Roberta Piket | Pianist, Organist, Composer, Vocalist, Teacher
Progressive Pianist Roberta Piket Plays Jazz and Improvised Music Out of New York – – – – DownBeat Critics Poll Winner- – – – –
I’m too tired to write; here are some pictures I’ve been meaning to post.
Here is a picture of Mt. Hood I took during the drive up to Portland from California.
In Seattle we stayed at the home of some good friends of Billy who like listening to James Brown. Here is some footage of Billy dancing to James Brown.
Here’s a picture of me driving the van:
Happy Holidays. Yesterday we played here in Portland at Dunes. It was a small bar with a pretty good Sohmer upright. Sohmers are good pianos and this one was in good shape. A friend of Billy’s named Leif, a saxophonist, set it up for us. Thanks Leif!
Leif also recorded it and gave me CDs. Maybe I can put up a sample clip. I know I keep threatening to do that.
Apparently we played a two hour set which I find remarkable, as I had no idea how much time was going by. (Billy nominally “led” this gig as he had booked it but we played both our compositions, and I did the speaking.) To play for two hours so effortlessly seems a big stretch for me. I don’t think I could have done that on the first gigs. I, individually, and the trio collectively are getting more of a flow going, I think.
A free trio opened for us led by Portland drummer and writer Tim DuRoche. They sounded very good. It is hard not to be influenced by what you hear right before you play, and by what you perceive as the expectations of the audience. Perhaps as our trio plays more together this will become less of an issue for me. After the gig we went to a restaurant called Montague’s. It was late at night. The food was very good but the music (mostly dance and hip-hop) was way too loud for a restaurant. I asked Ratzo if he thought we would have played differently if this music had preceded our set instead of what did precede us and he agreed that we would have. How to get over this issue and just play the “pure” music that truly identifies you? I think it may be impossible. Of course we’re influenced by experiences and environment, and isn’t that how it should be? Billy agreed with me that this dichotomy exists. Oh well. We played some good music; I guess that’s all that matters.
This afternoon the trio played at Chez Hanny. San Francisco resident Frank Hanny opens up his living room to concerts Sunday. These kinds of house concerts are much more prevalent on the west coast than in NY. I did one once in Brooklyn in an old Victorian house. I guess most of the homes in Brooklyn are too small, although you would think some of the people in those beautiful brownstones would want to do something like this. I guess people in NY have to work too hard to pay our exhorbitant housing costs to think about holding concerts.
Anyway, we had a nice crowd. Everyone was very attentive and quiet. It is so great to play consistently almost every day with the same people. I feel that this trio has really evolved over the last week. Imagine if we had six months on the road!
Finally a picture of all three of us! Thanks to the audience member who took this.
My playing has been better over the last couple of gigs. I think the Thursday gig on the keyboard made me appreciate anew the possibilities inherent in playing a good acoustic piano. Also, gigging every day and thinking about nothing but music helps. (It’s one of the great things about being on the road.) I have been stretching out more soloistically on intros and generally just delving into each piece in a more focussed way.
I recorded the gig on minidisc but I’m not sure how the sound came out. If it’s good I may post a sample or two in the blog. I have to get the sidemen’s permission first.
Okay, I feel back to my old self now. I was really depressed about the electric piano gig at Tropical. Last night we played at the LA County Museum of Art and they have a beautiful 9-foot Grotien-Steinweg.
We set up with Billy next to the piano and Ratzo next to him. It seemed to work well. We played Alice In Wonderland, which is a tune I’ve always loved but for some reason have never played with this trio. We went through about five or six metric modulations. It was fun. I think we will add this tune to our repertoire.
I sang Billy’s tune Destiny, for which he’d written lyrics. Billy has been trying to get me to sing on my jazz gigs for a while. As I explained to the audience yesterday, I am a “closet singer”. Back in New York I occasionally do some gigs at senior citizen homes where I play and sing standards. I love it, and the audience is very appreciative. However, I was a bit trepidatious about singing for people under the age of 92. It was well-received, though. Chuck Perrin at Dizzy’s pointed out the other day that this kind of thing warms up the audience for the less accessible stuff we do, like Claude’s Lament.
Today we’re driving up to the Bay area for the triple bill tonight. Hopefully we’ll get some new people blogging on here!
Last night I made a decision that I will never play a piano trio gig again on an electronic piano. It is impossible to get any real subtlety of tone or touch. Especially when playing someone else’s keyboard, you never know if the action is going to be decent or not, and usually not.
We had a pretty good crowd, probably due in part to Greg Burke’s Jazz Pick Of The Week in LA Weekly. I was especially pleased and honored to see musical luminaries Mike Melvoin and Vinnie Golia there.
Here are some pictures from the Two Bass Band part of the evening. Below, Billy and Ratzo discuss the charts, and saxophonist/arranger/composer Kim Richmond warms up.
Here are some pictures from our clinic at Saddleback yesterday. I took the pics so there are none of me this time. I’ll make this short because we are on our way out the door to Tropical now for our Trio/2 Bass Band double-bill. This should really be fun.
Ratzo and Billy were both really great – totally articulate and encouraging. I think it was a very good clinic.
We also got to play trio for a while, and we tried a new setup with Billy behind me and Ratzo by the piano. As I suspected, it didn’t work well to have Ratzo and Billy so far apart. Maybe tonight we’ll try it with both of them behind me. The problem is sometimes I can’t hear Billy that well. I never thought I’d say that about a drummer, but better that way than the opposite, which is more typical!
Today Ratzo, Billy and I are giving a clinic/demonstration at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, where our good friend Joey Sellers teaches. Joey is a truly great trombonist/composer. (Joey will be playing with the Two Bass Band tomorrow night at Club Tropical in LA. See the itnerary here.) I had the pleasure of playing with his Jazz Aggregation a few times when he was living in NY. He and his wife Suzy graciously put Billy and me up last night so we didn’t have to drive back to LA after the Dizzy’s gig.
Tuesday was a busy day. Billy rehearsed the West Coast Two Bass Band at the musicians’ union in LA. It was my first time at the LA union. Unlike the NY local, the pianos are all in very good condition. Billy composed and arranged a piece for piano plus Two Bass Band. So I rehearsed with them, and then went to get a coffee after taking some pictures of Billy conducting the other pieces.
After the rehearsal, Billy, Ratzo and I drove down to San Diego, where we played at Dizzy’s. Dizzy’s is a performance space in downtown San Diego primarily featuring jazz. It’s owned by singer/songwriter Chuck Perrin.
(When I first played there, about four or five years ago wth Virginia Mayhew’s group, it was a very desolate part of town, a few blocks from the gaslamp district. Now the area has been built up. I pulled up to discover that the new Padres stadium, Petco Park (yucky name – maybe they should change “Dizzy’s” to “Dizzy’s Coca Cola – ” oops, never mind.) has been built right across the street from the venue. Owner Chuck Perrin, who has done an amazing job of creating a space where the music is foremost, says he does not hold concerts on nights when there are events at the stadium. In fact, the traffic is so bad he avoids the area all together. Looking at this behemoth, I can’t imagine how disastrous something like that will be if it gets built in downtown Brooklyn, as Bruce Ratner is now trying to do. Of course let’s not forget all those great jobs selling hot dogs that will be created.)
I love playing Dizzy’s because the audience is so appreciative, they have a very nice Baldwin grand, and a good PA. Because it not a bar or club, there are no clanging cash registers or phones ringing while you are performing.
After the gig we went to the City Deli with some friends of Billy’s that he hadn’t seen in years, singer Coral MacFarland Thuet and her husband Max Thuet. Billy ordered a vanilla malted and it was fantastic.
Monday I gave a lecture/demonstration at California Institute for the Arts. The jazz program there is run by pianist David Roitstein. The faculty includes Darek Oles on bass and Joe Labarbera on drums, and I was fortunate that they were both available to play with me.
Talk about intimidating: some of the best musicians in LA, including Cal Arts faculty member/guitarist Larry Koonse, pianist Mike Garson and my own trio drummer Billy Mintz decided to show up for the class. (Mike and Billy are pictured below) As they sat right in the the front row with arms folded (they claimed the room was cold) I felt as if I were taking a jury! Of course they were very nice. Pianist Steve Lockwood also stopped by. Thanks for your support, guys!
