Geoff: 0:01

Hello podcats, Geoff Gascoyne, here. Today I'm going to be talking to an old friend of mine, Pete Churchill, A great educator, great piano player and singer, composer, arranger, a mainstay of the British jazz scene for many, many years. We used to work together in the 90s. I haven't seen him for a while, so I'm looking forward to catching up with him and seeing what he has to say. So here we go.

Announcement: 0:37

The Quartet Jazz Standards podcast is brought to you by the Quartet app for iOS, taking your jazz play along to another level.

Geoff: 0:46

It's Pete Churchill, hello, mate.

Pete: 0:47

Hello, Geoff. How are you today? I'm very well. Yeah, very, very well. It's lovely to be here.

Geoff: 0:52

Good. Can we start by talking about how you got started in jazz? What's your background? Because I know we've known each other a long time God haven't we? But I don't think I know much about your history.

Pete: 1:02

Oh, it's so traumatic. No, it's not traumatic.

Geoff: 1:04

We met in the 90s, didn't we? We started off playing together in the 90s.

Pete: 1:08

Yeah, that's right and sort of crossed paths in various bands, and we did a lovely little album together, didn't we? We did a Christmas album, yeah, a Christmas album, which I think was like the 12 keys of C hristmas

Pete: 1:19

That's right. Yes, the, that's right. Yes, th Win Winter Wonderland yeah.

Pete: 1:22

Yeah, Adam Glasser Andy.

Geoff: 1:24

Panayi.

Pete: 1:24

Yeah, how did it all begin? Is that where you want to know? Yeah, yeah, Interestingly enough, my parents were both classical musicians. I'm quite sort of highbrow, I guess. In London in the 50s and 60s my dad was organist and choir director at St Martin's in the Fields. Really.

Pete: 1:45

And my mum was sub-organist and also a recital organist and concert pianist. He founded that orchestra, the Academy of St Martin's in the Fields, and he was the original. He was a Baroque specialist and an improviser Baroque improviser he was one of those people who could improvise fugues and all that stuff. We left the UK and emigrated to Canada. When I was six, Dad got offered a job to start a music department in Ottawa. really and so the whole family traveled on a big boat from Southampton to Montreal docks wow and the idea of leaving what you knew and going somewhere that you don't know happened quite young for me and I went to a Canadian school for a couple of years before.

Pete: 2:20

in their wisdom they sent us all back to a school in the UK but remained in Canada. I think my parents probably thought parenting was a bit of an ordeal. My dad used to say in hindsight, when I questioned him about the wisdom of sending your eight-year-old child off to boarding school, he said well, these people are professionals, we're all amateurs. I agree, parenting we're all amateurs.

Geoff: 2:42

I've spoke to a few different people about this parents and the relationship between musician parents and their kids, and we both obviously have kids that are musicians.

Pete: 2:51

Yes, that's right, so we have different experiences of this.

Pete: 2:54

I was away at school and I was taking piano lessons and cello lessons. There were three kids that made us all learn two instruments on the understanding. I gather that when we got into rebellious mode they could negotiate well, you can give up one of them. I gave up the cello. You know, I had a moment at the school where I gave up all music and it was quite dramatic. I decided I didn't want to play the cello in the school orchestra in assembly one morning. I just thought I can't do this anymore. This is horrendous. And when I got into trouble for it I thought, well, in for a penny and I said and actually I'm not going to do piano either or be in the school orchestra or the school choir or do music O- O-level level level. Yeah, and so, like I was maybe 13, right, and all music stopped. I didn't do music at school and my dad started to send me cassette tapes of jazz pianists and things.

Announcement: 3:46

And.

Pete: 3:46

I started to listen to, you know, Jelly Roll, orton and Louis Armstrong Hot Five recordings, and then I got into a bit of Errol Garner and all that.

Geoff: 3:55

The music of rebellion, I guess for a child.

Pete: 3:57

Well, you know, and it was interesting, my dad was a jazz fan, you know. I mean he could always play standards with good harmony in all keys. I thought, oh well, obviously you're meant to play every tune in every key, or else you'll never get a gig. You know there's things.

Pete: 4:15

Nobody told me that that's not the case. So from quite early on I was playing and trying to teach myself to read chord symbols, but I never did classical study again. Well, for a child it can be very cold, can't it? I wasn't built for the exam system the way I'm wired. My last piano teacher was a school organist who happened to be called Mr Pipes and you're meant to take them seriously, right? You know, it's like it's not his fault, but he obviously thought I should learn the Pathetique and after six months, on the first three pages I'd lost the will to live.

Pete: 4:49

You know, yeah, but I did learn a lot of pop songs, mostly to stay in with some kind of social groups. I learned a lot of Elton John. I learned more about triads from Elton John songs and I learned doing Bach chorales, yeah. So I kept in touch with music until I left. I left school at 16 and went to Canada, because that's where my parents were, and went to university to do art history interesting and almost got an art history degree, um, but I was playing piano bars. I'm really grateful that I did, basically in liberal arts degree. Yeah, the reason I changed to music, bearing in mind I didn't really read or write music at the time was because I was asked to write a musical at university and I wrote 10 songs for the university theatre company and then they said you've got a band and it's a rhythm section and four front line.

Pete: 5:43

And I went, oh.

Geoff: 5:44

So you started composing music quite early on.

Pete: 5:47

Songwriting tunes. I was maybe 19, 18, 19. I'd written some things at school. You know some songs at school which I didn't play to anybody and I played a lot of boogie-woogie things and kind of you know things that you do.

Geoff: 6:04

I was exactly the same.

Pete: 6:05

Yeah, I was just like whatever Scott Joplin, yeah, and all that kind of thing. But I realised what I was doing. I was trying to write the Great American Songbook, trying to figure out how these things work, these cadences work, and learning about song form. And by this time I was learning a few standards and Cole Portertunes tunes tunes ported ported tunes. And so I was trying to write similar things. And I knew some broadway things and Sinatra my dad Basie had some sinatra and bassy big band albums and I had all that going on in my head and so I wrote these songs and then enrolled in a music course fundamentals of music to try and learn about notation and and it must have been a crash course, because within six months I'd written a kind of pad for the show. You know, I think it's interesting If you do music and then come to theory after you've been doing it for a long time.

Pete: 6:51

It's very different, you know. It's like basically, you're learning a vocabulary to describe sounds that are already in your head.

Geoff: 6:59

Interesting? Yeah, because I was the other way around. I started reading from a very young age.

Pete: 7:03

Right, yeah.

Geoff: 7:04

So I took it for granted. Yes, you know, and so I came to jazz. It's not about me, but I'll just say it anyway. No, no, no, it's really interesting you know, started to transcribe and write it down, right, yeah.

Pete: 7:22

And I would always write stuff down. Yeah, and you know, like Bill Evans with the record which is most? important. I learned to read by having to write music down. But I didn't read through the graded exams or anything, so I had no visual.

Pete: 7:36

I still have a very weird visual relationship with music. You know, I think efficient sight readers bypass the ear. Really, they have visual stimulus and a muscular response, sure, whereas I can only play something if I can hear it. So I'm basically sight singing in my head and trying to play what I hear. Yeah, which is not very efficient as you can, imagine.

Pete: 7:57

Yeah you know it took me seven years to get my degree because I had to start again after. You know, I was in my early 20s and I was still scrabbling around trying to figure out you know how music works. So I did four years of harmony and counterpoint more than I needed to, and so got really into like, because my dad was teaching there, I got the old school Royal College of Music where he used to teach kind of boot camp harmony, counterpoint right instruction.

Pete: 8:25

You know, invertible counterpoint, fugal expositions, five-part chorales. I had to do settings of the Mass, but I was still, I was kind of getting into jazz and there was a time when I thought I need to, I need to decide what I do after my degree. You know, and my parents pointed out that there was a summer course, uh, in Dartington in Devon, with Richard Rodney Bennett writing film music. So I sent off my scores because by now I'd done some incidental music to some Shakespeare plays and things. I got accepted. There were like eight composers. One of the composers, one of the eight composers, was um Scott Stroman, oh okay, who was, as we know, is, uh, you know, been at the Guildhall, quite influential teacher there, yeah, and he told me about the Guildhall course and the one year post-grad course which was in its infancy. This was 1984, yeah, and I think he'd only just started to teach there this is the birth of jazz education, isn't it?

Geoff: 9:24

In the UK?

Pete: 9:25

after that Leeds undergrad in light music, the only place you could go was I thought, oh, I'm going to have a go at this, and I sent off a portfolio of things you know from Canada and I didn't get on.

Geoff: 9:40

Funny. You should say that because I applied for the Guildhall, I didn't get in either.

Pete: 9:43

Yeah, In those days. I wanted to be not a piano player, I wanted to be a composer arranger. And the Guildhall I don't know if it's still that you can be a first study composer arranger.

Geoff: 9:53

You could then on the postgrad- diploma, But not getting into a course like that also teaches you a lot about your own self-discipline, doesn't it? Yeah, because self-discipline doesn't it yeah, because I remember that's what happened to me forced me to do lots of things I wouldn't have wouldn't have done, yeah, And so I sat down and I remember thinking what did when I had to write fugues and things.

Pete: 10:12

I'd used to spend all weekend just listening to Bach and then try and write something similar. right trying to find even though there was a kind of probably a way that you could teach it with. You know, by rules and regulations for me that I knew there was a sense in the sound and if I could just have that in my ear the way things worked and the, and so I thought, right, I'm going to do nothing for a week except listen to Sammy Nestico charts and Count camp Basie Baisy and whoever other things, and then I'll write something similar. So I did, yeah, and I got on. You know, and I do remember at my audition I had to play piano as well, and there was in those days Lionel Grigson oh yeah, was teaching.

Pete: 10:54

Lionel wanted me to go on as a piano player. Why do you want to be a composer Arranger arranger? should be a piano player. I mean, I like writing, oh well, if you play piano, you can write. And I'm thinking, no, I don't think that's true. You know, just because you can play the piano doesn't mean you can orchestrate and everything. So I went as a composer, arranger and it was a good year. I was there with Cleveland Watkiss and a lot of John Miles, a fantastic saxophone player, was there. He was a good mate.

Geoff: 11:21

I had a band with John Miles actually back in the 90s yeah you know.

Pete: 11:25

so it was like it was a good place for me, and then, after I'd graduated, with my PG Dip in jazz, you know it was quite hard because I'd done a lot of gigs in Canada before I left.

Pete: 11:40

A lot of people were there and they'd done an undergrad at a university or they'd done the Leeds course and they had much more jazz than I had. I was improvising but I didn't have any theory about jazz. I didn't know anything about modes. I sort of remembered them from studying polyphony or something, yeah, but I didn't know. It was a thing you know and I'm thinking oh my God, what's this, you know?

Pete: 12:03

and I went for it and I learned to write. I'd learned from Richard Rodney Bennett on those film musicals. I'd learned to write quickly. I wrote a lot of music that year so I think my fluency and my connection with notation was sort of solidified. I transcribed a lot of rhythmic music and I think that was my weakness was understanding rhythmic placements and things. And I think that was my weakness was understanding rhythmic placements and things. You know I was doing a lot of funk charts and 16th note stuff and that was really good at getting that together and I always sang. So I ended up almost running while I was a student, the Guildhall Jazz Singers. So I ended up writing all year vocal charts and also horn section things that you know. So I had you know. And then I wrote several big band charts. I kind of wrote things chronologically. I wrote a kind of Sammy Nestico style chart, then a kind of Thad Jones chart and then I tried to go for a kind of Bob Brookmeyer sound or something.

Geoff: 13:00

You know, I was just just to immerse yourself in the different styles of writing yeah, but also because I'd done classical music that way.

Pete: 13:06

I thought that was the way you should do jazz. You know, nobody told me, but I thought, well, obviously I shouldn't try and write a bebop chart until I can write a basic swing chart, you know. Yeah. And it's funny how you know those things are quite old-fashioned kind of approaches to education. Education, people sort of dive in the deep end now and then look back if they have time, you know.

Geoff: 13:28

You've taught a lot of very influential musicians in this and everyone speaks very highly of you. How has all this stuff informed your teaching?

Pete: 13:36

So one of the things I realised that I'm able to do is remember what it was like not to know.

Geoff: 13:42

Right.

Pete: 13:42

Like a lot of people, they forget the light bulb moment and they forget being puzzled by things that they now know about and so I quite enjoy remembering that. The teaching thing I did some Saturday morning harmony theory teaching to a singer's class at the Park shot Center at Richmond you know that one which is still going, I think.

Geoff: 14:05

I think Trudy used to teach there too. Yeah, that's right?

Pete: 14:07

Yeah, she did, and it was with Lee Gibson. Yeah, so, Lee Gibson. So then, on the strength of that, one of those singers two of them, I think Donna Canale and maybe Daniela Clynes got into the Guildhall, and then that seemed to be as I taught them.

Pete: 14:27

There I was then asked to teach at the Guild Guildhall.

Pete: 14:29

That's how we got second study, kind of things, you know second study piano, yeah.

Pete: 14:33

And then they said, well, you know, we need an ear training and harmony class. And I went to a staff and he said, well, I'll do it. And they went, really thinking it was the last thing anybody wanted to do and for me I thought that'd be great talk about harmony. And there was an arranging class with Scott and Simon Purcell and, uh, Lionel Grigson, I think, taught the improvisation class and I just provided information. It wasn't assessed. It was a really great time for me to learn about teaching. I basically thought, trying to organize things that led on one to another the idea, idea of curriculum, meaning you just don't go into a one-off class and then say what should we do next week? Everything had to have a point to it.

Geoff: 15:12

But the thing about jazz is it's such a broad subject you can't really put it into a kind of order, can you?

Pete: 15:18

Well, no, but the thing is, I've read up a lot about teaching and it was interesting. Like Bill Evans never wanted to teach and this was quite a significant realisation and when they asked him why I forget where I've read this it might be he said because he couldn't figure out how to teach improvisation without teaching style and he didn't want to teach style.

Geoff: 15:41

Okay.

Pete: 15:42

So he had almost like a moral problem with imposing a style on somebody who was improvising. It wasn't that he didn't think people should be taught, it's just he hadn't figured that out. And I used to look for a lot of things that were common, trying to look through complexity to something essential that was going on.

Geoff: 15:57

Right, that's a great point yeah.

Pete: 15:58

You. That could then be taught and then we could look at where it shows up in lots of different styles. I'd also come from a generation before fake books. You know, I lived in Canada and I was into jazz, but the only thing I did was go to the library and buy the published, you know, songs of Harold Arlen and I'd have a Harold Arlen week where I'd be going. I'd be playing this Harold Arlen off the sheet music slowly, because my sight reading was so bad and looking at these chord symbols that were written above the song copy and thinking doesn't look anything like what's going on in the bass.

Geoff: 16:33

Yeah, because those piano books are pretty badly done, aren't?

Pete: 16:36

they, yeah, but also the chord symbols, and sometimes with these little ukulele things my dad used to call the banjo portcullis, which is like you know you know, they look like, you know, with the dots, and I realized that that was just to tie up with the right hand shape of the piano accompaniment, so it was no good for the if you're reading it wanted to play the bass you know, yeah, and I was trying to figure out how did what I'm looking at here become this I'm hearing on the record so I could get a jazz record of Oscar playing Peterson playing something you go.

Pete: 17:05

How did that become that? So I became interested in in the how, the language. Really early on I was asking weird questions like what is a chord symbol for? Why do you use that? And then I thought well, from Baroque music it equates to figured bass and it's because you trust somebody to provide what's missing. It's a musical shorthand and it's not notation. That's why it's called a chord symbol. It's a symbol of something rather than the thing itself, and it assumes that somebody will have done a certain amount of work to fill things out, just as in continuo playing in Baroque music.

Pete: 17:42

So I got quite interested in that. Also, I had a responsibility. I thought I'm only about a couple of years older than these people. I tried to stay one step ahead and probably do more preparation than I actually had to. But I also, almost philosophically, I wanted to make people interested in don't try and get chord symbols to do something they're not designed to do. They can't tell you a voicing. It's like a short score of a sound designed to do. They can't tell you a voicing. It's like a short score of a sound. Now it's up to you. You know, in classical music they have this thing called comparison of additions, where they look at the first published edition of, and then the various edits and and I started to do the same thing for a standard, you know, I find the original song compare versions.

Pete: 18:20

Yeah, yeah, and it's interesting, if you take um, that ukulele chords, they don't do major sevens, right, and they don't do. They do minor sixes and six chords and they do sevens and they do like diminished. You know, it's basically like the left hand of an accordion, the back of an accordion, right, yeah, so you get like. So that became oh yeah. So then I figured that the bass, I used to sort of imagine a situation where a bass player says, oh God, this is dull, what am I going to do, you know? And then the bass player realising that like was just going to drive them mad. So then they go, go, you know, find other notes, you know, and then those are, we got some. And then, and then there's something, there's a two five, goes, no, and then the major seven sound change. At some point the sixes became major sevens, yep, and you got like, and then you got a two five, and then this is became a two five, and then they wanted and the turnaround was because they didn't want everything to stop every eight bars.

Pete: 19:43

So suddenly this is like I remember you you're the one who made my dreams come true. A few kisses and they became like you know, I was interested in how one became the other. Okay, what had to be happening? Yeah, and what the improviser was driving.

Geoff: 20:02

How the improviser was driving that change So how other chords were inserted between yeah, between what essentially would be like a one, four, five yeah, or possibly one five, one five, a few diminished chords and subdominant minor and things like that yeah, yeah and.

Pete: 20:19

But the thing, the thing is to look at a set of changes of like a bebop tune and see the old song copy changes. Yeah, so that you could play essential things. You didn't have to be led by the harmony, you could play something simpler if you wanted, and that became kind of part of that way I taught right changes.

Geoff: 20:36

Well, I found in my own teaching as well, it's very difficult to be subjective, isn't it? When you're a teacher, you learn a particular way. I learned a particular way how to improvise. Sure, and that's my experience. I transcribe this vocabulary, I applied it to this and I did it like that, you know. So do you find that you, you're able to be a bit more open? I found sometimes that my teaching could be a little bit.

Pete: 20:58

This is how I did it, you know yeah, I try and find a reason for being dogmatic with my students Like. There's this notion in an ensemble about being able to take care of business. There's an urge to express ourselves, but sometimes it's not all about you and sometimes you have to get yourself out of the way to let the music come through.

Pete: 21:25

And that means like just doing what is necessary for the material. You know, and I have this kind of stages in my mind that you know it's kind of whether you're an instrumentalist or a singer. You know we want to hear how you feel about the material, but first we want to hear the material so that we can really understand your relationship to it. I try and find a reason, you know, about serving the music, why certain things need to be practiced. And of course you know somebody can say, well, I don't really like that sound.

Pete: 21:49

And then yeah, and I say, well, that's not really the point you know, and that's become less and less maybe sustainable, I think, in the current climate, because, because times have changed, there aren't so many gigs where you have to go out and take care of business. You see what mean. More people are doing their own gigs with original music or they're doing contemporary things yeah sure.

Pete: 22:09

I remember a bass player who just went and got six nights a week at the Eve Club in Soho with Alan Berry, one of those old piano players, and said I just have to learn how to do the thing and he said it changed his life. And he said I can hear anything now and it's like oh, yeah, but that's never going to happen again. It doesn't make sense to hold on to that way of teaching. What you're trying to do is prepare a student for the first five years outside of the college to stay in music for five years, Because once you've done that, you go.

Geoff: 22:41

Oh, I think I'm all right now You've done your job, that you go. I think. I think I'm all right now. You've done your job, So I've made some apps Yes, you have? Yeah, absolutely you have. They're all about practicing jazz and practicing standards, because I, like you, I love standards and that has been the benchmark for for learning jazz I actually have them on my phone, Do you now?

Pete: 23:04

Yes, okay, I came through the Abersold things we both did. Yeah, yeah, but I found the Music Minus One from the 50s. Do you know that one? There's some play-alongs from the 50s with Oscar Pettiford and.

Geoff: 23:20

I've got one of the vinyls right here actually.

Pete: 23:21

Kenny Clark. Yeah, so I've used all those as a vocal improviser. Sometimes you have playalongs I'm not saying Abersold, but you can. You can hear that they've actually this that they're interacting with with, with an instrument that that then you never hear well, you can do, of course, in my of course you can.

Pete: 23:37

Yeah, but yeah. But the thing is what happens when you play, like but I mean really interact, you know, like those kind of like crashing around things, and you're in the middle of this maelstrom of kind of activity and you realise that they're not playing with you, they're playing with this something killing New York saxophone player who nobody's ever going to hear again, you know. So I used to go back to these 50s ones where you know pianists like Nat Pierce and Don Abney I think Mundell Lowe the guitarist was on those things Listening to them also to practice comping.

Pete: 24:07

I was thinking yeah, comping is like you know, I have this idea of gear changes in comping and I was really interested in that. You could hear them. Just kind of something would happen. It would go up a gear.

Pete: 24:17

Normally you hear it from the drums you know, we all know they go from brushes and then they go to sticks and then they have several cymbals and there's a high overdrive where they're on a certain ride and then you think, well, as a piano player, how am I going to match that energy? And so when I teach piano, a lot of what they come to me for is comping, because, as you know, I've done a lot of work with singers, where most of the reason you're booked is because of how you accompany those early play-alongs. I could hear that, you know, and I can hear that in your apps as well, this beautiful kind of, like you know, just beautifully placed time playing, but with the right voicing. I always say that the changes, especially those American Songbook things and the kind of 2-5-1 cadence things, changes are very disruptive To to swing . our playing, like whether you're a bass player or a pianist, is trying to pretend that the chords aren't really there. You just float through them and they're effortless voice leading, so it sounds like it's more linear.

Geoff: 25:21

A lot of those early Abersolds as well were a bit hit and miss, weren't they? Yeah, some of them sped up and some of them got really a bit too excited.

Pete: 25:27

Sure, sure, yeah. And I found that yeah to my point was that the earlier ones, that Music Minus One that I think was it was very elegant playing. I really loved it, you know. It reinforced my feeling of what I was just about able to do. I couldn't crash around like McCoy, you know.

Geoff: 25:46

So a method for singers to improvise, yeah.

Pete: 25:48

And the thing is, the model has got to be the people who improvised before there was any theoretical. You're looking at people like pre-Bebop, all right.

Geoff: 25:58

So Louis Armstrong yeah.

Pete: 26:00

Lester Young. Yeah, those people, those big band improvisers, you know, who are clearly playing by ear, got very linear approach but they catch all the changes but they probably are playing what they would sing. What can you study that puts you in there, in that zone, you know, if you're a singer right, so how do you start then?

Pete: 26:17

it's very much linked to the way that I teach harmony. You break things down into key centers that are like c. There are three primary major triads one, four and five and there are three primary minor triads six, two and three and those are all relative minors to the majors. So C and A minor, F and D minor, G and E minor, and each of those has its own two, five. Ah, we've now got six harmonic events that will probably happen in C without going anywhere. So that's six events. And then you realise that C sometimes goes to chord four. That's another little event. I'm doing this very quickly just to give you an idea. But that means that as a singer I have to be able to hear these cadential shifts. If I'm in C, I go. I want to stay here all day. Yes, I do, because it's very comfortable. But as soon as I want to go to A minor I have to be able to go, and I think the harmonic minor is the most singer friend. There's a couple of notes you're changing only one note.

Pete: 27:22

So you need to know oh, if I sharpen the fifth, I can get myself to my relative minor, but I need to be able. Oh, if I sharpen the fifth, I can get myself to my relative minor, that's right. Yeah, but I need to be able to do that without hearing the chord. So for singers, you have to be able to. B-major C-major, b-major A-minor.

Geoff: 27:36

It's that A note that you're changing.

Pete: 27:39

So this becomes that, yeah, so it's 50 years and it gives you a leading note. Yeah, yeah, if you look at the if I want to go to A minor, people find the fifth of the key you're going to and descend and that's where you suddenly it stops sounding like a scale and sounds like a, like a melodic event. So if I go, if I know, if I want to get to the relative minor, I have to find the third of my major key, which becomes the fifth of my minor key and descend.

Geoff: 28:11

Yeah, yeah, so I can go and then you've got a reference point. Yeah, just springboard.

Pete: 28:19

Yeah that's right, and those things you can practice as singers away from the piano. Yeah, I mean those are basic things to start with. You can understand the, the approach. I've got eight things mean those are basic things to start with. You can understand the approach. I've got eight things I want to do.

Pete: 28:29

I want to be able to cadence in my three major keys and my three minor keys. I want to go from chord one to chord four. There are notes you learn to flatten or raise of your key. So I just have to flatten my seventh and my sixth, which means I don't have to leave my sense of C. Six, which means I don't have to leave my sense of c. You know c is always there, which is what singers want. They want to feel that stability. They don't want to launch themselves when you can think where the hell am I? Um, but with singers you have to be very gentle because the voice is is the most vulnerable thing. Yeah, you know, um, like you, I love the, the American Songbook. You know I have to be careful. You know when some people you know they sing to unleash something. You know and and you know, and I think there's a singing is such a personal thing, isn't?

Pete: 29:12

it, yeah it is.

Geoff: 29:13

You're exposing your soul, aren't you, when you sing?

Pete: 29:15

but it's still the idea of when do you do that? I I try and go for the whole shape of the thing. Look, you've got a song. If you're going to sing two choruses up front, maybe paraphrase since we're talking about paraphrasing, maybe the paraphrase is going to happen in the second chorus. So you know, I have this thing. It's like you want to tell them what is, then you want to tell them what you feel about what is. Then maybe you'll tell them how you feel about the other people on stage and how you all feel about what is. Then you have time to tell the audience how you feel about them. Benjamin Britten used to talk about the holy triangle between the soloist, the ensemble and the audience and the energy flow that went you know different ways and sometimes one of one corner of the triangle was unaware of the other.

Pete: 29:59

You know it's like so interesting when you think of the dynamic in a listening ensemble that happens without having to talk about it yeah.

Pete: 30:06

If you don't have a huge amount of ensemble experience when you're a student, you have to articulate those things so people know what to listen for. The first thing is to be able to deliver the material on which you're going to paraphrase in a way that sits well within the ensemble. However you do it, Before you change the melody, there's a lot of quite a lot of riffing around standards. You know, Choose wisely when you do that kind of thing. You know there's a time where it's exactly the right thing to do. You know, For me, the first thing for singers is that sometimes the note is more of an effort than it is for them.

Pete: 30:42

You know, like the bass is a physical thing, you know you work, you work at getting sound and you best yeah you know, and the paradox of the fact that that, although it's a, you can't play a long note, you're trying to make it as long as you can. Sometimes, yeah, but given with the limitations of plucking the string, you know well this is.

Geoff: 30:58

This is one thing I noticed with beginner players is the decay.

Pete: 31:01

Don't have the note length correct, that's right, but I think that's a good model for singers. Back to your app. You know that's a fantastic resource really, because you can imagine this would be like a good swing in rhythm section drop your voice in anywhere and see if you can begin there.

Geoff: 31:15

So let's do that. I asked you to pick a standard that you'd like to, and maybe you could demonstrate some of these paraphrasing ideas. Well, you know Well you know. So which tune have you picked?

Pete: 31:22

for us. How Deep is the Ocean? How Deep is the Ocean? Okay, it's Irving Berlin originally.

Geoff: 31:27

Okay, so I'm going to play two choruses. All right, are you going to play piano or are you going to sing?

Pete: 31:33

I might do both at the same time.

Geoff: 31:35

Oh great.

Pete: 31:35

Okay, so I think there are a couple of things to demonstrate.

Geoff: 31:41

One is why I was talking about we're in the key of C minor, c minor, which is E flat, so I know I've got my E flat A flat and B flat, and I've got C minor, f minor and G minor and I've got 4 and 4 minor.

Pete: 32:00

These are things that happen in and around E flat, so just to give some context of this first thing I'm thinking of doing. I've got this C minor you know yeah. And then it goes to G minor, which is one of the satellite keys of my planet.

Announcement: 32:22

Satellite. Eh yeah, so it's like E flat is my planet and it's got like c minor, that's home base.

Pete: 32:27

Yes, and then c minor is rotating around, in the end f minor and g minor. So I know that in my voice. I'm going to have I have to be able to hear those so you're using the fifth as your your jumping off point. That's my fifth of the harmonic minor of each.

Geoff: 32:49

So C harmonic minor. Great thing about harmonic minor is it instantly sounds like bebop, doesn't it Because of that major.

Pete: 32:56

Third isn't it? Yeah, the business end of the harmonic minor is this augmented.

Pete: 33:01

Second, there's a minor third, which has semi. You know all those things. And so then I'm going to explore as a singer, I want to explore G minor, and then it goes back to, then it goes back to home, but before it lands there it goes to chord four. Now I know four minor. Then it's got this weird little half step. This is the other thing that happens. I'm in the key of E flat, I'm heading for that two, five, but it gives me the one upper semitone from there.

Pete: 33:35

Sa ba ba, woo, woo, wee, wee. Ah Sa ya da ba. But I've got to get back to you, know it's got these little games.

Pete: 33:42

It plays where you know you're almost going home and then it thwarts you and you go to another key. So say I've done masses of preparation.

Geoff: 33:49

I mean, you have the advantage because you're playing them on the piano as well, so why don't?

Pete: 33:53

we do it without me playing. Without you playing yeah but maybe give me the piano.

Geoff: 33:57

Okay, here we go please seven ¶¶.

Pete: 35:52

I think that particular tune covers everything, the only thing it might not cover. There's this thing I really like, which is the secondary, the dominant on two. Yeah, you know, sometimes people go if there was that, it's there, right? Yeah, that means what? The way you get to that is you sharpen the fifth of your key, you just go up, okay, so you can train singers to get there from the tonic triad no, he's the sharp 11th, isn't it yeah?

Pete: 36:24

so the sharp 5. But what you have to do is you have to hit for singers. Instead of explaining that in terms of the chord, like sharp 11 of the chord, you say it's the sharp 5 of your key, the tonic is always their reference point.

Pete: 36:40

That's what you need inside your ear. As a singer you can't just go. I'm on F7 now. Yeah, you know we were talking earlier about John Hendrix. If you listen to his scat solos he can throw his voice to any of those satellite keys at any time when he improvises. You know they're all ringing in his ears, those special notes. And then, and if you find that you know- then he'll go, you'll go. You know, like from that note you open another. So if you can, but like unlocking little doors.

Pete: 37:09

Yeah, I think it is, yeah but you've got to find the significance of those trigger notes yeah, like to get the leading note of all the minor keys you're trying to get to yeah, yeah and then, and the flattened seventh gets you to the subdominant and then the subdominant minor. It's this the note for the subdominant and then the subdominant minor. The note for the subdominant minor is the same note as for the secondary dominant.

Pete: 37:32

It's getting very technical now isn't it we're getting very deep now Excuse me while.

Pete: 37:36

I just go down this deep rabbit hole, the main thing is. It's a thing that happens all the time and the sound. There's a sense in the sound and you don't have to name it anything. You just have to say can you hear that? Can you hear what's happening? Now? I do that trigger notes. You're able to shape a solo better because you hear the whole form. You don't go oh, where am I? I've just been attending to this cadence and I've forgotten where I am.

Pete: 38:04

You have to see this much bigger picture, and I think I don't know if I ever retire, maybe I'll write the methodology book.

Geoff: 38:10

You know, one more methodology book I think you should be honest I think you're well so I mean the interesting thing about, um, paraphrasing things.

Pete: 38:19

The other thing which is a very natural way, I think, for singers to improvise and you hear it in a lot of instrumentalists and this is not a harmonic thing. It's very closely linked to the laws of rhetoric in speech making or preaching, which is the idea of repetition and emphasis and repetition and extending yourself to make a point. You know so in speech making, you know that there's some I think they call it the power of three where you say something and you say it again and you expound on it, and that's pretty much how.

Geoff: 38:57

Coltrane plays, but that carries on into songwriting as well, doesn't it?

Pete: 38:59

Yeah, of course it does, and also into like soloing, you know. So if I wanted to do that on on the same tune, I probably wouldn't put some so much harmonic detail in, because I'd be thinking more about the gestures you know, so if I was going. You know what I mean. There's a.

Geoff: 39:30

You know, that's a story more like a narrative way, so we're getting into call and response a little bit as well With yourself. Yeah.

Pete: 39:36

And just you can do things like sing a long phrase but make sure you finish it well, because you want to start the next phrase with the end of the old one.

Pete: 39:43

So that's a really good trick If I go like. Otherwise all your phrases just kind of die at the end, just because those narrative skills, you know linking things, is something that a lot of people they think there's so much to work on on cadences that they forget that the reason people listen to your solo is probably that, because there's a narrative and it makes sense yeah Shall I finish off with a few questions?

Geoff: 40:19

oh, go on then. Yeah, matron, some of these will be easy to. Some of them will not be easy to answer.

Pete: 40:26

Thanks, Geoff. We've known each other a long time, haven't we? We have, we've been friendly up to this point.

Geoff: 40:34

What's your favourite album?

Pete: 40:36

It's not a vocal album. I'm really into it at the minute large-scale writing for large-scale forces that integrate improvisers. So I would have to say the one that I would take to a desert island would be Epiphany by Vince Mendoza, and the soloists are Joe Lovano, Michael Brecker, Kenny Wheeler, John Taylor, Mark Johnson, John Abercrombie and Pete Erskine and the London Symphony Orchestra. There's a lot to unpack in it, but it keeps me listening all the time. So at the moment that's kind of where I am Amazing.

Geoff: 41:11

Is there a musician, live or dead, that you'd like to have played with?

Pete: 41:15

Yeah, I'd like to just comp with Dave Green.

Geoff: 41:19

Have you not played with Dave Green? I have, you have, yeah, okay.

Pete: 41:22

But I mean I'm saying comp because I just want to listen to him and his lines and his time feel and everything. It's like there's so much history in there and it's still current. And I say that because I've heard him a lot recently, because Nicky, my wife, plays with him in the quartet with Karen Sharp and I used to do gigs with him and I'm thinking, oh, Dave, that's really lovely, yeah, amazing.

Geoff: 41:50

Absolute legend, yeah. Has there been a highlight of your career so far? So far?

Pete: 41:57

Probably the project I did with John Hendricks John Hendricks, where I spent time with him helping him finish his lyricization of Gil Evans' Miles Davis album Miles Ahead Happened also by accident, but because he was the son of a preacher Son of a preacher man, he was yeah, he was the seventh son of a preacher man and I met him in London, uh, spent time talking to him and that led to a long productive relationship. But it seemed that all roads had led to that point because his references were all the King James translation of the new and old testament, and I know that very well because my father was a Church of England church organist and so I totally got him and he knew that I got him, and as well as the American Songbook and jazz and improvising, there was this other thing there. So for me that was like you know, it's like everything I'd been interested in my life seemed to lead to that point. It was very serendipitous, so I'd have to say that.

Geoff: 43:05

Yeah, it's amazing What was the last?

Pete: 43:07

concert you attended, I think I went to see Nikki with The Karen Sharp Quartet a little while ago, but also Nikki's big band, Nikki Iles' big band, yeah, with all that new music, fantastic new music. And the thrill of that, of going to that gig, is that I've heard all that music begin in the house with little rumblings on the piano, and then I go to a concert and hear it in glorious Technicolor. And of course I've heard her music with different times, with different European big bands, you know in Stockholm and in Helsinki, and it's always like different. But you know, in Stockholm and in Helsinki, and it's always like different, but you know familiar, it's lovely.

Geoff: 43:47

Amazing. What would you say was your musical weakness. Sight?

Pete: 43:52

reading. All right. Yeah, I hate doing it and I'm not very good at it, right. What I'm quite good at is making my bad sight reading sound like a creative decision.

Pete: 44:04

You know, Mark Murphy, when I used to do gigs with Mark.

Pete: 44:07

I spent 15 years with Mark Murphy. He used to suddenly throw a lead sheet in front of me of like an Alan Broadbent tune that he'd written lyrics to and say this is a great tune. Pete and I are going to do a duo. Pete's going to play it first, and then I'd kind of creep through it, sight reading it really slowly, making it sound like I was just being extremely tasteful.

Geoff: 44:25

Yeah.

Pete: 44:27

You know, so I've got a lot of strategies to cope with my appalling sight reading.

Geoff: 44:29

So you're talking about a lead sheet, probably with a melody and chords.

Pete: 44:33

Yeah, lead sheet with melody and chords and I can make sense of all those and that's how I'm used to playing those things. But if he counted me off like Pete, go on your own. It would just come out like yeah, terrible, you know, but because it's like the other sort of rubato thing.

Geoff: 44:46

and then he said you can get away with it yeah, you know so.

Pete: 44:49

I have strategies to cope. That's my weakness. Do you ever get nervous on stage. If I'm conducting? I was the conductor of Kenny Wheeler's big band and, uh, just a sheer array of personalities and musicianship that I was. You know, if you've, if there's ever a job, that was totally redundant. It was that job. You know they do it without you equally well, but they liked you to confirm what they suspect. You know, just so. But but I knew the tempo things.

Geoff: 45:17

You've got to get the right tempo.

Pete: 45:19

Yeah, you know I used to do West West End show and Five Guys Named Mo. I did for a year, you know, in the West End and the dancers needed the tempos exact. So I have this kind of, oh, the responsibility of the right tempos. So that gets me a bit nervous.

Geoff: 45:34

What's your favourite sandwich?

Pete: 45:35

Cheese Parma ham, tomato and mayonnaise with some spinach.

Geoff: 45:40

Oh OK, almost like what we just had, yeah, you could have read my mind, Geoff. What some spinach. Oh okay, Almost like what we just had. Yeah, you could have read my mind, Geoff. What about a favourite movie?

Pete: 45:46

Oh you know, there's a movie I loved which probably just get on VHS with Tom Conti, and it's called Reuben Reuben.

Geoff: 45:56

Okay.

Pete: 45:57

And he's a sort of alcoholic, faded Scottish poet who used to be very successful. He plays that part very well, slightly drunk and very funny, and he's in America, so he's like that classic sort of funny but sad. I really loved that movie. It really affected me and I've always tried to find it again, but I've never done it.

Geoff: 46:18

Are you sure it's available with one click?

Pete: 46:20

Somewhere it is. Yeah, I'm sure it would bore everybody else as well. It's just I really liked that movie.

Geoff: 46:25

Is there a favourite venue you like to perform in?

Pete: 46:28

I'd like to perform in a piano bar like a proper piano bar. When I'd studied with Richard Rodney Bennett and here's a guy who had so many film scores to his name as well as symphonies and concert programmes and operas he said all he really wanted to do was sit in his piano bar in New York and play tunes. Now I would pretty much love to do that. Those bars are very hard to find, like a good piano, well-tuned and an audience who are into songs and just sit and play some standards.

Geoff: 46:56

I'd play some standards all night.

Pete: 46:57

Yeah, I'm with you right there and I want people to be sitting around the grand piano on high stools and request things, because that's where I started. I had a piano bar gig in Ottawa and I did six nights a week and people would request songs. There was a microphone that kind of went around the room so they'd start singing them quite well, and I'd have to find the key and just accompany them. At this point in my life, that's the kind of gig that would be nice.

Geoff: 47:23

I'm sure you can find one in Bedford, can't you just a piano bar?

Pete: 47:26

near the pianos. It's got to be no, I'm not at this time of my life, I'm not going to play a dodgy, I need like a, like a song bar. Yeah, they exist in some cities, you know, but I'm not sure if there's one in London.

Geoff: 47:39

So what about a favourite city, favourite country? You know, you travel a lot.

Pete: 47:42

So Paris All right, Nikki and I have a flat in Paris, oh you do. Yeah, we bought a studio flat in Le Marais about 15, 20 years ago. In those days you could kind of do it, and so we have it. We're starting to stay there again recently and to go to a city and have your own place, you know, even if it's like a tiny room, and then you just kind of explore the city you have a different perspective of the city, don't you?

Pete: 48:11

yeah, and I speak french sort of reasonably, which is also really helpful because some people complain about Paris and people are willing to kind of put up with their dodgy French or something. But I find, you know, I I find the Parisians very lovely.

Geoff: 48:25

So, finally, what's your favourite chord? That's a silly question, isn't it? No, it's not a silly question.

Pete: 48:32

Now. People probably hear it everywhere in everything I do. It's one of those tunes spirals. It's like fifths in the left hand and then your thumbs are a semitone apart and then you have fifths in the right hand. So it's a minor 11 chord. All right right it's very nice and you know, when I first learned it I played it all the time, but nothing like it on any other chord I go. My days are sad and lonely. Oh yeah, for you. I sigh for you do only.

Pete: 49:05

You know, that was the only I knew how to do it on minor chords. And then I thought, well, this is stupid, I've got to stop doing this. You know, like people who play the diminished scale, every time they see a diminished chord. Yeah, yeah, but nothing like it with the chord before it or after it.

Geoff: 49:16

Yeah, so I just that's shoehorning licks into your play.

Pete: 49:20

Yeah, yeah, it's like a harmonic lick you know, what do I like about it? I like the fact that it's small and large intervals, because most of us do harmony that's based on kind of intervals that are the same, like quartal things, yeah, yeah, or tertial tertial things yeah, yeah, you know yeah so this is like ah.

Pete: 49:36

so the reason I like it is it's got a semitone and it's got so seconds and fifths and small and large intervals. So then I thought, well, what if I took that and changed one note? So I changed this note, so instead of c minor, I went and I thought, ah, now that's a nice chord and that's basically c half diminished, but it could be E flat minor, could be A flat 13, could be D7, all those things. And for me I don't have a chord. I don't think of chords from the root, I think of chords from the middle, because the root's your department, Geoff. Yeah, that's right, and I'm trying to play them so that they give you maximum freedom. So I would say probably that that's very lovely.

Pete: 50:26

Yeah, and then if you move one more note, you get a diminished chord and you can. You know all those things. So it's just like extrapolation from this very nice Kenny Barron chord by changing.

Pete: 50:39

One note I've now got a whole kind of world of really interesting chords, like half diminished chords, altered dominants, lydian dominants, minor, major, sevenths diminished, you know, and that's a minor, sixth, a semitone, and fifths, and then you try and put different roots underneath it, you know. So that's Beautiful, it's not really a chord, it's a chord voicing, but it's not. I can't define it from the root.

Geoff: 51:10

I love the way it leads to other things. Yeah, you know you can tweak.

Pete: 51:13

And it's the tweaking thing, and I always think that sometimes in education people stop at the point where it can become really interesting. They go you know, oh, it's a nice chord lad, look, play that. Every time you see a man you get lots of mileage out of that and you go yeah, but what if you just took it a bit further? And then you just go, whoosh, like that.

Geoff: 51:33

Yeah, and I think that's why we're attracted to jazz, though isn't it Because our mindset wants, always, wants more? I mean, I've been the same. I've always wanted to change things. Yeah, this is not the end. There's no end point to it.

Pete: 51:45

There's got to be. It's got to lead to something else you know. And I think so. Maybe that's my little, that's the thing I'm toying with at the minute. And also those things for string writing. Those things sound, those things are hard to voice in a big band because of tuning, you know. Yeah, those things are hard to voice in a big band because of tuning, you know. Yeah, to put saxes like that, it's like, ooh, it could go really well or really badly.

Pete: 52:09

Is that good in a choir as well, that voice. So it's beautiful in the choir, you know, but it's strings.

Geoff: 52:15

Well, I think that will do it. Thank you very much for coming.

Pete: 52:18

Oh, it's been an absolute pleasure.

Geoff: 52:20

So much to think about there.

Pete: 52:22

So little time yeah.

Geoff: 52:23

Absolute pleasure. So much to think about there. So little time, yeah, so little time, no, no, let's do it again sometime.

Pete: 52:27

Yeah, I'd love to yeah. Thanks for asking me.

Geoff: 52:29

Thanks Pete, thanks Geoff, see you again, Bye.

Announcement: 52:32

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