Bowie's Piano Man - The Biography of Mike Garson

by Clifford Slapper

  He plays me a recording of a masterclass in which he plays some truly extraordinary examples of improvisation on the song ‘How About You’. The original melodies and harmonies are only just hung on to, borne in mind at times like no more than a fleeting ghostly presence. The music strays further and further from the original, embellishing and disguising its origins. Yet the essential melody and harmony of the original song remain ‘inside’ the music as he plays it. This approach is in some ways less accessible but repays dividends, because ‘if you’re willing to go into the layers of Coltrane, or Bach, you’re going to hear something each time that is so deep’. Unfortunately, however, people do not have patience; they have a short attention span or, at least, they believe they have. Garson prefers to see this as a social problem: ‘It’s the group consciousness which can’t concentrate for more than five minutes and follow a focus.’ He sees it as the role of creative artists to project whatever pieces of beauty and harmony they have in them, which can help to counteract, with disproportionate power, the swathes of negativity emanating from elsewhere in society.

  Calling for a greater respect to be accorded to the creative arts as helping to shape society itself, Garson says specifically that ‘a person doesn’t have to be poor and starving to have something valid to offer… the artist should be the first person to be taken care of, because they’re projecting what the future society is supposed to be’ and goes on to expand his understanding of ‘artists’ to include scientists, doctors and anyone else who makes or does something useful and takes that to a level which transcends mere technique.

  Most sincere and diligent creative artists, including musical composers or improvisers, are contributing joy to the world as opposed to conflict, damage or environmental pollution. In his passion for the positive social significance of art and creativity, Garson’s views are not far from those of William Morris, who in nineteenth-century England saw the impulse to create things of beauty suffocated by the economic constraint of antisocial priorities.

  On the responsibilities of creative artists, Garson’s ideas also echo at times those of Kandinsky, who in the wake of the industrial revolution and witnessing the beginnings of the commoditised and alienated society to come, attempted to uphold art as a spiritual antidote to consumerist values:

  The artist has a triple responsibility to the non-artists: (1) He must repay the talent which he has; (2) His deeds, feelings, and thoughts, as those of every man, create a spiritual atmosphere which is either pure or poisonous; (3) These deeds and thoughts are materials for his creations, which themselves exercise influence on the spiritual atmosphere.58

  In terms of teaching methods, Garson sometimes encourages an almost meditative focus on one song, for example asking his students whether they might be willing to practise a given piece for two hours every day for thirty days, to a metronome, without stopping no matter how many mistakes are made, and without losing the timing. He explains this by pointing out that ‘one song is every song’ and notes that this kind of intense method was used by Thelonious Monk, playing his own songs.

  Above all, Garson continually returns to the idea of music as therapy. To create music spontaneously through improvisation is, for him, far more than a profession or even a vocation. Increasingly he is interested in welcoming others into this practice as a contrast to and defence against the negative forces in the world: the destruction, war, torture, poverty. He observes the relative happiness amongst those who are creating something, making something from nothing, whether in music, film, visual arts or written word.

  In the early 1980s he played at the Cannes film festival along with Stan Getz, Paul Horn, Joe Farrell and others. He felt that Getz’s pianist was somehow performing better than him, and on enquiry found that he had played for over two hundred almost consecutive nights on the road prior to that, in jazz gigs. This prompted him to put a band together and do likewise. With that steady application of work the mastery of the craft allows the individual to emerge from their shell. It is discipline which opens it up and allows the artist to emerge as themselves.

  Garson recognises that, despite never having trained as a teacher, he took to it naturally from the first lesson he taught at the age of seventeen. Other than the ability to compose melodies well, this is the only aspect of his work which he feels he has not needed to train at all for. He is passionate about the importance of music being taught universally across the world to young children, and derides the way that ‘fast food’, shortcut culture has devalued genuine musical exploration and the idea of training hard to acquire skills. He gives the example of having asked one of his grandsons when he was six whether he was ready to do some more piano together and getting the reply, ‘Oh no, that’s okay, we already did that last year!’

  One musician who has close experience of collaborating with Mike Garson is Dutch organist and music professor at Rotterdam Conservatory (now part of Codarts), Willem Tanke, who studied organ and improvisation in Utrecht with Jan Welmers. He is an acclaimed performer and composer who, like Garson, has always tested the boundaries of improvisation as a method of creating music. They met in 2006 when Garson had been invited by René van Commenée (having played for his ‘Mr Averell’ project), to give a masterclass in Rotterdam. Garson and Tanke had a shared passion for the organ works of Messiaen, all of which Tanke had recorded as organist.

  Tanke was pleasantly surprised to find that, despite his fame, Garson listened closely and questioned him methodically on Messiaen rather than sounding forth himself. With van Commenée, they ended up repairing to Tanke’s home to explore further their common interests. Garson and Tanke bonded and one year later did a television appearance together as well as making a four-handed organ recording, starting to experiment with joint improvisations, and appearing together at two concerts in a cathedral in Rotterdam. They also have eighteen fully mastered tracks together for possible future release, which were made by Tanke sending his parts from Holland to the States where Garson would overdub his own. These were all for two pianos. They have also discussed the possibility of combining organ and piano in a further joint improvisation.

  They travelled to a small village in the North of Holland and played one of the most remarkable organs in the world, an eighteenth-century instrument which has an extraordinary quality of sound. In addition to all this they also opened a long-term and ongoing discourse in which they are exploring what new forms might lie beyond the once experimental but now possibly exhausted frontiers of ‘free jazz’, and looking to move away from the twentieth-century preoccupation with categorical boundaries between ‘classical’, ‘jazz’, ‘pop’ and so on.

  In discussion with Tanke, I ask about his working methods with Garson and his precise and sensitively thoughtful responses generate a fascinating exploration of the way in which creative artists and even humanity in general absorb and process our experiences as input and then – occasionally – are able somehow to give birth to something genuinely new, going beyond the mere reshaping of earlier influences and inputs. Tanke suggests that to improvise without revealing any historical or cultural antecedents is virtually impossible:

  It’s all there always, the whole input that you have, and of course you cannot deny that. But sometimes you have to say to yourself that you ‘intend’ to deny it, to come one step further, to liberate yourself in a way, and then it might happen. I think maybe of all the stuff we play, ninety-eight per cent is in a way premeditated, practised, memorised, but then on some special occasions something new might come out of that, and that one or two per cent, maybe even less, that is the real freedom and improvisation, and that can be a starting point for your next session. I don’t believe too much in a naïve view of improvisation that you can be spontaneous all the time and develop new things… you are supported by the input that you have your whole life. But there is also a little room for new things, and if you focus on that, if you are keen to be there in that space, then you can come there. But of course it needs a lot of pract
ice.

  He dissents from that idea of free improvisation, popular in the 1960s, that anyone can innovate randomly without special effort. However inspired or spiritual one might be, that does not supply a shortcut to achieving great things and, in general, exciting growth and innovation in virtually any field has come after sustained efforts to absorb and process the best of what has gone before. We all stand on the shoulders of our predecessors, and the delights of musical improvisation are no exception to this. As regards how those influences show in our creations, perhaps we might initially aim for reflection rather than imitation, as a stepping stone towards our goal of transforming rather than recycling such strands.

  Tanke emphasises that both J. S. Bach and Mozart were known as very able improvisers. One of Bach’s contemporaries even described him as a better improviser than composer, and it is thought that each of his written pieces were in a sense one final version of something he had been improvising around, which then became crystallised as a fixed masterpiece. As expressions of improvisation, however, each of these now well-known precise sequences could easily have taken another shape, from the same starting point of inspiration. Likewise with both Chopin and Liszt, especially given their use of the partimento instructional system, which involved building complex but prefigured structures and patterns into pieces. This was common, especially in the eighteenth century, and facilitated both improvisation and the creation of original compositions with unprecedented swiftness as well as elegance. It was not until the nineteenth century that composers had some idea that they might enjoy posthumous fame, so these earlier composers were not inclined to leave detailed notes on their methods. However, it can be seen that improvisation and composition have long been interwoven processes. This interplay rather than opposition between these facets of musical creation is still key, and is acknowledged in his own work by Garson. Improvisation, composition and performance are recognised by him, as they were in earlier periods, as three parts of the same continuum.

  Tanke also strongly endorses the work of Nettl, referred to above59. Some believe that Mozart, in particular, had sufficient genius and speed to be able effectively to write his compositions directly whilst improvising. He did not choose to have sketches or preliminary notes to work from (other than in the last two years of his life). Now, with programs like Logic and Sibelius or Finale, we are able to narrow further still the distinctions between improvisation and composition. First comes an idea and some performance to try this; then a look back at this and some modifications before settling on a more finished form. At different stages in the process the musician switches the emphasis from a more spontaneous part of creating to a more schematic, solidifying part of the process, using mouse, cursor and keyboard (or pencil and manuscript paper) to move some notes around from what was performed. They then click SAVE (or finish off the handwritten score).

  Were the greatest recipes in the classic cookbooks first scribbled down on paper at a desk in a moment of inspiration, perfected in the mind and then handed down to the chefs to cook? Of course not: they were evolved through experimentation in kitchens and at dining tables, and there is no reason to see other forms of practical creativity differently. It is only the classical establishment’s fetishisation of the pencil and the paper score in composition which clouds this fact.

  In the oral tradition, composers benefited from highly trained memories which made it possible to repeat on successive days the same melodies and harmonic structures in their performances. Today’s improvisers may rely instead on being able to play their sequence of notes into a computerised notator such as Finale to generate a score or a digital recording, but the general principle is the same. If anything, the computer can be seen as enhancing this process as it allows an even more intuitive and organic evolution of a composition, through more rapid alternating stages of improvisation and adjustment.

  Artists who are happy to make sculptures in ice or in sand which they know will soon melt or be washed away by the tide, and there are many examples of such transitory art around the world, show us something about the joy of creation even when (and, for some, especially when) it leaves no trace. It is the ultimate power of a message which has the boldness not to need its own permanency. There is a strong link there to the idea behind Garson’s coinage for his own music as being called ‘Now’ Music.

  His friend, the Argentinian film composer Emilio Kauderer, who has won a Latin Grammy, an Emmy nomination and many other awards, describes for me the features he discerns in Garson’s ‘Now’ Music, and goes on to assess the capacities of such a creative method:

  Well-defined style, balanced harmonic structure and extreme dynamics… Many of us composers take weeks to get through the few bars that Mike can deliver instantaneously. To see him create feels like watching a connection to a highly spiritual inspiration. I used to joke about him being connected to the ‘cable company’.

  Finally, Tanke summarises his view of his friend and collaborator Garson as being undoubtedly ‘an extremely gifted genius’; he says that although that term has become sometimes devalued, he believes that it is truly appropriate for someone with his scope of vision, feel, inspiration and passion wedded to such extreme agility, versatility and technical mastery. His love of Liszt, Chopin and Bach influences him as much as his immersion in jazz. Most people know him primarily for his great work with Bowie and yet before he even met Bowie he was already an established jazz pianist, and he knows and can improvise on virtually any jazz standard which has ever existed too. He really does live the philosophy of his ‘Now’ Music by being truly spontaneous. Tanke says that they had spoken a few days previously and then, inspired by their chat, Garson sent him a new finished piece, finely constructed and played, just a couple of hours later. In all of this, Garson is motivated by the idea that it is coming not from him but from something bigger.

  Tanke characterises both Garson’s and his own musical preference, if there were no other pressures or demands in life, such as the need to support family and earn a living, as being to dive in to the ‘experimental and improvisational’ world entirely. He hesitates to use the word avant-garde, as it carries the connotations of late-twentieth-century trends which are already in the past, and above all theirs is a project of freedom beyond even that label. He says that Garson’s genius lies in being able to meld all of the genres in an instant and in one piece. Once that stage is reached, the categories cease to exist in any real way, as they are all transcended. ‘Free jazz’ can be seen itself as a social product of the liberation politics and new cultural attitudes of the 1950s and 1960s. In that sense it is not free of its own time and place either, and holds limitations.

  The need to try to shock through music has passed, as we enter an age in which the ability to shock has reached vanishing point. Garson is genuinely happy within conventional or mainstream jazz or rock too, as he has the capacity to entertain himself within it. For Tanke, though, the music he and Garson make, in which there is no limiting form other than the honest emotion of creativity and integrity, this is the most valuable work of all. It is no longer even a case of knocking down boundaries for the sake of it, but rather simply a case of expression.

  14 - ‘Music has charms to sooth a savage breast…’

  ‘My grandson, Jacob who is ten years old and has autism, inspired this. I must have done fifty versions of this piece over three months until I found the correct series of notes and intentions that describe Jacob and the millions of children with this condition. Jacob holds his head high and creates his own beautiful world. Jacob is totally non-judgemental and brings unconditional love and joy to anyone who is blessed enough to be around him. About five years ago, when his autism was much more severe, I would put him on my lap at the piano and play Mozart for him. He would melt into the music and totally relax. Another example of how music heals…’

  – From programme notes written by Mike Garson for his

  March 2014 world premiere of the Symphonic Suite for Healing:
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br />   ‘11. Oneness with All/Gratitude’

  THERE ARE NEW PROJECTS BEING added to Garson’s schedule every week, all of them musically rich and expressive. It is against this current background of varied and intense creative activity that the past couple of years have seen the beginnings of an undertaking which he now believes will occupy the next big chapter of his working life. In 2013 he was commissioned by Newport-Beach-based brain surgeon Dr. Christopher Duma to compose and produce a ‘therapeutic’ symphony, which was premiered on 1 March 2014 in Costa Mesa, California, for a 44-piece orchestra with piano, keyboards, a 55-voice children’s choir, a jazz ensemble, vocalists and dancers. The concert was partly intended to raise funds for a charity created by Dr. Duma, the Foundation for Neurosciences, Stroke and Recovery, which provides physiotherapy, psychotherapy and a whole range of other support to patients. The concert was attended by a capacity audience of 3,000 at Segerstrom Hall within Segerstrom Center for the Arts (formerly the Orange County Performing Arts Center).60

  The Symphonic Suite for Healing was one of the pinnacles of his career to date. Garson describes it as:

  Unquestionably the best concert in my life, from beginning to end. I played with a twelve-piece jazz group including a string quartet in the first half, doing Gershwin, some newly written additions to my Paganini Variations, also ‘Space Oddity’, and some Brubeck. In the second half it was the whole of my original Symphonic Suite for Healing, all twelve pieces, which were chosen from thirty by the patients of brain surgeon Dr. Duma.

  The performance of ‘Blue Rondo à la Turk’ by Dave Brubeck was made all the more poignant by the fact that Brubeck had died in 2012, aged ninety-one, and had been a lifelong musical influence and love of Garson’s, from the day when his father took him to the Half Note jazz club and he played ‘Take Five’ to audition for Lennie Tristano.