook us up. These are all things that I love and sounds like an eye heart sound slice. Yeah, me too. Oh, and it's, it's a software product online in browser, but it's one of those pieces of software. You never curse at it. You just, and it gets better

over time. It's like a fine wine. It's been improving quite. We've been one of their first, we were one of their first clients, I think. Yep. And we've been early adopters of it, and we've watched it grow. So get on board now before it blows up so much. But it is browser-based. It's not like you get a box from AOL. Dude, I don't think anyone's even thinking they're going to get a box of software.

You know how my computer is, man. I still get boxes. You remember when you're too young probably, remember this when you'd have to, like, to be able to download software, you'd have to start it at night and then come back in the morning and hope that this teeny little file had finally downloaded all night. I remember doing that with songs, like back in the day. Oh, right, right, right. Maybe.

MP2s, MP1s. Hello, Napster.com. Keep on stealing. Before I was in the music industry. Cool. So what are we talking about today? Well, we're talking about how to be prepared for the gig, being prepared. We have being ill prepared.

Yeah, that was my little bit. In parentheses. Yeah. We're really going to be super frank and very personal today, right? I think so. This is based on a true story that is actually, we'll give a little bit of background on it, but it's actually still in the making.

It's ongoing. It's ongoing. Like today I'm leaving in 30 minutes. So Terrence Blancher wrote a wonderful, innovative opera. It's so good. Fire shut up in my bones. Fire shut up in my bones. Right.

Based upon a memoirs of Charles Blow, the great writer and opinion writer from New York Times and author. And it's being premiered in a couple of days right here in St. Louis by opera theater, St. Louis. And it's really just a huge endeavor. obviously to write an opera, but it's a lot of attention on this. It's an amazing piece. Some star singers. Julia Bullock.

Holy mackerel. Amazing, amazing. And St. Louis Symphony, members of St. Louis Symphony playing in the orchestra. It's quite an endeavor. And I guess, how did it originally happen? I was tapped to play piano, which, you know, it was kind of so long ago. I don't even know if it was going to be on stage and the pit, how much it was going to be used. Were you tapped by Terrence?

I was tapped on the shoulder. He was like, hey, Pete. Yeah. Hey Terence. Yeah, yeah, hey Terrence. Do you guys have a podcast? Yeah, exactly. And so I was, you know, I just immediately said, yes, of course I'd love to do it.

As it turned out with the schedule, it worked out that, I mean, operas are heavily rehearsed. Classical music in general is, but I mean, opera is like, I mean, I did some things months ago where it was kind of workshopping some of the just individual songs that are in it. And we actually did some performances of early versions of them and stuff. So I was super excited about it. maybe a little too excited. When the final kind of rehearsal schedule out, it came out, I realized I was going to be gone for the first two weeks. But they said, well, no, as long as you're there for the performances,

if you get a good sell, but I said, oh, I happen to know somebody. My partner on the, you'll hear a podcast at Amanda. So you did all the rehearsals up until the, you know, I knew there was some rehearsals I was still going to be doing it. I just didn't really think through the dress rehearsal thing. Because in jazz, when we dress rehearsed, we're not dressed first. Well, we are dressed. but we're not dressing concert.

Yeah, you missed all the good rehearsals where we couldn't play the thing. Those are the good ones. Right. I think, yeah, so you came in at the dress rehearsal a couple days ago. Yeah. Yeah, and then it was like,

it was just too late to come in for something like this. It's just like it was so hard to get going. You know what I mean? Yeah, I was just, I was really holding the thing back, the rhythm section. I mean, there's some important,

I mean, I caught some of them, but it was that kind of thing that I just, I'd never heard the whole thing. I'd heard a couple of songs. I hadn't heard it with the old. orchestra. I hadn't heard it with the singers. And you can't see the singers. You're down in the pit. Yeah. And dress rehearsal, you don't stop. You do not stop. There was an audience there.

Yeah, yeah. So you have to play on through. Yeah. And I felt for you. Every week met in the morning and we kind of walked, I walked you through all the notes I had taken, which were copious. Actually, Andrew, I'll take a shot with my phone and send it and you can put it up. We'll take a little shot of part of the score. So you could see how much it's ridden up. Don't be stealing tarrants of stuff. No, we'll mask it. We won't give it. Just a little little hit teaser of it. Well, actually the premiere will, the opening night

will have happened by the time they hear this, which is exciting, because that's in a couple days. Also, no one can play this anywhere. It's exactly. It's super difficult to. It's a specific thing. It's really challenging to, and I find this too. You play a lot with orchestras.

I've played a fair amount. And like, it is hard to lock up a rhythm section with an orchestra, with a conductor, because we're just not used to the way that stuff works. I mean, their beat is up, and we're just trying trying to stay with them and it's not happening. And it's like, I mean, those first couple rehearsals were really, really hairy, man.

Like we couldn't, we really couldn't hang. We had to really workshop it, as the kids like to say, to the point where it was, it was playable for us. And so what happened was you guys did workshop it. And, you know, we were talking during that time when I was gone and it started to come together. I know Terrence made some changes actually ongoing up until a few days ago, you know,

to some structural things, things with that, which is kind of common on a premiere. It's a premiere, yeah. And I mean, Terence is such an amazing writer. But he wants to be right. You know, he had this vision and it's going to be amazing. And so, you know, kind of missing that ability to workshop, I just didn't have a great feel for it. So I did the first, the dress rehearsal, and then we spoke.

I spoke with Terrence. I spoke with the conductor. And, you know, my feeling was that you were going to clearly do a better job of bringing this thing home. So we switched it back to you. You're the understudy. Now that, now the tail is wagging the dog. The dog was wagging the tail. Now it's, we don't even, it's so confusing.

We don't know who's wagging who. Yeah. So it's good that we do have an understudy because I could come in if needed. But I mean, for me, some takeaways for this. And I think for our listeners, a lot of you may know this, but there's nothing like doing it in real time. I would say number one is the music is the most important always, like the final product. So like once I started thinking about how to do this, I wasn't thinking about the money, how I look. I was thinking about, wow, this is a great piece of music.

The premiere is this Saturday night. How is this going to sound the best? Like what needs to be done to maximize? Because, I mean, there's always unexpected things are going to happen on set. I mean, there's things we can't control. I was like, what can I control to make sure that this is the best? Yeah. And I started thinking through the amount of time I'd need to practice the amount.

I'd need to pull the conductor and probably even Terrence to get in you to get more help versus you being able to come in and do a great job. And I wasn't looking even backwards to some mistakes that I made in terms of allowing it or, you know, having it set up in this way. I mean, it was a real learning thing for me. But at that moment, I started thinking about how is this performance? it's going to be the best. And so, you know, we talk about reverse engineering things and stuff, and it became very clear. And so, I'm so grateful that, you know, I have a partner like you.

And so that's, that's another takeaway is like, you know, work with other people, especially on your own instrument. Like when you're younger, you're just like, where pianists are competitors, bass players, we're all. And then as you get older, you start to realize, no, man, we, I mean, you want to be, you know, brothers and sisters with the bassists and drummers and the conductors, of course. But you really want to be brother and sister with the other pianists. For real.

Yeah, yeah. Appreciate the opportunity, man. Yeah. Happy. Any time you had any Terrence Blanchard opera to throw my way, I'm down, man. It's really, really good music. I've learned a lot in this process, too, about rehearsing with orchestras because this is the by-foy, you know, usually the gigs I've done are pops gigs, right?

Right. The conductor maybe even counts it off and then we're just swinging in or whatever or groove in, and it goes. Yeah. And this is much more in the orchestra's style. Like we were coming to them. We're trying to play in a. freer time feel than what we're used to for sure all the time right and and then even you know

the grooves are following the conductor and and a little bit you know slowing down speeding up at times and it's very very difficult yeah so i've learned uh better to follow the conductor that there's a little bounce i didn't know about the little bounce oh yeah little bounce can even be big sometimes can even be big bounce yeah uh and then and then really just uh you know when you do something like this if there's something that a score where there's important things, you have to document. And it's an important part of the process. Get friendly with your pencil and your highlighter.

And like really, you don't wanna write paragraphs on there. But anything as you're going, and it's in the moment, you don't have time to react. You know, we've been changing on the score. We've changed so many rotten chord symbols. Right, right, right. That just aren't right. And there's a couple of places where it's like,

there's a lot of places where it's like two bass clefts on a grand staff. Right. And it's weird. read it that way. And just to clarify Adam Adam's saying, he's not saying rotten cords. We're talking about the nomenclate, like how it's written. Like what, and

the nice thing is like we both kind of know what the types of movements Terrence likes to do and we can hear the thing. So this is just kind of, we'll give him an example. Like it's like a G minor's, I don't know. Yeah, I mean there's a ton. So like a C flat you know, minor over

a, we've talked about these chord symbols before like two different chords and really it's just like an a flat seven sharp 11 or something. Sometimes these more kind of copious that are more classically verse don't understand. It's one of the hardest things is a rhythm section part and a piano part

and usually it's pushed to the end. But yeah just something being written. I mean yeah the notes are correct and they're written there but it's written in a way that's way more complicated than it needs to be. Yeah I don't even think you have to worry about like making notes that are theoretically correct you just make them so that you understand what's going to happen. You know make them for you

right make them like this score is full of like C triangle and they mean C triad. Yeah. But that's, I think most jazz music are C triangle and think major seven. And there's really... And then some of these they do mean...

And then some of them actually do have a major seven in them with a triangle. You have to hear and they make a note. And you had made those notes. But being that kind of detailed for something like this, I think that's what, you know, that's what being professional is all about.

Absolutely. And taking that game of detail to like a highest plane you can. Yep. And then, you know, now we got to play it. Not we. No, but... No, but the thing is, too, and I think, you know, to your point of documenting these things as you go through and rehearsing, the great thing is that there was a lot of rehearsal.

So, yeah, it started rough, but you know you're going to get to the Promise Land. Yeah, shout out to Opera Theater. Yeah, absolutely. And, I mean, only, you only get to the Promise Land, though, if there's a commitment. And you see this with orchestras, they're always writing stuff. They're not having, in this case, to have to write as much as we do just because of the nature of this piano part is just, it never stops. It's so integral to everything. But, you know, this is not the kind of thing.

that anyone could come in, no matter what level as a pianist or even reader could come in and just not write anything. And even if you did do that, that would be a disturbance. Like we always talk about how a part should look. Like you wanted to be, even if we didn't have this kind of understudy thing where we could cover each other, you know, what if something happens and you get sick on Saturday afternoon and can't make it? They've got to call on someone else that's never seen the part. Yeah. It's going to be hard, but at least they're going to have all the stuff that you've written in now to be able to guide that. It still would be hard. It would be very hard. But I mean, that's kind of the goal is that, you know, the copyist gets it, you know, the composer to the copyist and then the performer.

We do have a responsibility to get that part ready to go, not just for us, but for anyone. Yeah, this is going to be a hit, I think, and it's going to go on the road. I know his last opera that was commissioned by jazz St. Louis and opera theater here in St. Louis, which shout out to those organizations. Oh, I know. For commissioning jazz operas, you know what I mean? Yeah, where else is that happening in the world right now? But the last one went on to a few other cities. Yep.

San Francisco. Yeah. So, you know, there's going to be another piano player reading that part. Right. Unless they want to fly one of us in. Or both. Or both. I do like the idea of us just tag teaming this in the pit and then just kind of talking smack the entire time we're not playing.

Right. Exactly. But cool. Yeah. Well, it was really a big learning experience for me just a little bit. I mean, just the whole process and navigating. And, you know, it's like the great thing about it is like if you keep the music, as the number one thing and this could be anything like you know you can apply this to different

goals in our musical career um to do gigs and we're always talking about you know how to get gigs how to practice for gigs how to work with other people man if if you keep the music at the at the top kind of goal even if other people aren't doing that they'll start to rally around that like we always got to remember that's what matters like we always think you know oh you're going on a tour like what's the travel what's the piano all these all these things are important what am i going to eat how am i going to get there am i going to be you know all all that's, I don't know if I like to play with them or whatever. It always comes down to, you're in a room, a club, a big hall, an arena, outside, in a subway, whatever.

You've got an instrument, you're either by yourself or with other people, and you're playing. And people are liking it, they're paying or they're not, but that's the gig. That's actually the thing. So all the other stuff is window dressing. So, like, how do you make that, no matter what the situation, the best, work backwards from that, and I think it always gets easier. Man, well said. And thanks, again, for the opportunity.

it's going to be awesome. If you're in St. Louis in the next few weeks here at the end of July, or in June, excuse me. Yeah. Get your tickets. The next two weeks, right? Yeah, good performances. Faced out over different days.

I'm going to be there. You're going to be there. Well, can you hook me up some tickets? Yeah, probably. And if you see fire shut up in my bones, is that right? Yeah, fire shut up in my bones. Come into your town, check it out.

Terrence has absolutely crushed this one. I mean, it's just so beautiful and so moving. So go check it out. Absolutely. And yeah. Oh, and don't forget to go check out SoundSlice. You know, we have our theme up on SoundSlice.com.

We have a link here in the description so you can see the you'll hear at theme, Emotion in Motion by Peter Martin. It's transcribed. It's in SoundSlice. It goes along with the video. It's awesome. People have been loving that. We've got some great comments the last few days.

Nice. And we remind you to go to YouTube, even if you're not watching us, even if you only like to listen to us, no problem. We're the same way. We don't like to look at each other. We just listen. That's right. But you can go to YouTube.

YouTube and check out every episode is every episode on YouTube Andrew pretty much of this you'll hear it I mean that we do currently yeah up on YouTube and you can leave the comments we had some some some some nice back and forth about the Brantford episode the other day I noticed you haven't waited into those comments but I waited deep this morning did you I got to go check it out yeah someone was uh yeah had Brantford's back big time that's right right I mean we always we got Bramford's back of course just in a different way but you can go there if you want to comment on in today's episode, if you have ideas about how to, you know, fail and then pick yourself back up in a performance situation or whatever it was we were talking about, please go there,

leave us a rating review wherever you listen or watch this. If you have a moment. If not, do it tomorrow. It's all good. And until tomorrow, you'll hear it.