Q&A with Alan Broadbent

Exclusive Interview by Karen Beishuizen
Photos courtesy of Alan Broadbent

Alan Broadbent is a jazz pianist from New Zealand who worked with Sue Raney, Woody Herman, Chet Baker, Sheila Jordan, Glenn Frey, Sir Paul McCartney, and many others. He recorded on Natalie Cole’s album “Unforgettable… With Love”. He became her pianist and conductor for the tour that followed. His arrangement for her video “When I Fall in Love“ won the Grammy for Best Orchestral Arrangement Accompany a Vocal. He plays regularly in New York at a club called “Mezzrow”with his trio. So, if you have never seen Alan Live, you know now where to find him! Go check him out!

KB: Did you always want to be a musician growing up?

Ever since Chopin reached out to me and grasped my 8-year-old heart. I kept it a secret, as I knew nobody would comprehend how someone over 200 years old could possibly communicate directly to me, a child, just through notes. It was an intuitive and immediate understanding and I had to learn how to do that. Later, Bud Powell, Charlie Parker (Bird) and Gustav Mahler did the same thing to me, although now I was old enough to begin a lifelong relationship of study in their music, both as a composer/orchestrater and jazz pianist.

KB: What is so special about the piano?

It is made up of wood and metal, does not breath, yet it speaks according to the will of each individual performer. Thousands of great pianists over so many years have had their own touch and sound on it. It requires great technical mastery, but I am more drawn to the singers on the instrument, such as Bud Powell and Yuja Wang, Bill Evans and Arthur Rubenstein. Yes, I equate them together in my own musical world.

KB: Who were your favorite musicians in Jazz growing up?

When I was young, the compositions of Dave Brubeck and the singing alto sax of Paul Desmond. Then I discovered Bud, Bird and especially two albums by Lennie Tristano; “The New Tristano” and simply, “Tristano”, which features his magical “Line Up”, an improvisation on the old standard “All of Me”. These I continue to learn from.

KB: What makes a great jazz song?

One that has a solid, easy to memorize, form with interesting chord changes to improvise on and that are not too difficult to follow for the listener. They are mostly songs from the 50s & 60s, before the onset of jazz fusion, jazz rock and difficult time signatures. They don’t present the same challenge to me, which is to create endless melodies in the feeling of jazz time. Not only my young students at NYU, but jazz musicians all over the world still play them to express themselves and they are our common means of personal expression, our sonatas, our etudes, which we play wherever we go.

KB: You worked with Chet Baker?

Oh, that was just one rainy night at a club in Los Angeles called Hop Sing’s, back in the late 80s. The group was Chet, Mike Fahn on trombone, Charlie Haden on bass and Billy Higgins on drums. I think there were 5 people in the audience, my wife and her friend and another table. As I’d begin to take a solo, I would play a phrase and I could hear this disembodied voice in my head encouraging me on to my next phrase and the next, not in any obtrusive way, but softly, gently. Charlie reminded me years later that it was Chet listening and reacting deeply to what I was playing. It remains a beautiful and cherished memory.

KB: You wrote arrangements for Glenn Frey’s album “After Hours” and Sir Paul McCartney’s album “Kisses on the bottom”: For which songs were these arrangements and how did they ask you?

I wrote string arrangements for all the tunes on those albums. Paul McCartney hired me on the recommendation of my dear friend, Diana Krall. Glen’s musicians suggested my name to him on account of hearing my work with Shirley Horn. Both albums were already recorded by the rhythm section together with the vocals, so it was a matter of filling in the blanks with background colorings and simple lines so as not to distract from the existing takes, much like a good craftsman might do. Arranging for orchestra is a different experience for me compared to improvisation. As an arranger I’m able to orchestrate in different styles according to the needs of a particular project, delighting in the joy of creating and experimenting with instrumental colors. But as a jazz performer I’m unable to do that, because if it doesn’t have that feeling, what Tristano called a life force, I feel lost and untrue to myself. Many colleagues have no problem with this, and I envy them their versatility. Balancing a life between the arranger and jazz performer, though, is a constant give and take which can get a little overwhelming at times.

KB: You can make an album with 7 Jazz songs. Not your own songs: What songs would you pick and why?

Well, I’ve recorded them all, at least the ones I love. As is said, especially in jazz improvisation, composers sometimes don’t realize the potential in reharmonizing and conceptualizing their songs to give them a deeper feeling beyond the words. A case in point to me would be the great genius of American music, Leonard Bernstein, who can be seen rehearsing his beautiful song “Some Other Time” on YouTube. But the way he treats it can’t be compared to the extraordinary interpretation of Bill Evans, who takes it to another level of beauty and communication with just his trio and the notes. That being said, tunes with certain intervals and harmonic possibilities that move me are:

I Wish I Knew (Harry Warren)
Lament (J.J. Johnson)
‘Round Midnight (Thelonious Monk, Cootie Williams)
If You Could See Me Now (Tadd Dameron)
Naima (John Coltrane)
They Say It’s Wonderful (Irving Berlin)
Body And Soul (Johnny Green)

There are many more, of course, but depending on how I’m feeling, the song I choose in the moment will never be the same as I played it before. Again, it’s not so much about the tune, but what is the best one that will enable me to express what I’m feeling at this moment in time in terms of its melodic content, harmony and tempo. I must have played “Body and Soul” at least 2000 times in the course of a lifetime and never once have I repeated myself in improvising on the chords and with my melodic phrasing. To do so is anathema to me.

KB: Are there currently any artists out there you would love to work with or wished you had?

Speaking of young people and these songs, there is Samara Joy who, through the lineage of Louis Armstrong (the inventor of jazz time) and Billie Holiday (who considered herself an extension of Louis), brings feelings and emotions up to the present time through her technique and heart. By the way, these are not ‘covers’, a word I disagree with as relates to jazz. They are unique renditions each time they are performed and not a copy of some other version. As to whom I wished I had worked with, that would take up too many pages for this interview.

KB: What are you currently up to?

I have recently returned from Cologne, home of the great WDR Big Band which commissioned me to write a tribute to Miles Davis. Selections from the concert can be seen on YouTube. I also did an album some 10 years ago with the equally superb NDR Big Band in Hamburg of all my original arrangements called “America the Beautiful”. So here are just two examples of what happens when a government allocates funds for the arts, especially jazz, which cannot compete with the industrial, corporate, entertainment industry in being able to support itself. I play regularly here in New York at a club called “Mezzrow” with my trio. These are live streamed and can be seen on YouTube also. This club and its partner “Smalls” are owned and operated by Spike Wilner, himself a great jazz pianist, and they give us an opportunity to play for a broad spectrum of the community where young people, especially, can come to listen and feel the energy of this generous music without costing them a small fortune. But mostly I live from day-to-day practicing, studying, as I have for 70 years now, in the hopes that tomorrow will bring a new experience and a chance to express something meaningful to sensitively intelligent, music loving, listeners.

Check out Alan’s website: HERE

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