sketch by Monte Antrim
session photos

Liner notes by Art Lange
There’s no doubt that choice of instrument affects the essence of any music we hear. The parameters of sound—tonal qualities, color, texture—determine the music’s identity as much as do pitch, rhythm, and organization. Thus, for just one example, the vigorous, persistent debate over whether the modern piano should be used in performing 17th and early 18th century keyboard works—music that was composed on, and for, either the harpsichord or the clavichord. Purists assert that the nature of the intended instrument, whether the metallic, inflexible, string-plucked tone of the harpsichord, or the clavichord’s softer, nuanced, string-struck intimacy, influenced the compositional choices made by Bach, say, or Scarlatti (the two most important Baroque keyboard composers), and thus their music is inevitably distorted when voiced using the variety of dynamics, colors, and pedaled effects available on a modern piano.

According to reputable sources, Bach disliked the flawed first version of the forte-piano invented in his lifetime; his favorite keyboard (apart from the organ, a mini-orchestra in itself) was the clavichord because, within limits, it allowed dynamics and tone to be manipulated by the performer’s touch, something not possible on the harpsichord. But as the quiet, subtle clavichord was not suited for public performances, especially in combination with other instruments, he tried to overcome the harpsichord’s tonal limitations by using instruments with more than one keyboard—the second lower in volume and set to project different tonal qualities—and also helping to develop a harpsichord with a sound that closer resembled the lute. On the other hand, despite the revival of interest in these particular period instruments and performance practices, the primary trend of 20th century performers, especially those who helped to popularize Bach’s music, from Edwin Fischer to Glenn Gould (Wanda Landowska notwithstanding), has been precisely to take advantage—each from their own interpretive perspective—of the modern piano’s broader range of qualities, inauthentic as they may be, in part because of the comfortable familiarity contemporary audiences have with the piano, and in part because of its greater potential for expressive effects.

Jazz—a music which has connections with much Baroque music regarding its rhythmic origins in dance, its frequent adaptation of folk resources, and its capacity for improvisation—has been identified with the piano from the burgeoning days of ragtime, and the legacy of brilliant jazz pianists is enormous and varied. But more than a few jazz pianists have experimented with other keyboard instruments, some as a novelty to surprise listeners, some to seriously explore the effect of new timbres in an improvisational setting. The most popular of these has been the organ—reaching back at least as early as 1928, when Fats Waller played it in his inimitable style on a session with the Louisiana Sugar Babies. Waller reportedly liked nothing better (aside from hedonistic pleasures, that is) than to rhapsodize mood pieces and punch out swing riffs at the oversized console of a full church organ—however lumbering the result. His protégé, Count Basie, was also fond of the instrument and featured it sporadically throughout his career. Meanwhile, proponents like Milt Buckner and Wild Bill Davis anticipated the explosion that Jimmy Smith ignited in the 1950s which, inspiring a legion of followers, shot the organ—especially as an r&b/funk-jazz vehicle—into its present day status.

Even more curious and provocative, although less successful, were attempts to reverse the neo-Baroque trend of updating instrumentation, by using the harpsichord. One such treatment found Johnny Guarnieri on harpsichord as part of Artie Shaw’s 1940 Gramercy Five recordings, but the dated effect was stylistically at odds with the small combo’s sophisticated swing. More appropriately, boogie specialist Meade Lux Lewis recorded a suite of four “Variations on a Theme” on harpsichord for Blue Note Records in 1941, where the music’s exuberant right hand filigree and interplay between bass and melody lines benefited from the instrument’s prickly, pointillist, crisp clarity and reconciled boogie-woogie counterpoint with its Baroque antecedents. A few months earlier, on a soon-famous session under the leadership of clarinetist Edmund Hall, with bassist Israel Crosby and Charlie Christian on acoustic guitar, Lewis played celesta (a tinkling keyboard which substitutes metal bars for strings—think Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies”), but the sound of the instrument lacks the sinew necessary to support Lewis’ powerful touch. Likewise over the years many other jazz pianists, from Dick Hyman to Andrew Hill, have dabbled with the harpsichord or celesta for a change in color, though the results have seldom been memorable. At least when Keith Jarrett improvised on clavichord, he avoided jazz inflections and offered a sympathetic adaptation of Baroque phrasing.

Another, even rarer, use of an unusual keyboard was Earl Hines’ 1939 recording of “Body and Soul’ and “Child of a Disordered Brain” on the Storytone piano—an experimental electric keyboard which had no resonating soundboard, but instead amplified the strings with magnetic pickups. By the 1950s, however, Wurlitzer had developed a functional electric piano, occasionally used by even Duke Ellington, among others, for exotic tonalities—but by far its best and most imaginative exploitation was by Sun Ra, who was already on the prowl for cosmic sonorities. It wasn’t until the Fender Rhodes came to prominence in the late ‘60s, heralded by Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, and Joe Zawinul on Miles Davis’ audience-jolting jazz-fusion sessions Filles de Kilimanjaro, In A Silent Way, and Bitches Brew—and quickly thereafter a defining characteristic of their own separate fusion bands—that the electric piano gained a permanent identity and recognizable context as a jazz instrument. Though its prestige has lessened since its almost ubiquitous position in the ‘70s, the sound of the Fender Rhodes remains a prominent, if somewhat nostalgic, resonating echo in jazz.

By which leisurely, circuitous route we arrive at the disc at hand—not to suggest that Pandelis Karayorgis’ approach to the Fender Rhodes electric piano, or this compatible trio’s music, owes any debt to fusionoid forebears. Over the course of nearly 20 years and approximately that many recordings, Karayorgis has established himself as one of the singular, and significant, pianists of his generation. One of his trademarks has been to examine and illuminate the irregular edges of the jazz piano repertoire, as he does here—not just tunes associated with early influences like Tristano or Monk (who appear on almost everyone’s résumé these days) but, in this case, material from the likes of legendary Philadelphia recluse Hassan Ibn Ali, Dutch dada master Misha Mengelberg, and Promethean sound-shifter Sun Ra—along with original pieces that venture into peripheral terrain. Another trait is his broad and bracing musical sensibility: an acute concentration on melodic contour, sometimes linear and chromatic (via Tristano), other times craggy and abstract (from Monk), reinforced by a harmonic foundation that draws upon not only the aforementioned resources, and of course Ellington too, but also Hindemith, Scriabin, and Berg. But there’s an unexpected ingredient in the mix of Betwixt—his choice of instrument.

For this program, Karayorgis has chosen the vintage Fender Rhodes, while, crucially, further enhancing its electric idiosyncrasies with the addition of a mutron (a synthesizer-like sound filter once endorsed by Stevie Wonder), distortion pedal, and ring modulator (a favorite of Stockhausen, which blends sound signals into dissimilar, often dissonant, frequencies) to divorce it from its previous associations. As he related to me, “Filtering the sound through various devices offers the option of choosing from a wide array of attacks, timbres, textures, etc, that can become little unexpected musical events in themselves or suggest completely new directions for the music to go in. … All this would not be the same on a modern electronic synthesizer keyboard. The Rhodes produces its sound via mechanical elements (little hammers strike metal tines whose sound is then amplified individually just like the six strings of an electric guitar) and therefore each note has somewhat different attributes (attack, decay, timbre) and its own unique imperfections (false harmonics among them). This creates a sound that does not come off as artificial, even though it is processed electronically, but rather as colorful, real, and funky.”

By choosing an instrument that differs from his accustomed acoustic piano in both method of sound production and technique required to play it, Karayorgis is here doing what Bach did, composing (spontaneously—though Bach too was a renown improviser) in response to the specific qualities of the instrument at hand. The altered perspectives which Karayorgis brings—and to which bassist Nate McBride and drummer Curt Newton must intuitively and actively respond—differ in degree throughout the program. In some pieces, like the title track and “Brake’s Sake,” the keyboard crunches and wails like an electric guitar, reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix’s extravagant attacks, or the dazzlingly percussive acoustic fingerpicking of Rev. Gary Davis. Elsewhere, say “Humph” and “Hypochristmutreefuzz,” it implies a kind of orchestration, dramatically expanding the tonal palette, thus refocusing the song’s atmosphere and mood. There’s certainly a playful echo of Sun Ra’s galaxial squawk from time to time. And then there are those places, perhaps “Pinocchio” and the fantasy on “Heaven,” where instrumental color and texture no longer affect the music, but become the primary force of communication. Regardless of the distancing effect this may have from the “traditional” piano trio, McBride and Newton adapt their roles to the circumstances, with restraint, allowing space for the keyboard colors to emerge; weight, as rhythmic anchor; and their own colors, as the way bow and brushes resolve “Off My Back Jack.”

Whether it’s Bach or Monk, played on harpsichord or harmonica (…well, maybe not harmonica, how about tuba?)—musicianship, imagination, and taste will make the music sing.

Art Lange, Chicago, November 2007