You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Jazz Prodigies and How They Can Inspire - #74

Episode Date: April 14, 2018

In this episode, Peter and Adam talk about jazz prodigies and what we can learn from them. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Adam Manus. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear at podcast. Daily Jazz advice coming at you. Today we're going to talk about jazz prodigies. Oh, man, I'm too old to be considered a prodigy. I appreciate it, though, thanks. Oh, you're not talking about me?

Well, I mean, maybe back of the day, we can delve into that if you'd like to. I was about to say projadees, but it's prodigies, right? Yeah, man. I couldn't be a progeny if I call it a progeny, right? There's no way. You got it. So this is from a question actually on our You'll Hear It podcast page. And just a reminder, if you guys would like to ask us questions, you can go to you'll hearit.com.

And you can actually just, if you're too lazy to type, you can just press a button and speak your question if you'd like. Yeah, we love those because we're too lazy to read. That's right. Or you can certainly type it out and we'll get one of our interns to read it for us. But this is from Sheldon. And I think the question is really about, you know, in terms of our, a prodigy, you know, how we can be inspired by them as opposed to being envious. And I've always been, you know, someone that I've been thinking about a lot, as I'm sure a

lot of people are, because he's sort of the current prodigy du jour. And that would be Joey Alexander, amazing young pianist out of Indonesia. Incredible. That is, yeah, just an amazing player. And I think there's always been prodigies, you know, we more closely associate them, I think, with classical music, of which there's just, you know, hundreds of them. them around the world, if not thousands, an amazing number. But in terms of jazz, it's pretty rare somebody comes along like Joey that's, I don't

know, is he 15 now, 14? I know I heard him when he was 13, some performances, and it wasn't that long ago. But it's pretty rare. Someone comes along with that kind of maturity, understanding of the music, something to say, and the ability to say it, you know, to perform in front of an audience at the level that he has. There's always been a few, but it's rare. Yeah, Tony Williams comes to mind.

Yeah. You know, someone who's playing with Miles when he was 17, 18 years old? 16. 16 years old. Unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, these, I've always drawn great inspiration, too. And I think what our listener was kind of getting at was the fact that they can get so good in such a short period of time. And the caveat with that is that they're usually really young. And we know that our brains accept language easier when we're younger. So, you know, don't think that you have to paste yourself with Joey Alexander right now and his development. because he's just going to fly with what he's been building on since he was a small child. Right. And I mean, it's just, you know, we can be inspired and think about how quickly one can progress

over short periods of time, though. Like, Joey is probably not going to progress at the level he did from zero to 12 up until he's 100. I mean, if he does, he will be, you know, just the biggest genius to ever walk the face of the earth. But just saying that there's always peaks in valleys, and I think that rapid periods of development. I know I've experienced that I'm sure you have two and most musicians and really just artists do that, recognizing when you're in a very, you know, fertile period of your development when you can make great strides in certain areas of your artistry and take advantage of that and really set up your schedule around that. And then maybe for six months, you know, your technique is just progressing

and you're really feeling and your brain is working in a way and you're at that point of your life where you can really, and at that point of your progression as a player where you can really accept that. So take advantage of that. And then it's okay to plateau for a while and just kind of ride where you are and kind of be more in maintenance mode. Or maybe you're really into composition. I think for Joey, you know, he's in this period of being able to quickly take different influences and assimilate them and then kind of spit them back out in a really cool way. You know, he's creative, but he doesn't try to be more creative than a 14-year-old should be in a way. So like you hear the influences, but he puts them together. He

He's not at that point where he's just like, I want to get rid of Chick-Korea and Herbie and do my own thing. He's still taking those things in and hearing things and then kind of putting them through the filter of his young mind. And that's a great thing. That's awesome. I think one thing that we can all definitely take away from Prodigies is that, you know, Prodigies, whether we're talking about Joey Alexander or, you know, Tiger Woods when he was a young kid or the Williams' sister. What instrument did Tiger Woods play? I can't remember. The Four Iron, like a madman.

you know Mozart any of these like legendary prodigies is that they set themselves up to be great because you know their whole lives from the time they were a kid revolves around getting better and so I think we can pull some of that you know it's not it's not like Joey Alexander was just born playing the way he does he works really really really hard at it yeah Tony Williams you know practice like crazy when he was a child we can take that we can take that that way that they've designed their lives around improvement and and borrow from that and use that sort of work ethic as our advantage as well. Yeah, I remember Nicholas Payton when...

There's a prodigy. Yeah, he was a prodigy. And, you know, I remember playing with him when he was like 15, 16 years old when I first met him. And he was very talented musically, like, in terms of like he could play several instruments. He could hear anything. But the main thing that I remember about him at that period is, like, he was very focused and disciplined. in a very unusual way for somebody that age. So that's something that as we get older

should become easier. Now, we usually have other things that get in the way of that, perhaps in our lives, in terms of family or friends, or, you know, big shout out to my family and friends. I'm not saying you're getting in the way of nothing. Love y'all. But, you know, there's things that happen in our life,

so we have to be even more disciplined about taking that time. But the more focused we can be, we can get at those rapid little development spurts, I think, nicely. Another thing I think we can pull from this is that, you know, just where a prodigy is at usually in their life, there's some psychological stuff going on that gives them an advantage in that there's no expectations for them to be anything other than a kid. So everybody gives them this like, oh, that's amazing that you could play.

And we can kind of steal that thought loop of like, oh, well, I'm 25, I should be as good as Brad Maldow was when he was 25. Why am I? You know, don't think like that. Think like a prodig you think like, oh, I'm going to get there. I'm on their heels. Right. I'm coming up.

That's great. I'm young and coming up. And I think if you keep that thought loop going, that could be another thing to pull from them. Yeah. And I think, too, like you look at Joey Alexander, something really smart that he's done, is he surrounds himself in his trio with really seasoned players that are older that are older. That's right. That's right. Because there's basically nobody his age that can play by him.

But still, I mean, he could. He could get some 17, 18-year-olds that are really good players, you know, to play. But he has really good trials. I mean, not necessarily the oldest guys or gals, but, I mean, seasoned strong players that you or I would hire for a tribute. Oh, yeah, totally. No, there is actually a video of him playing with some kind of older teenagers who are really, really good. Yeah. But they're not as, I mean, they're not quite on his level.

But, you know, there is a difference between him playing with them and him playing with Larry Grenadier and Ulysses-Owens Jr. Right, right. You know what I mean? Yeah. Huge a difference. Absolutely. So, all right, well, hopefully, Sheldon, that kind of helps a little bit. And, you know, I think the main thing is to, you know, get that mindset of a young prodigy, take that inspiration.

That's, you're definitely on the right track. And, you know, another thing is in the jazz community, a lot of times we kind of fall back on this cliche where, like, you can't be a great player when you're young. And one thing I noticed some really good older players, as in older than 15, have been really. really supportive and generous with Joey Alexander. And a lot of that is because his, from what I hear, you know, his attitude about the music and his maturity level is so good that he kind of fits in with the scene really nicely. So I think it's something that we should embrace and actually have more of hopefully. Absolutely. All right.

Well, you'll hear it. Thanks for listening to this episode of the You'll Hear It podcast. If you liked what you heard, please leave a rating or review. Yeah, I liked what I heard. I'm going to leave five stars, but you guys can do whatever you want. Today's episode was brought to you by Open Studio. Jazz Lessons from Jazz Legends. Check out our brand new All Access Pass.

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