TT 447: Four Questions for Piers Playfair
Introducing the commissioner of the new record
Thanks to pre-orders, I’m #1 New Release in Classical Sonatas. Probably not the hardest metric to move the needle on, but still! Undoubtedly some people are treating the cover art by Roz Chast as a collectible. I suppose if enough pre-orders come in, the algorithm will make the bots do more good stuff for me, so I encourage you to pre-order here.
The six Playfair Sonatas are completely written out and played by Miranda Cuckson, violin; Makoto Nakura, marimba; Carol McGonnell, clarinet; Mike Lormand, trombone; Taimur Sullivan, saxophone; and Tim Leopold, trumpet. (I play piano on everything.)
The release date on Urlicht AudioVisual is November 15, 2024.
Scrolling score videos for the singles:
“Music Hall (for Carla Bley)”
“Hymn (for Roswell Rudd)”
Hi Piers! Can you explain something of how you got into music and your history in the business?
I was a child of the 1960’s and 1970’s. As an infant I remember singing The Beatles' “She Loves You” to my sister. You couldn’t help but be affected by the vibe of the Fab Four even as a 5 year old in 1963! I can trace my childhood and adolescence through popular music. “A Whiter Shade of Pale” being played over and over in a west London apartment in 1967, spending an hour in Harrods choosing between Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” and The Kinks’ “Lola” for my first ever ‘45 rpm singles purchase in 1971 — and more importantly the whole underground music world of the early ‘70s. Yes, Genesis, Floyd and particularly the Canterbury scene of Soft Machine, Caravan and Kevin Ayers all featured heavily and influenced my teenage years. All the time I studied music at school, played instruments and was a chorister.
Throughout university I was an avid opera and musical theater fan and count myself incredibly lucky to have seen some of the truly great singers in their prime including Bergonzi, Bumbry, McIntyre, Jones, Baker etc.
How did you start 23Arts, and what have been some highlights?
There was a hiatus in my music involvement — where I was a banker and money manager — until something happened in 2011 when I was asked to start a program for the Orpheum Theater, which had just been built in the village in Tannersville NY.
I chose jazz.
Let me go back: Those that remember 1984 NYC will recall the tremendous dwelling shortage. The question du jour at the time was “How did you find your apartment.” You would queue up on Saturday nights to get the NY Times real estate section and spend Sunday desperately running round town looking for a place. Being a recent English arrival and blissfully unaware I looked at the Monday section and — to cut a long story short — found myself Stanley Crouch’s neighbor in a first floor sublet on West 11th St. He became my friend and NY mentor (and for those that aren’t aware one of the giants of the jazz world as critic, mentor to Wynton Marsalis and co-founder of JALC). Early on in our friendship he used to take me to the Vanguard where I was exposed to some of the greats. A highlight was attending the 50th anniversary of the club in 1985 where I remember the Weavers (at least Ronnie Gilbert) taking the stage.
So it was only natural to call Stanley in 2011 who introduced me to a young Aaron Diehl over dinner. You didn’t need to listen to a note to know that Aaron was special and it was easy to support him in the original vision of having a week-long residency to support content and young artist development. Catskill Jazz Factory thus was born. Over the next six years hundreds of artists came to upstate NY to play across the region in every kind of venue from doughnut shops to major concert halls.
Covid hurt the effort and caused a reappraisal. Time also changes things and many of the artists that I worked closely with obviously evolved in different ways and I took the decision to evolve the organization with the changing needs of the people we had become close to. Broadly speaking this has resulted in supporting recording projects and commissioning new work under our new umbrella, 23Arts.
Highlights? My wife Lucy and I talk about our top ten all the time. I was really proud of a show I conceived last year called A French Affair with Dan Tepfer, Cécile McLorin Salvant, and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra at the Grange Music Festival.
It was an honor to program all of Bard’s Jazz for four years at all their venues and do two big series at the NY Botanical Gardens.
I also never will forget doing a huge Orchestral Concert at the King’s Theatre in Brooklyn of Steve Hackman’s Brahms Radio Head mashup.
There are a lot of smaller things that are highlights too. I feel just lucky to have been involved in so much. Last month I oversaw a recording session with Dominick Farinacci of Duke Ellington music, that was very exciting. Mathis Picard plays a remarkable solo piano rendition of “Fast and Furious” that everyone needs to hear.
Look at this: A brand new record, Ethan Iverson’s Playfair Sonatas. What’s your take?
Love it! Also happens to bang in in line with everything I believe in and want to do. No artist wants to be defined and put in a box. In my experience it is venues and music companies that like to do that. So to commission a brilliant jazz musician to write in a classical form for often unconventional instruments is right up my street. Classical music in particular needs new accessible music because without it it kind of de-oxyginates. Trombones, marimbas, and alto saxes all could use a sonata specifically written for them too.
Curveball: I know your first love is the theatre. List five of your top experiences seeing a play.
I was born into the theatre and acted and directed professionally. Candidly I am a little depressed by what has happened to the theatre. If you don’t practice your craft you are likely not to be that good at it and these days it's very tough to make a living solely as a Stage Actor. Also as you can probably tell from the way I have gone about programming music I don’t believe in typecasting….fast way to ruin great acting…let a great artist do the creative work for you.
The vast majority of my great experiences happened in the 1980’s. Here’s a go: Maggie Smith in Lettuce and Lovage on Broadway, Maggie Smith as Millament in The Way of the World, Gielgud and Richardson in No Man’s Land at the National Theatre, the premiere of Evita with Elaine Paige and David Essex and finally Judy Dench and Ian McKellen in Macbeth at the Donmar Warehouse. Oh, to revisit those five again!
Previously: Four questions for Gene Gaudette.
Love that photo of Cécile and Dan and their ‘French Connection’! Grateful for supporters of the arts like Piers.