November 6, 2008
Inspirations for Seales’ music range from Paris to Bellingham
Marc Seales and friends will present an evening of jazz that draws heavily on Seales’ recent experiences in Paris, as well as his own take on songs of his youth at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 14, in the Brechemin Auditorium of the UW School of Music. Seales, professor of jazz studies, and his quartet will perform original works from his Paris Suite and also from his upcoming CD, American Songs.
A prominent pianist on the Northwest jazz scene, Seales, will be accompanied by Steve Korn on drums, Evan Flory-Barnes on bass and Lary Barileau on percussion. The evening also will include a tribute to Joe Zawinul, prominent keyboard artist and composer perhaps best known as a founder of the groundbreaking 1970s group Weather Report.
Seales has been traveling to Paris and environs for the past eight years. Each piece in his suite is reminiscent of a favorite place: Trocadero near the Eiffel Tower, the Jardin de Luxembourg, Rue Cler, Boulevard St. Michel, Pont Marie. “These were the places where we’d go and hang out,” he says.
His American songs include a tune that he describes as “in the spirit of the blues, without being regular blues. It may not have the precise form but it captures the idea of the blues.” He also plays traditional, mainstream blues and spirituals. “They all have the same roots, coming straight out of the black church,” he says.
Seales believes in playing songs that have some resonance in his personal experience, so he often focuses on tunes that go back no more than one generation. His CD has a heavy emphasis on songs of the 1970s, when he was in school at Western Washington University (first as an economics major before switching to music) and just considering a music career after graduation.
“That’s a critical time in everyone’s life. As a young person, I was listening to music like crazy, and experiencing music as kind of a sound track to my life, on so many levels. When I listen to that music today, a lot of it holds up. Listening to that music now and playing it helps me to bring meaning to my own playing, because it reaches deep emotions within me.”
Growing up in the jazz idiom — among others — Seales came to regard that music as “hip and today,” an approach he still holds dear. “For me, jazz isn’t archival music,” he says. “It’s OK to dig where you come from, but you have to extend it. I recently played for Quincy Jones and he commented, ‘You remember where you came from musically,’ but for me it doesn’t end there. I have to stay as true to myself as possible.”
Seales has no allergy to blending pop music into his repertoire; indeed, American Songs contains tunes that experienced significant airplay in his youth, updated and arranged for a quartet. “People who disparage pop music forget that even in its heyday, that’s what jazz musicians played,” he says. “The challenge, then and now, is to think about what audience you want to reach and at what level. It’s all about communication. You can be a commercial success and communicate to an audience on many levels. If I have one complaint about jazz today, it’s that too many musicians don’t focus enough energy on communicating with their audience.”
Seales himself, earlier in his career, supplemented the income of a serious jazz musician with commercial gigs and even television commercials. “I was just into playing then. But I found I didn’t like the commercial stuff all that much, so I wasn’t very good at it. Everyone makes a decision about how it works for them.
“I tell my students that, after graduation, the most important thing is to play. After all, teachers like me won’t have anything new to talk about unless there’s a fresh crop of young musicians with new ideas.”
With American Songs, Seales is making his own small effort at exposing his audience to other important parts of American musical history. “When I was growing up,” he says, “if you listened to the radio you learned at least a little about a variety of music. The number of stations was limited, so everyone encountered, just by flipping the radio dial, many different kinds of music. For this generation, that doesn’t happen automatically. We don’t have a body of cultural history to which everyone is exposed.”
Over the course of his performing career, Seales has played with many notables from the jazz community. That includes Don Lanphere, a local icon with whom Seales performed for more than two decades, both locally and internationally. He’s played in the rhythm section for many jazz notables who came to town, including Joe Henderson, Benny Carter and Bobby Hutcherson.
He also ended up on a gig with Kenny G at Kane Hall when he needed someone who could play both piano and synthesizer. “I have a synthesizer at my house, as well as two pianos. I had one of the first in Seattle, because at that time you needed to know electronic music if you wanted to work regularly. And I still get calls from people who need it.”
Tickets for Seales’ recital are $10 cash or check at the door. For more information, call 206-685-8384 or visit www.music.washington.edu.
