My students often ask me: \u2018how can I get better at comping?\u2019 or \u2018how can I get better at playing with singers?\u2019\u00a0 In developing my response to these important questions over the years, I\u2019ve found that it\u2019s fascinating to look at the iconic pianists of jazz history, the undeniably great soloists and ensemble players in instrumental settings, and investigate which of these players demonstrate the strongest skills at the very different demands of being the primary collaborator and accompanist for a soloist, particularly a vocalist, in a duo or ensemble setting.\u00a0 It is also important to look at the lesser known players who excelled at accompanying.\u00a0 \u00a0The players I\u2019ll be looking at in this post include Oscar Peterson, who was best known as a soloist but had major collaborations with singers, Ellis Larkins, Carl Drinkard and Jimmy Jones, who were lesser known but were very fine accompanists, Wynton Kelly and Duke Jordan, who recorded both as soloists and accompanists, and Bud Powell. Powell\u2019s collaborations with singers are little known, but the few recordings of that were made of them, as well as some of his live recordings with Charlie Parker, illustrate that although he was a revolutionary soloist and composer, as an accompanist, he occasionally made some classic accompanying mistakes.<\/p>\n
Despite being an undeniably important figure in the evolution of instrumental jazz, Powell\u2019s accompanying in some settings starkly and even humorously demonstrates a lack of empathy with the soloist. I will be discussing excerpts from the accompanying work of Peterson, Larkins, Drinkard, Jordan, Jones and Kelly which I think have much to teach aspiring accompanists about the craft, as well as a few excerpts from Powell\u2019s accompanying which simultaneously illustrate his genius as a soloist and some accompanying pitfalls to avoid. \u00a0(I do not intend any of the criticism of Bud Powell\u2019s accompanying in this post to detract from the fact that he is a hugely important soloist, composer and ensemble player in instrumental contexts, and that his music is crucial to all jazz listeners and players. \u00a0 I urge anyone who doubts my reverence for Powell\u2019s playing to consult my posts Six Degrees of Bud Powell<\/a> and Six Degrees of Bud Powell, Part ii-V-I<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Pianists who are great soloists and improvisers in instrumental settings are able to carry the melodic narrative of a piece in a way that clearly articulates the starting parameters of the piece (tempo, dynamics, style, etc.) and closely follows the various \u2018changes\u2019 of a piece (including chord changes, key changes and lyrics).\u00a0 \u00a0Pianists who are great ensemble players in instrumental settings are able to create accompaniments that show an acute awareness of those parameters and changes. \u00a0\u00a0While good accompanists must have all these skills, they also have responsibilities which require an additional level of skill with interpersonal communication and musical understanding.\u00a0 They must establish and maintain a working relationship with a particular soloist, develop a detailed awareness of the soloist\u2019s aesthetic and artistic goals, and assist the soloist in achieving these goals through both long-range planning in rehearsal and through verbal and non-verbal communication in the moment of performance.\u00a0 While a skilled ensemble player can stay aligned musically with a soloist and perhaps react musically to the soloist\u2019s choices, a skilled accompanist can anticipate the soloist\u2019s needs. \u00a0Accompanists acquire this ability both through making explicit plans (such as an arrangement) with the soloist, as well as accumulating enough experience in rehearsal and performance with the soloist to be able to anticipate their needs and intentions.<\/p>\n While becoming a proficient soloist and ensemble player in instrumental setting involves a great amount of personal practice time, great instrumental soloists and ensemble players often develop a musical connection with other players with little or no ensemble rehearsal time.\u00a0 I remember hearing Dave Brubeck announce during a performance in Burlington with the bassist Michael Moore that it was their very first time playing together.\u00a0 I have heard many great instrumentalists make this kind of announcement during a performance, as a celebration of the spontaneity of jazz.\u00a0\u00a0 It often takes a greater amount of rehearsal time for a jazz vocalist and accompanist to develop an effective working relationship, often because accompanying vocalists is considerably different and arguably more challenging for the accompanist than accompanying jazz instrumentalists.\u00a0 For example, vocalists often sing tunes from outside the instrumental jazz repertoire.\u00a0 When they do sing tunes from that repertoire, they frequently require different keys than instrumentalists, and often add sections (such as the introductory \u2018verse\u2019) that aren\u2019t part of a typical instrumental \u2018head arrangement\u2019 of the tune.<\/p>\n In addition to familiarity with the significantly different vocal repertoire, there are a number of other skills that a pianist needs in order to accompany vocalists.\u00a0 In the following paragraphs, I will discuss skills that relate to sections of a typical jazz small group arrangement.<\/p>\n Intro skills<\/strong><\/p>\n An accompanist must be able to play an intro in a way that leads a soloist to their first note and leaves space for the melody\u2019s opening phrase.\u00a0 A classic example of this is Oscar Peterson\u2019s intro to Moonlight in Vermont on the album Louis and Ella<\/a>.\u00a0 Peterson vamps the opening four chords of the tune twice, while improvising with the pentatonic scale that the melody uses.\u00a0 He ends with a phrase that approaches Fitzgerald\u2019s opening note via its chromatic neighbor tones (i.e. a half step above and below) and its diatonic neighbor (a whole step above).\u00a0 It is an opening gesture that is at once sophisticated and simple, and leaves a clear opening for the soloist\u2019s entrance.<\/p>\n An example of what can happen when an intro does not clearly tell the soloist when to enter can be heard on Bud Powell\u2019s intro to \u2018Ornithology\u2019 on the live recording One Night at Birdland<\/a>.\u00a0 As documented by Ethan Iverson in his article High Bebop<\/a>, Powell plays four bars that begin in the distant key of A flat major.\u00a0 While Powell\u2019s intro does return to the tune\u2019s key of G major and hints at the opening motive, his left hand chording obscures the downbeat enough that Parker enters on what Iverson identifies as Powell\u2019s \u2018and\u2019 of two, and treats it as the \u2018and\u2019 of four.\u00a0 Parker\u2019s entrance, which demonstrates that Powell has managed (perhaps intentionally) to confuse an otherwise unshakeable fellow musical giant, is followed by Art Blakey\u2019s cymbal crash on what Parker has established as beat three of bar two, and Fats Navarro\u2019s entrance on the pickup to bar three.\u00a0 Powell creates so much instability with his intro that Parker is forced to intervene before more confusion ensues.\u00a0 A ripple effect of Powell’s intro is that Blakey and Navarro to enter in a later and much less coordinated way than they normally would.\u00a0 The genius of all these players keeps it from sounding like a \u2018train wreck\u2019 opening and allows the performance to continue smoothly afterwards; but it is still a moment that could easily lead to an aborted tune with players any less gifted than these.<\/p>\n An accompanist needs to be able to handle a rubato section which may involve simply following the soloist, or may involve the accompaniment and soloist taking turns leading and following.\u00a0 These often occur in the opening of a tune at the \u2018verse\u2019 (a narrative opening section in a jazz standard.)\u00a0 An example of this is Jimmy Jones\u2019 accompaniment of Ella Fitzgerald on the intro to \u2018Let\u2019s Do It\u2019 from the album \u2018The Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington Concerts at Cote D\u2019Azur\u2019<\/a>.\u00a0 Ella speeds up and slows down throughout intro in order to maintain the conversational approach appropriate for Cole Porter\u2019s lyric, and Jones follows her throughout, sometimes running to catch up but always ending each phrase with her.\u00a0 I have found that the best way to develop this level of rhythmic empathy is to know the tune, both melody and lyrics, well enough to mentally \u2018sing along\u2019 with the soloist while accompanying.\u00a0 Jones\u2019 skill at following Fitzgerald here suggests to me that he is doing this. \u00a0It is a testament to the unique challenge of vocal accompaniment that the only songs in the concert where Duke Ellington steps aside to let another pianist play with his band is when it comes to the vocal solos in the concert.<\/p>\n Skills for accompanying the \u2018head\u2019 (melody)<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>An accompanist needs to be able to improvise fills in the breaks of a melody in a way that supports the soloist but does not overshadow them.\u00a0 On Billie Holiday\u2019s live version of I Cover The Waterfront from 1954<\/a>, pianist Carl Drinkard leaves space for each vocal phrase in the first A section of melody (\u2018I cover the waterfront\/I\u2019m watching the sea\u2019), accompanying each phrase in the lyrics with chords and then responding with an overlapping improvised phrase.\u00a0 While Drinkard\u2019s fills do start to move more simultaneously with the melody as he accompanies the second A section (\u2018I cover the waterfront \/ In search of my love\u2019), he leaves space, appropriately enough, for the word \u2018patiently\u2019 in the phrase \u2018Here am I \/ patiently waiting\u2019 which opens the bridge.\u00a0 His accompaniment for the tune is orchestral in that each fill occupies a specific range of the piano, evoking an arrangement where instruments with different ranges take turns in the sonic foreground.\u00a0 Drinkard\u2019s improvised fills during Holiday\u2019s vocal contrast the melody both by moving in a different rhythmic subdivision than the melody uses (often 16th<\/sup> notes), and sometimes by providing a simultaneous counterpoint to it.<\/p>\n An alternative approach to adding melody fills is demonstrated by the sublime Ellis Larkins in his accompaniment to \u2018What Is There To Say?\u2019 sung by Ella Fitzgerald<\/a>.\u00a0 Larkins fills only in the breaks of the melody, and his fills are often ingenious developments of the melody phrases that they follow.<\/p>\n A collaboration which is less successful to my ear is a version of I Cover The Waterfront<\/a> heard in a short film where Bud Powell accompanies the otherwise unknown singer Trudy Peters.\u00a0 Where Drinkard sensitively surrounds Holiday\u2019s vocal phrases with melodic activity, Powell often allows his virtuosity to upstage Peters\u2019 vocal performance.\u00a0 Although Peters holds her own in the sonic balance with Powell, her tone, vocal phrasing and physicality suggest that she is a Billie Holiday admirer who is still in an imitative stage.\u00a0 For much of the performance, Powell does not so much accompany as he simply takes an almost fully formed solo during Peters\u2019 vocal, and it should be said that the solo on its own is comparable to his best ballad playing on tunes like I Should Care<\/a>.\u00a0 The effect of this pianist-ignores-vocalist situation is sometimes hilarious, as when Powell plays a fill that spans nearly the length of the entire keyboard as Peters sings \u2018Here am I, patiently waiting\u2019 in the bridge.\u00a0 Although he is playing phrases of characteristic brilliance that would be perfectly at home in a trio performance, it sounds to me like Powell is marking time until this vocal solo is over, but not patiently.<\/p>\n Skills for accompanying an improvised solo<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong>Another awkward moment in Powell\u2019s comping occurs in the first chorus of Charlie Parker\u2019s solo around 1:07 on \u2018All The Things You Are\u2019 from the album Jazz At Massey Hall<\/em><\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0 Powell plays continuous quarter notes behind the first sixteen bars of Parker\u2019s solo, but rather than the quieter and melodically minimal quarter notes of Freddie Green\u2019s guitar or Erroll Garner\u2019s left hand, Powell\u2019s quarters are full of the kind of harmonic invention heard on trio tunes such as Sure Thing.\u00a0 This does not fit with Parker\u2019s busy and virtuosic line, or perhaps the density of his double-timing is a reaction to Powell\u2019s harmonically \u2018out\u2019 and rhythmically relentless chords. Bird\u2019s frustration builds audibly in the solo until the bridge when, just as Powell starts to relent and play longer chords, Parker plays a phrase which is likely a quote from a children\u2019s song with a skipping 12\/8 rhythm, but which he fills with irony.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s likely that Parker\u2019s expresses the frustration of trying to battle Powell\u2019s accompanying. As in \u2018I Cover The Waterfront\u2019, it sounds like Powell may not conceive of his playing and that of the soloist in the same context, or may hear his own playing as a lead part and the soloist\u2019s line as an accompaniment.<\/p>\n Parker’s soloing on the Massey Hall ‘All The Things’ is similar in rhythmic concept to an earlier recording of his which uses the same progression, Bird of Paradise<\/a>.\u00a0 On this recording, the pianist Duke Jordan leaves Parker much more space than Powell does.\u00a0 Jordan’s accompaniment indicates he understand that Parker’s double-timed phrases need sparse punctuation rather than a constantly active accompaniment.\u00a0 Another more empathetic approach to comping on this tune can be heard in Wynton Kelly\u2019s comping behind Johnny Griffin on \u2018All The Things You Are\u2019 from the album A Blowing Sessio<\/em><\/a>n<\/em>.\u00a0 Griffin has a level of frenetic activity in his solo similar to Parker\u2019s, and Kelly comps around Griffin\u2019s phrases in a way that is more active than Jordan, but more responsive than Powell.<\/p>\n Jazz accompanying, and particularly piano accompaniment of jazz vocalists, is less often identified as a discrete skill, as the literature on jazz piano (like the jazz education world in general) is more focused on skills related to playing instrumental repertoire.\u00a0 It is becoming gradually more common, as represented by books like Mike Greensill\u2019s<\/a>, which are still fairly rare in the jazz book market.<\/p>\n The lack of recognition in jazz education for jazz vocal accompanying as a discrete skill is reminiscent of a situation in the scientific world that Alan Alda describes in a recent book titled \u2018If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look On My Face?\u2019<\/a>\u00a0 Alda describes his efforts to convince science educators of his belief that scientists, particularly those who go into fields where fundraising is important, are often lacking in communication skills, and as a result have trouble explaining their work to non-specialist audiences.\u00a0 He tells fascinating stories about teaching theater improvisation games to scientists and helping them develop skills which greatly improve the effectiveness of the presentations they give on their work. He describes a conversation with a college president who was unconvinced of the need for science students to learn communication skills and \u2018seemed to feel that students would pick up the fine points of communicating just by listening to good communicators.\u2019\u00a0 Alda invokes a musical metaphor to express what he wishes he could tell the administrator:\u00a0\u00a0 \u2018\u2026just listening to good communicators doesn\u2019t work.\u00a0 It takes training to learn how to do it.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been listening to good pianists all my life and I still can\u2019t play the piano.\u2019<\/p>\n To adapt Alda\u2019s conclusion, I believe the excerpts from Powell\u2019s comping above demonstrate that it\u2019s possible to have been a great jazz pianist all your life and still not have the skills to be an accompanist.\u00a0 The excerpts from Peterson, Larkins, Drinkard, Jones, Jordan and Kelly above are examples of empathy.\u00a0 This includes being aware ahead of time of the soloist\u2019s part, both what they are doing in the moment and in coming moments, as in Peterson\u2019s intro and Larkins\u2019 fills to Fitzgerald\u2019s eminently accurate yet still fresh interpretations.\u00a0 \u00a0It also includes being able to react in the moment to spontaneous changes they may make to the parameters of the piece, as in Drinkard\u2019s fills to Holiday\u2019s less predictable phrasing, Jones\u2019 tracking of Fitzgerald\u2019s unpredictable rubato, and Kelly\u2019s comping for Griffin\u2019s solo.<\/p>\n My experience as an accompanist and a teacher has led me to believe strongly that it is crucial for developing jazz pianists to have training in the skills that I\u2019ve described above from a teacher who has experience as an accompanist .\u00a0 Any jazz accompanist needs these skills in order to give a performance with basic coherence, i.e. one that moves from start to finish of an arrangement with no ‘train wrecks’.\u00a0 As the examples I’ve used have demonstrated, these skills are also an integral part of performances at the highest levels of musical communication.\u00a0 I have learned immensely from teachers who listened as I accompanied a soloist in my student days and gave me important feedback, sometimes even while the music was in progress.\u00a0 It is so important when collaborating to have the collaboration heard by a informed listener who can offer suggestions on how dynamic balance, rhythmic alignment and creative interplay can be improved, and who can listen as the suggestions are tried.\u00a0 I am thinking of using a new phrase to congratulate accompanist-soloist duos who are ready to perform: sing, swing and empathize!<\/p>\n In future posts, I’ll hope to discuss skills for ending a tune, as well as one of the most highly evolved piano-vocal duo collaborations, that of Tony Bennett and Bill Evans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My students often ask me: \u2018how can I get better at comping?\u2019 or \u2018how can I get better at playing with singers?\u2019\u00a0 In developing my response to these important questions over the years, I\u2019ve found that it\u2019s fascinating to look … Continue reading