Pickley reluctant to jazz up the classics
Published 11:58 pm Thursday, December 20, 2007
By By JOHN EBY / Cassopolis Vigilant
DOWAGIAC – Pianist Jim Pickley jazzes up Christmas music, but he balks at treating the classics similarly.
"I don't like to mess with the classics," Pickley admitted to Dowagiac Rotary Club last Thursday at Elks Lodge 889, proceeding to play "Greensleeves" like the classically-trained musician with bachelor's and master's piano performance degrees from Indiana University Bloomington that the Elkhart High School graduate is.
Mixing Beethoven and disco strikes him as "disrespectful."
Pickley, a former Edwardsburg resident who now lives in Mishawaka, Ind., is a frequent performing presence in Dowagiac, whether it's at Southwestern Michigan College, Wood Fire or, Nov. 4, at the middle school Performing Arts Center for the "Still Swingin' at 95" gala with saxophonist Franz Jackson.
"That's the great thing about jazz if you're a competent player," he said. "I saw most of those people onstage for the first time."
Although "it's not all free form up there," he said, illustrating with a tale out of school about one of the "nervous" female vocalists wanting to perform in a different key than the one "it's always done in." The bass player suggested, "Let's just do it in F."
At the bridge in the middle of the song, Pickley changed keys.
"It was a jam session basically," he said. "The singer sings," then the horn players trade solos. "After one guy did a solo, she came back in again. And again. When we tried to end it, she wouldn't end it. We just looked at each other, but it was a privilege and a lot of fun. I love some of the old drummers, who look like they could hardly move" – until they slide in behind their drumsets and the energy level jumps.
Pickley recalled a Count Basie tribute he played in Elkhart where "the average age of the guys was deceased. They were all in their 80s and 90s. Applause lasted forever. We finally got tired of clapping because they were still (shuffling onto the stage)."
But once they reached their places, "It was an hour of magic. That's how it is with Franz. When he's up there he's amazing. I talked to the other piano player afterwards and we were both tired. But Franz was up there the whole time" and is known for finishing strong.
Pickley was a band leader for five years on various cruise ships and has performed with Clark Terry, Wynton Marsalis, Bill Watrous and Ed Shaughnessy.
He leads his own trio, solos with the Elkhart Symphony, serves as music director at Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church in Edwardsburg and has been hired as a jazz musician by the Methodist Church in South Bend, so "Christmas time has been fun."
Besides playing at the Wood Fire Italian Trattoria with his trio or with Jackson, he also performs at Club LaSalle in South Bend and at the Bent Oak in Elkhart.
Pickley opened with a medley of tunes composed by Grammy Award-winning jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi (1928-1976) from San Francisco, including "Linus and Lucy." You know them as the soundtrack to 1965's "A Charlie Brown Christmas."
Pickley began playing at 7 on a piano his parents purchased for his older brother.
For his final number, "Frosty the Snowman," requested by City Clerk Jim Snow, Pickley jazzed it up to make the top-hatted character "hip."
Likewise, he jazzed up "O Come All Ye Faithful" and "Silent Night."
"Silent Night," Pickley adjusts his keyboard so his piano sounds like a guitar, then gives himself some samba percussion.
"Silent Night in Rio," he pronounces the final product, continuing on with "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" as Thelonious Monk might render it.
"White Christmas" he imagines in a Jamaican vein. If someone was not in a warm, southern clime, why else would they be fantasizing about snow? he figures.
Pickley's spare patter between songs referenced Victor Borge, which seemed appropriate because like the Danish piano prodigy who passed away in 2000, Pickley has a quick sense of humor, as Judge Herbert Phillipson quickly learned.
Phillipson wondered aloud if Pickley might play "The Victors," his alma mater the University of MIchigan's fight song.
Pickley quickly complied, except, ever the IU graduate, he slyly substituted a speeded-up snatch of the music that starts Warners Brothers cartoons.
Phillipson came back just as quickly, reminding the Hoosier that "The Victors" was written by Elgard of South Bend.
When asked how long he's been playing, Pickley checks his watch.
His mother, 89, "plays a little bit," Pickley said. "I think she knows seven songs and plays them every day." His grandfather, a Disney animator, worked on "Fantasia."
Pickley's electric piano has but one foot pedal, compared to three on a grand piano. "As long as you hold a note, it rings," he demonstrated. "The left is called the soft pedal. On a grand, the hammer hits three strings. If you hit the pedal on the left, the keyboard moves over just a little bit so it only hits two strings. And as Victor Borge says, the middle pedal separates the other two. The middle pedal is hard to explain."
And no, he doesn't have any CDs for sale. "I'm working on that," he said.