The Pianist and Free Jazz

It's been a while since I talked about how the piano style has changed with jazz so that's what I'll focus on in this post. Free jazz, more than any other movement, changed the entire way the music was viewed. Now, I will be the first to admit that my knowledge of free jazz is extremely limited, but as I've been exposed to more of it, I have developed a theory about the pianists. Though there are exceptions, the style of player piano for a free jazz group became much more percussive.

It is an interesting turn of events, but it makes sense (I even wonder if it might have some roots in Thelonious Monk's strange technique). Free jazz was about letting go of the boundaries of music. It left behind the accepted standards of rhythm, harmony, melody, and structure among other things. As such, the piano became out of place in a free jazz group unless they changed. The piano had always been a member of the rhythm section and not only that, but a key member in regards to providing the harmony and chord structure a group played on.

So when free jazz began to form, pianists who desired to play it had to change their technique. Pianists didn't have the same options as horn or sax players...a piano will never growl or squeal or squawk for a player, it won't even be slightly flat or sharp. But it can be extremely loud and percussive, so that was the path those early free jazz pianists took.

Cecil Taylor is, of course, one of the most known jazz pianists. His style is commonly acknowledged as percussive. The textbook even says, "Taylor takes that percussiveness to an unparalleled extreme. He is said to treat the piano as if it consisted of eighty-eight tuned drums". Another described his playing as such: "His wild piano attacks were akin to a voodoo ceremony. He pounced on the piano with the wild abandon of an angry lion producing a cacophony of angry, disjointed sounds, but was able to coordinate everything into one irregular package of raw emotion and sound images". The following piece is a sample of Cecil Taylor's piano technique (I like this one especially because it sounds like the jungle and they've included an orchestra).

Beyond Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra, my knowledge of free jazz pianists is a little lacking so I did some research and found a few others that I find interesting. The first is Kris Defoort, a Belgian pianist and composer. He was born in 1959 so by the time he started studying free jazz it had been around for a while. He too has that special brand of percussive sound. The video below is a recent video of Defoort's Trio (it was posted in 2010).

The last musician I'd like to highlight is Satoko Fujii (born in 1958), another present day free jazz artist. Fujii is Japanese and studied classical piano until she became interested in improvisation. She has a very unique style and has cited a strong connection with the American free jazz musicians of the 60s. She prides herself on bringing back the sense of showmanship that those musicians had as well as her desire to "make music that no one has heard before". The following is a recording of her and her quartet from 2009.

The piano just won't leave. Every time jazz changes, the pianists of that generation adapt. Their love of the music allows them to change not only their technique, but the accepted technique for the piano. These pianists will continue to stretch the boundaries of both their instrument and the art.

Sources: 
Jazz by Scott DeVeaux and Gary Giddins 
Jazz Musicians, 1945 to Present by David Dicaire
www.krisdefoort.com
www.satokofujii.com