November-December 2013
Chicago Jazz Magazine
in his own words... Pianist Jeremy Kahn spent his youth in Highland Park, Illinois, growing up in a family that loved music. At an early age Kahn was exposed to music of all types, but by high school Kahn had discovered jazz and was attracted to the freedom it offered as a player. Choosing to pursue music in college, Kahn eventually landed a Bachelor of Music degree from Boston’s New England Conservatory, where he studied with the great jazz pianist, Jaki Byard. Immediately following college, Kahn relocated to New York City, where he hoped to land a choice jazz gig touring with a big name. Instead, he spent a number of years as a full-time member of the Nighthawks, a nationally known band specializing in jazz from the 1920s and ‘30s. He also dabbled in theater work, a portent of things to come. After twelve action-packed years in New York, Kahn relocated his family to Oak Park, a near suburb of Chicago, where, unexpectedly, theater ended up being a substantial source of steady work. Kahn landed longstanding gigs with major productions, such as Wicked, The Lion King and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Armed with a diverse music background and highly skilled piano playing, one never knows where Jeremy Kahn may turn up––jazz and cabaret venues, in the orchestra pit of a theatrical extravaganza or on a commercial jingle. He has performed with Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Joni Mitchell, Phil Woods, Teramasu Hino, Charlie Haden, Aretha Franklin, Barbara Cook, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and everyone in between. Chicago Jazz Magazine: Many people know that you came to Chicago from New York, but you are originally a Chicagoan. Jeremy Kahn: That’s true. I grew up in Highland Park, and when I graduated high school I moved away to go to college and stayed away for eighteen years. Obviously not all of that was in school. I moved back twenty years ago today. October 5, 1993, is when I moved to Oak Park from Jersey City. Chicago Jazz Magazine: Growing up, didn’t you have musical siblings? Kahn: Music in my family. I am the only professional musician––the only person who pursued it for a living. I don’t want to sound sexist, but all the men in my family were pretty good piano players and we would sort of rotate at family parties. The women in my family seemed to be better at languages, which is probably part of the same area of the brain… I don’t know what I am talking about! [laughs] I remember at family parties it was determined that we should all act as a team to try and keep my grandpa from sitting at the piano, which I always thought was kind of mean, but it was because it was decided that he wasn’t a very good piano player. [laughs] He would hog the piano and only play in the key of C, but I was very entertained by it. But yeah, my father had, and my brother still does have, the ability to play any song that they know in any key, despite not being very schooled musicians. They had good ears. Chicago Jazz Magazine: So you are the only member of your family that pursued music professionally? Kahn: Yes, I think I came to the realization that I was incapable of doing anything else. I feel very blessed that I knew from a young age what I really wanted to do. There are a lot of people in the world much smarter than me that go though long stretches of not knowing what exactly it is that they want to do, so I feel very lucky for that. And despite being a professional musician, which is a rather unorthodox pursuit, my parents were nothing but supportive of that notion. Chicago Jazz Magazine: You are involved in many different music styles. How did you get introduced or jazz? Kahn: I recall that we had three LPs in the house that could be described as “jazz.” One was Dave Brubeck’s Time Out, another was an Oscar Peterson record, called Thoroughly Modern Twenties––which was culled from several different LPs, but every tune had been written in the twenties––and the third was a Bill Evans record called
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Jeremy Kahn
Conversations with Myself. The Brubeck and the Bill Evans records had a lot of acclaim when they came out––I think Bill Evans won a Grammy for his, and the Dave Brubeck record is still one of the best selling jazz records of all time. Oscar Peterson was famous enough. Nobody in my house was a big jazz fan, but they wanted to check these records out. That’s what I did and I think the light bulb went on a little bit. Chicago Jazz Magazine: Did you actively pursue playing jazz at a young age, or were you introduced formally to jazz in the high school jazz band? Kahn: I would say that I started assembling my toolbox before I knew anything about the styles of jazz. By that, I mean my parents were very much into Broadway musicals, and we had tons of those songbooks that had the songs written out fairly easily. I would work my way through them, and I noticed that they had these little chord symbols in addition to having it completely written out. Once I started figuring out what those chord symbols meant it opened up many uses. First of all, it meant I didn’t have to learn all those notes that they had written out. It meant also that I could figure out my own notes based on what the symbol was. Take C7––well, there were a million different ways to play a C7, depending on what my mood was each day. I am still working on different ways to play a C7. So I think that began my lifelong pursuit of trying to play my own notes, because I know what makes me sound good. That works better for me than to trying to play the exact notes that someone else has already written down. Unfortunately, a lot of times I am obligated to play what someone else has already written down, and then I do that. In high school, I had a great band teacher, named Don Younker, who is still around doing gigs! I ran into him not long ago. Anyway, he got a little jazz combo going, which included me. I was also in the “stage band,” as we called it. Towards the end of high school I became a member of a four-piece jazz quartet outside of school that included the bass player Gary Sinise, who is now Mister Big Shot Hollywood actor, and still playing the bass, from what I understand. Yeah, we did a bunch of gigs, we drew straws and I lost, so the name of the band was the Jeremy Kahn Quartet. So maybe I won, depending on how you look at it. Those were my early days with jazz. Chicago Jazz Magazine: Have you run across Gary Sinise in recent years? Kahn: We do communicate every now and again. I heard from him a few months ago. He was looking for a piano player to play a benefit for an organization he is involved with. I know people that are in his Lieutenant Dan Band, so we sort of exchange pleasantries by way of other people. But yeah, I have crossed paths with him, but not all that often. I remember that Gary was on the fence about whether he should pursue theater or music. I think he made the right choice. Chicago Jazz Magazine: Coming back to your early piano playing, when you learned the chord notations you were also training formally or were you strictly doing this on your own? Kahn: I always took lessons, starting from the age of seven, although I don’t really think I enjoyed my lessons until about twelve or thirteen years old. But some voice told me that I should stick with it. So yeah, the lessons that I took were the kind of piano lessons that pretty much any kid takes––it’s learning how to read music and simple classical music or some simplified popular music of the day. But it was on my own that I started messing around with these chord symbols and seeing what I could do with that, and eventually I did find some teachers that helped me out in that regard. But it was several years of “brewing in the laboratory” before it came out. I think I considered myself a jazz musician before I had any idea what it meant stylistically, but I knew that it implied a certain freedom that really appealed to me. Chicago Jazz Magazine: How did you choose your college? Kahn: Ummmm… I decided that I wanted to stay in the Midwest, but be far enough away from home that I didn’t have
to come home every weekend, and that it should be small. So I narrowed it down to two schools. My safety school was Lawrence and my first choice was Macalester. The first letter that came in the mail was from my safety school, Lawrence, saying that they were not interested in having me a student and I kind of freaked out: I am not going to go to college. What is going to happen? Luckily, Macalester came through. I spent two years there, and it is a great school. God knows I could never get in applying today, based on my less than stellar academic record. I went there for two years before deciding that I really wanted to pursue music. I was reading the liner notes of a Phil Woods record and was completely blown away by the piano player on the record and it made a reference to the fact that this man, Jaki Byard, was a teacher at the New England Conservatory, and it occurred to me that to be able to study with somebody like that would be a really good choice. So I applied to transfer to the New England Conservatory but, unfortunately, I was told that it was such a small program that they would likely not be accepting any pianists at all for the next year, but that I should feel free to apply the next year, which I did. So then I got in and spent three great years in Boston with Jaki Byard and a lot of other very inspiring people. Chicago Jazz Magazine: What did you learn from Jaki that you weren’t getting from your other instruction? Kahn: Well, stylistically Jaki is just a tremendous resource––an encyclopedia––because the range that he covers without sounding like a bookworm repertoire orchestra at the piano: he can play stride; he can sound like James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, but he also can play the most avant-garde stuff. He will sometimes do those simultaneously––he can sound like James P. Johnson in his left hand and Eric Dolphy in his right. That was phenomenal to me, and I tried to embrace a wide range of styles as best I could. He was also just a great guy to be around, and was a really good teacher, too. He had his own system that he was able to communicate, so he was a very, very big influence on me in a lot of ways. Chicago Jazz Magazine: What advice has he given you? Kahn: Well, not much that I recall now, other than that I should always be aware of producing a good sound on the piano. He really taught by example––his approach to the music, his sense of humor in that he never took himself very serious-
ly, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t a very serious musician. He had real disdain for the music business; the subject of the Grammy Awards came up once and he referred to them as the “Shammy” Awards, because he thought the whole thing was such a sham. So he rarely offered me pearls of wisdom that you could write down, but it was really leading by example. I pay tribute to him on my website. I wrote a loving piece to him, explaining what an influence he was on me. Chicago Jazz Magazine: We don’t normally talk about websites in these interviews, but aside from the great name of your site––Kahnman.com––it has a nice feel to it. Besides the photographs and other amenities, your blog contains some well-written missives. How often do you write? Kahn: I should be more active on the blog––I’ve gotten nice feedback from it. I really don’t have a set schedule––if an idea strikes me as something that I want to write about, I will put down the crossword puzzle and stop playing Scrabble for a minute, and force myself to start writing. I’ve got something new kicking around in my head that I want to get started on, and I just finished a little piece that I wrote about a wonderful reunion that I had with the band that I played in, in New York. I was playing with them for the first time in eighteen years and it meant a lot to me, and it took me months to write. It was one paragraph at a time, but I was happy with how it turned out. I need to spend a little bit more time doing that. Chicago Jazz Magazine: You just mentioned New York. Did you go immediately from Boston to New York? Kahn: I did. I graduated in 1980 with my B.M., which tells you about what it’s worth. [laughs] I’ve never gotten a gig because of that degree [leans into the mic], but stay in school, kids! [laughs] I hung out in Boston for another year doing some gigs, and then it seemed like a natural migration to go from Boston to New York. First of all, Boston is a great place. It is the ultimate college town in every good way that you can think of, but as a result the market is kind of flooded with student musicians who will play gigs for virtually no money, and, if you are looking to make a living at it, that presents challenges. So New York seemed to be a logical choice, and I spent twelve very challenging, inspiring years before deciding to return to my Midwestern roots, or “roots” [rhymes with “schmutz”], as we call it here.
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Chicago Jazz Magazine
Chicago Jazz Magazine: You didn’t have a gig lined up before you went to New York?! Kahn: No, and I definitely did a lot of sitting around and scuffling for the first year or so before some things started trickling in from unexpected sources. My plan all along was that I would move to New York, meet some people and then head out on the road as a sideman for Joe Henderson, Sonny Rollins or Miles Davis, but none of those guys ever called me! But you just never know where things are going to come from so you have to be open to whatever floats by, and be ready for your opportunity. Chicago Jazz Magazine: So how did the Nighthawks gig come about? Kahn: That was just a completely random phone call. Vince Giordano’s Nighthawks were and still are a great band. I can’t say that I had a tremendous interest in that repertoire before I hooked up with them, but Vince was looking for a piano player, needed to go down his list and everyone was busy and somebody probably said, Well, there is this new guy and I think he owns a tuxedo. Give him a call. So I get this call from this guy named Vince Giordano, and he describes what his gig was: “We play music from the twenties and thirties and there will be some reading involved, so come down and check it out.” I did the gig, and it must have gone okay, because he started giving me more and more work. I stayed with him for ten years and it was a great, great learning experience. I would characterize it as my graduate school. Chicago Jazz Magazine: The Nighthawks’ music seems sort of fun and spontaneous, but wasn’t that was a pretty structured musical environment? Kahn: Absolutely. First of all, when Vince said there was “a little bit of reading” involved, he was maybe not fully describing what was involved. A lot it was very easy. Like I said, I could play my own notes, which is what I like. I like nothing better than seeing a page that has chord symbols and slashes on it, and with that style I would just be going boom-chuck, boom-chuck for several pages; then, bam!
Manhattan Rhythm Kings, with Jeremy Kahn and Tony LaRussa.
Out of the blue there would be a note-fornote transcription of a piano solo as played by, say, Earl Hines or Fats Waller or some other virtuoso, and you are supposed to play that solo note-for-note. And Vince knows if you are B.S.-ing him, because he knows every solo that was ever played from that era. So there is a decision that has to made in an event like that: I know that there is no way I can accurately play exactly what’s on the page, so what can I play that is going to convey the sound of that solo, but that I can in real time make sound like music? And that’s kind of what sight reading is to me––it’s not about playing every note on the page; it’s about playing something that sounds enough like what’s on the page that it’s not going to throw anybody off the trail. And Vince had some tremendous players in his band that took umbrage at the notion that they had to read these solos when they felt that they were perfectly capable of playing their own solos in the same style. People like Ken Peplowski, Howard Alden, Randy Sandke, Joel Helleny––he had lots of amazing musicians pass through that band, but that’s the way Vince wants it.
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It’s his band and he is certainly entitled to run it the way that he sees fit. It has proven to be a very successful endeavor for him, and I completely endorse any choices that he makes. Chicago Jazz Magazine: Jazz fans may not know that you do quite a bit of theater work. Did the Nighthawks gig in anyway lead to your work in theater? Kahn: No, the Nighthawks were not connected to the theater world at all, though every once in awhile we would find ourselves playing parties that were opening nights for certain shows or movies. We were more in the club and private party world. I did some really cool Off-Broadway stuff, where jazz and theater met. Oh, this is a good story. I was sitting in my apartment in Brooklyn and the phone rings. I pick it up and on the other end the voice says, “Jeremy Kahn? This is Max Roach.” I immediately start thinking, Now, who of my buddies thinks this is funny and wants to do a Max Roach impression? So I am playing along, and after a while it became apparent that it really was Max Roach, and as I remember it now I think he was a little annoyed by my skepticism. He was offering me the chance to be part of three plays for which he had been commissioned to write the music––three Sam Shepard plays that needed a jazz quartet. Bobby Watson was the saxophone player. So we got together and jammed on this very loose kind of music. We performed the plays at La MaMa in Greenwich Village and also up in Syracuse. Now the Broadway world is a completely different thing. I had a couple of connections through musicians to get into the Broadway scene––which is really a hard thing to crack––so I played Crazy For You a few times, I played Cats a few times and that was the extent of my Broadway pit work. Oh, and Gary Sinise actually hired me for a play that he did Off-Broadway. Also, I was hired to be the music director at a small theater outside of Albany, New York, which is where I met my wife. I actually hired her. She was an actress and I hired her, and the rest, as they say, is history. We have been married for twenty-six years now. But the whole theater thing really didn’t kick into high gear until I moved to Chicago. Chicago Jazz Magazine: How did that come about? Kahn: When I knew I was moving here from New York, I had a long list of people to call. I started making a lot of cold calls and I got a lot of great gigs through these people that I had never met. There was a person on the list who was a theater contractor. I wasn’t interested in doing theater in Chicago, so I made her a low priority in terms of calling. Then I got a call from the person who had given me her name. He said, “Have you called Anita Smith yet?” I said, “No, I will.” He said, “You should call her, because she is looking for someone to sub on one of her shows.” It was for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, starring Donny Osmond, which was enjoying a very long run in Chicago. She must have exhausted all of her usual suspects, because when I told her that I was available she said, “Great, go do it!” I didn’t mess it up too badly, so I got myself on the list of theater musicians and have stayed on that list ever since, which has worked out very nicely. Chicago Jazz Magazine: Weren’t you with Wicked for a couple years? Kahn: Yeah, Wicked was a close to having a grown-up job as I’ve ever had. It ran over fifteen hundred performances, but I subbed out occasionally. It came back for a
November-December 2013 shorter tour a few years ago, and I’m getting ready to do it again soon for seven or eight weeks. So it’s been a nice long run. It was a great job to have: great security, a very high level of musicianship and really good people, for the most part. In addition to Wicked, I have done Lion King, Spamalot, Elton John’s Aida, lots of them. Chicago Jazz Magazine: It sounds like you owe a lot to Anita. Kahn: Yes, for years she was a very powerful person. She did the contracting for all the big shows, and when Pavarotti came to town she would supply all the orchestras––she had a really nice run. She is a very nice lady and tremendously supportive of all the musicians that she ever hired. She would go to bat for them in a second if anything weird was happening. Tim Burke contracts most of the big downtown shows now, and I like him a lot, too. Especially when he hires me! Chicago Jazz Magazine: In reading some of your previous interviews, it seems like one of your favorite clubs of all-time was Chicago’s Gold Star Sardine Bar. Kahn: That’s not overstating it. Shortly after I moved to Chicago, I got a call from this guy named Bill Allen: “Jeremy Kahn, this is Bill Allen, the owner of the Gold Star Sardine Bar, and Eden Atwood thinks you’re hot.” My first thought was, Bill Allen––who are you? My second thought was, What is a Gold Star Sardine Bar? And my third was, Who is Eden Atwood, and why does she think I’m hot, because I don’t’ know who this person is! Well, as I found out it was a wonderful club––very intimate. I ended up being the house pianist for the last three years that it was open. I had no idea that it even existed when I moved to Chicago. It was a steady jazz gig on a good piano where patrons were hushed if they made too much noise. I was astounded that there were still places like that. You know, back in the old days steadies were very common, but this–– we’re talking about midnineties, and the steady gigs were quickly evaporating. I played there sometimes five or six nights a week, with a great trio: usually Larry Kohut on bass, Joel Spencer on drums and several great singers besides Eden––who apparently had heard of me through Ken Peplowski, and was probably having a fight with her pianist at that time, Brad Williams. Brad left, I came in and Eden did it for a while, as did Spider Saloff and Stephanie Browning. It was a crazy place, but I loved it and I learned a lot. And that’s the piano right there. [motions toward a six-foot Yamaha grand piano in his living room] I ended up with the piano. It is a great instrument, but when I got it into my house it smelled like cigarettes and perfume, and also had an odd buzzing sound, which I thought was a problem with the hinge. I brought in a technician who cleaned and tuned it, and he said, “I discovered your buzzing sound.” He held out the palm of his hand and there were several squashed saxophone reeds that Eric Schneider had thrown into the piano in a fit of rage and had worked their way into a place where they were no longer visible. That’s my guy, Eric! Chicago Jazz Magazine: Eden Atwood’s review in the Chicago Tribune may have been the most scathing they ever published. Kahn: I don’t know if I ever remember seeing that review, but she told me about her rebuttal, which is not fit for print. Chicago Jazz Magazine: You have recorded a couple of your own albums. Is that the principal legacy you wish to leave? Kahn: I guess so, but I’d also like to leave a legacy as someone who tried to make the best possible music, regardless of the situation. I should be recording more, but sometimes you get too caught up in life’s small details to think about the big picture. I know I am guilty of that. Yeah, anytime you record you look at it as a document. Luckily, I have been pleased with what I have produced. I did two CDs that were completely produced by myself and, more recently, I was the leader of three other CDs that were all devoted to the music of Pepper Adams, the great bari sax player, produced by a guy that I went to college with who has become Pepper Adams’s biographer. He wanted to put together several CDs with a variety of people celebrating Pepper’s compositions. That was a lot of fun. One was a trio record; another added the great bari sax player, Gary Smulyan; the last one had two tenor players and a singer, as some of Pepper’s tunes had lyrics put to them. So these were all quite different. The one with the singer was featured at the
November-December 2013 Chicago Jazz Festival a few years ago. It was a lot of fun. Chicago Jazz Magazine: Tell us about your own CDs. Kahn: There were two. The first was recorded shortly after I moved to Chicago, but was done with a couple of buddies of mine in New York. I took the family back to New York and did a trio record called The Jitterbug Waltz, which had no real theme to it other than songs I liked to play. As much as anything, it was an excuse to hang out with drummer Tim Horner and bass player Boots Maleson, buddies of mine that I had known from Boston even before we all moved to New York. It was a great reunion and I think that spirit comes through. I hadn’t seen them in several years, and we just went into the studio and started playing. I was really happy with that. Then a few years later my theater and jazz worlds collided and I decided to do a record of arrangements of songs that were from the Three Penny Opera, which was a show that I did while I was in college. I was hired to be the music director for a bunch of Yale drama school students out on Cape Cod. I spent two summers there on the Cape, which is a glorious place to be, and one of the first shows we did was Three Penny Opera. The score of that show ever since then…we’re talking 1980… the score of that music had been kicking around the back of my head for around twenty years, wondering if I could arrange these songs so that I could play my own notes and adapt it to a jazz quartet format. I did, and I was really happy with the results. I got some tremendous support from Jim Gailloreto, Larry Kohut and Eric Montzka. The CD is called Most of a Nickel. Chicago Jazz Magazine: What was your thinking when you arranged “Mack the Knife”? It’s so strongly associated with Bobby Darin’s popular arrangement that it must have challenged you to decide how much, if any, of the original you would keep. Kahn: You’re right. Not only Darin’s version, but also versions by Ella and by Louie have become iconic, so the tune had to be included. But I was having trouble
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The first gig for the Jeremy Kahn Quartet, senior year at Highland Park High School, with Gary Sinise on bass.
Kahn with the the Chicago Wicked Orchestra.
coming up with a treatment that was compatible with the way we were playing the other tunes. So I came up with this solution: we’d do three separate mini-versions of solo piano, solo sax and solo bass. I said to Larry and Jim, “You have two minutes to do whatever you want with ‘Mack the Knife.’ All by yourself.” So we each came up with these abstract versions that weren’t long enough to get annoying––I hope. Now I’m kind of sorry that I didn’t ask Eric to come up with a solo drum version; I’m sure that it would’ve been cool. But, you know, I think that I tapped into one of the secrets to successful collaboration with this project––surround yourself with people you trust; then let them do their thing. Chicago Jazz Magazine: Do you have anything in the works? Kahn: Right now I would say no, but thank you for asking––maybe it will light a flame. It’s time to get going on something new. Like I said, I stay so busy doing gigs and teaching, and this and that, that it’s a challenge for me to keep an idea like recording more on the front burner. Chicago Jazz Magazine: Do you have ideas that you’re hoping to express, or have you formulated a direction? Kahn: Not really. I’d like to do a solo album, because that’s something I haven’t done before. But really, the joy of musicmaking to me is in the collaboration, so I
might find myself in the middle of playing a solo recording and thinking…Well, this is kind of boring, I’d rather be hanging out with musicians that I love to be with. But I think that the format of unaccompanied solo piano is an enticing one, because I look at the piano as this self-contained orchestra that can produce a wide variety of ideas. I should probably do a recording of my own compositions. The problem is, I haven’t written very many. That would be a good excuse to do it. So I don’t have many things specific in the back of my head, but I need to work on that. Chicago Jazz Magazine: Your wife is an actress. Have you and she performed together in music-theater? Kahn: Not since the shows that we did when we met. She doesn’t really perform anymore. Maybe I could get her out of retirement and do something that would be an enticing proposition. Chicago Jazz Magazine: You once said you were a “numbers guy.” What did you mean by that? Kahn: I don’t know. Did I say that? Chicago Jazz Magazine: Yes, you were talking about musical scores, and how most have a 32-bar format and so on; but you left the impression that your interest in numbers might go deeper than that. Kahn: No, nothing goes very deep with me, unfortunately. Yeah, I did notice that
the Mingus tune that I recorded was a 32measure tune, but it was in A-A-B form. If a tune is written in three sections but has 32 measures, it’s unusual math––I believe it is eleven, eleven and ten. Usually, if you have a 32-bar tune you can chop it up into two sixteen-bar chunks or four eight-bar chunks, so I found that to be intriguing. Yes, creating music is very much about the manipulation of numbers and their spatial relationship to each other, but that’s about as far as I go with it. Chicago Jazz Magazine: So you may not be a “numbers guy,” but you do like word games. Kahn: Yeah, I am addicted to crossword puzzles and Scrabble and I enjoy the blog, which has been a very pleasant surprise to me. I am very aware of language and its subtleties, and how you can make your own voice come across using language and math. That obviously translates to music, because in the music that I play it is a constant search to establish my own voice, my own merit. That’s much harder to do if you have to play someone else’s notes, but when I’ve adapted music to my own playing, then I feel that my voice comes across in a way that I hope is clear. And this is something that I have been thinking about lately, in that musicians need to acknowledge that most of the people listening to music are not musicians. So if you are playing something that is impressive only to other musicians,
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Chicago Jazz Magazine
then the audience, by definition, is going to be extremely limited. Therefore, a musician should wonder what it is that a nonmusician is listening for. That’s not something I can answer first-hand because I am not a non-musician, to use a double negative. But my thought is that you want to get to know the musician through their music. So what kind of narrative is this musician spinning? And body language has a lot to do with it, too. Does he or she look like they are enjoying what they are doing and relating to the listeners or are they completely in their own grumpy little world? These are the things that I’ve been thinking about more recently. Chicago Jazz Magazine: Who are the musicians in your opinion that are able to impress the staunchest critics, but yet have a popular appeal? Kahn: I’d say Herbie Hancock has been incredibly successful with that. He understands what a wide variety of people are going to be intrigued by, yet the musical content is always at an extremely high level. She’s not quite in the jazz world, but Joni Mitchell does the same thing. The music that she produces is very much her own and that it has great musical content is inarguable, yet it cuts across genres and has an appeal to people. Also, the fact that she is a tremendous poet––I think that draws in a lot of people that may not be as interested in the musical content. Chicago Jazz Magazine: Herbie is a Chicagoan. Do you think Midwesterners have a stronger sense of connecting with the masses than East or West Coast musicians? Kahn: I wouldn’t say that, necessarily. I’d like to think so, but I have no empirical data to back that up. I think that there are great musicians from all over the world. I think it might have an impact in terms of how the music is presented, but I wouldn’t necessarily think so, no. Chicago Jazz Magazine: One of the long-time theories is that New York jazz is more cerebral, while Chicago jazz is more blues-based, and in that sense more accessible to the masses. Kahn: Yeah, you might be on to something. I think the language of the blues is
In Italy with the Manhattan Rhythm Kings. universally accessible to listeners. There is such a great overlap between jazz and blues, so I tell my students that to ignore the language of the blues in your music is a big mistake, because all you have to do is play the blues scale and everybody’s ears perk up. It really is some sort of mystical equation that propels a lot of music, and I think any music that uses the blues language in some way is almost always enhanced by it. Chicago Jazz Magazine: While we’re on the subject of language, are you a big reader? Kahn: I should read more. My wife is in a book group, but unfortunately they meet on Saturday nights when I am almost always working, so I am usually about two or three years behind what that book group is doing. I am about to get going on a book that my wife and my son both recommended to me, called Master and Margarita. I shouldn’t say this but I did most of my best reading when I was in the pit of Wicked, because there was a lot of down time and I could read a page at a
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time. So I’d play a little bit and then go back to my reading. I was in a real good book groove during the four years I was doing the show. [laughs] Chicago Jazz Magazine: There is a picture on your website of you “multi-tasking” in the pit. Kahn: Oh, that’s right! I believe that was on the Lion King, where I had similar opportunities. That picture was just meant as a joke, though––reading a book with one hand and playing the keyboard with the other. That picture was probably taken by Jim Widlowski, an amazing drummer who can play anything and nail it every time. Chicago Jazz Magazine: Keith Jarrett has said that most of what informs his musical playing is outside of music. What things outside of music influence your playing? Kahn: Well, visual art. I have been able to surround my piano with some things that I think are beautiful. I think visual art and nature––any thing or any force that is bigger than ourselves, I think, can inform what you produce in terms of expressing yourself. That’s a help, but, on the other hand, I also think that music itself––trying to get deep inside harmony and rhythm, exploring what makes a great melody––these are eternal pursuits also. Music is very much a self-contained universe. Yes, music can be influenced by non-musical things––things that will round out your outlook––but there’s more than enough juicy stuff in the world of music to keep you occupied for several lifetimes. Chicago Jazz Magazine: Are there any figures in history that have been particularly inspiring to you? Kahn: Wow, that comes out of left field! Figures in history, let’s see… Bach is fascinating to me as the creator of a lot of music that is as close to perfection as you can get, in my humble opinion. I would say Winston Churchill is a fascinating character to me––his ability to communicate, and his ability to deal with extremely stressful environments. I would start with those two. Chicago Jazz Magazine: Pretty good choices. Kahn: Who would you want to have at
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a dinner? It’s an age-old question, but it’s a good one. Chicago Jazz Magazine: Spend a few moments comparing and contrasting the two worlds of jazz and theater. Kahn: Okay. What makes them different is that, in theater, music is just one small component. There is a lot of stuff going on, and when you have these big productions the idea is that the music should sound pretty much the same every time you play it. There are some good reasons for this––for example, there are choreography and lighting cues involved. Everybody else is relying on consistency, so that the show can unfold in a safe and predictable way. So with that in mind, you have to understand that if you’re in the pit playing a keyboard part, like I do, creativity does not play much of a role. Once you understand that, it becomes about craftsmanship and consistency, and setting the bar so high so that you can never play a “perfect” show. Then it becomes less of a chore. If you look at it the wrong way, it becomes a chore, even though it is often a very well-paid chore. But it is a great chance to work on your craftsmanship and use musical muscles that you might not use on a jazz gig, where, for instance, I’ve been playing “Willow Weep for Me” for about forty years now, and every time I sit down and play it the idea is that I will approach it in a new way. I am always looking for some subtle ways to tweak it. That’s the model that I use in a jazz setting. In a theater setting, I try to play it exactly the way it’s supposed to be played. I look at it as two different sets of muscles, and they both contribute to an overall picture of well-developed musicianship. Chicago Jazz Magazine: You mentioned earlier that you teach. Are you encouraged by what are you seeing in your students? Kahn: Yes, very much so. I had the great opportunity to become the jazz piano teacher at Northwestern last year, and these are a lot of really smart kids. A lot of them have double majors––jazz and engineering, jazz and journalism, jazz and economics. These are students that have tremendous love of the music, but they are also trying to develop their brains in other ways. It’s a challenge, trying to keep a body of work relevant that is now approaching its century mark. I mean, to me, the songwriting of the Great American Songbook, which is mid-twenties through the mid-forties, essentially produced some really lasting stuff that is very friendly to improvising musicians. But as we move farther away from when this stuff was composed, how do you keep it relevant to a kid that really doesn’t want to hear about some song from a Fred Astaire movie? Luckily, most of my students understand that these are great vehicles that should be part of your repertoire, in addition to the great jazz composers––Ellington, Wayne Shorter, Jobim, Monk––and not too many of them are all that interested in adapting music from today’s popular composers. But you know jazz is such an amorphous term these days. Does it refer to a style or does it refer to the idea of playing the same song in different ways? Does it have to have improvising in it? It’s a tough word to define, and that’s why some people don’t even like to use it anymore. I had never really pursued being a teacher. I’ve had various peo-
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November-December 2013
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Chicago Jazz Magazine
Kahn's first musical theater gig, Sing Ho For A Prince, in eighth grade.
Kahn as a child—already at the piano. ple seek me out for consultations that have turned into long term things, but in retrospect I find it a fascinating way to learn about myself, because I’m forced to articulate these ideas of how I’ve accomplished what I’ve accomplished and how I approach music. Whereas, before I never really had to write it down or even say it out loud. I would just sort of sit on the piano bench and mess around, and that’s how things developed. For better or worse, I have come up with kind of a systematic approach, and it is very interesting to say these ideas out loud and have them register with students. It is tremendously gratifying. Chicago Jazz Magazine: You work with a lot of vocalists. Do you have a specific approach to accompanying? Kahn: Yeah, playing for singers was probably the first time I interacted musically with other people. I can honestly say that I enjoy working with singers as much as I enjoy any other settings that I find
myself in. Plus, they’re good at finding gigs! And I’ve come to appreciate that the skill set for a vocalist is somewhat different from that of an instrumentalist. I mean, I like to talk about the “narrative” in what I’m playing, but a singer has actual words to tell a story. That’s a big difference. That, plus the fact that they are really exposed out there, in the front of the band with no instrument to hide behind…they really have more direct contact with the audience. Of course, it helps when a singer is a schooled musician, because that makes communication with the band easier, but it’s really not essential. So my job as an accompanist is to help bring out the best in the singer, and try and figure out what’s appropriate: Should I lead? Should I follow? Should I lay down a strong foundation or should I stay pretty sparse? Should I feed bits of the melody if I think that the singer is struggling a bit? And of course, I need to be ready to come up with lucid ways to start and end the tune. But really, accompaniment is not just about playing for vocalists––anyone in the rhythm section should take pride in providing sensitive support to the soloist, whether it’s a singer, a horn player or whatever. Everyone eventually gets their moment in the spotlight, but I think that the music really comes alive when everyone strives to make the whole thing sound better, not just to call attention to yourself.
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Kahn at Andy’s piano, circa mid-’90s.
Kahn at Andy’s piano, circa 2013.
Chicago Jazz Magazine: What do you musically aspire to and hope to accomplish when this is over? Kahn: First, to make sure that I am a good craftsman and can express what I want on my instrument in a clearly articulated way. Second, to be able to express myself with a voice that is distinct in its own way. Even though I am influenced by a lot of people, that I don’t imitate them––that it all filters through me. And third, that what I express is interesting for other people listen to. I want to try and push myself creatively in some areas that are slightly out of my comfort zone, but are still in areas that I find interesting. Finally, that I was open to a variety of styles and was able to incorporate them into my own playing. Chicago Jazz Magazine: You mentioned earlier that you enjoy the visual arts. Movies fall into that category. Kahn: Yes, I do like movies. I am old
school when it comes to Netflix––I have DVDs come in the mail. I keep this long list of movies––the list is so long that movies show up that I put on there a year ago. I love old movies and foreign movies. I find them to be tremendously transporting. Even if it’s not a great movie, I love to disappear into another world for a couple of hours. I especially love character actors, like William Demarest, Thelma Ritter and Peter Lorre. I like movies that have interesting characters. I am not a big fan of scifi or movies that have all kinds of special effects. I like human interaction. I like somebody who can make me laugh––I am much more drawn to that kind of a movie. I know there are a lot of great movies that are super-heavy but it’s hard to find the motivation to watch them. I just love a good story that sheds light on the human condition, whether it’s in a movie or in somebody’s solo. ■CJM