Interview I did with Peter Eldridge “A superb musical alchemist, Peter Eldridge synthesizes modern jazz with not only pop but also R&B and latin music. The results are varied and dynamic but also aesthetically focused, as Eldridge’s mellifluous baritone and urbane lyrics brim with pop accessibility”(JazzTimes). Peter Eldridge ranks “in the celebrated tradition of melodic poets, most famously represented by such disparate voices as Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison and Steely Dan – singer/songwriters who create catchy, beautiful tunes with insightful lyrics that are both personal and universal” (allmusicguide). Mr. Eldridge continues to draw on his many-faceted talent as he pursues an eclectic mix of activities, including composing, performing, arranging, recording, as well as teaching (the Manhattan School of Music, head of the jazz voice faculty since 1993). He has released four solo recordings: Stranger in Town, characterized by its bittersweet swing and called the Best Jazz CD of 2001 by Boston radio station WICN; Fool No More, full of Peter’s original compositions in a sophisticated pop style, released in the same year (both on the independent label Rosebud Records); and Decorum, a 2005 release of originals. Downbeat said of Decorum, “If musical intelligence and artistry were prompters to marketplace success, Decorum would grant him stardom. . . .strong, far-ranging voice . . .hauntingly wistful”. Peter ‘s newest project, the latin-inspired Mad Heaven, was just released this February on Palmetto Records. Jazz Review has said of the album, “Mad Heaven showcases Eldridge as a major player in vocal jazz, an artist of extraordinary depth and conviction”. Peter is also a co-founding member of the double-Grammy winning New York Voices, which has recorded seven studio albums (including A Day Like This released on MCG Jazz in September 2007). The group has made numerous guest appearances, and toured internationally for two decades, with appearances including Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, and the Kennedy Center. In addition, compositions by Mr. Eldridge have been included on albums by other artists: Minds of Their Own, written with Brazilian composer-performer Ivan Lins, was included on Nancy Wilsons R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal) on the MCG Jazz Label, which won the 2004 Grammy award for Best Jazz Vocal Album; Difficult was recorded by Cuban saxophonist- clarinetist Paquito DRivera for his The Jazz Chamber Trio, a 2005 release on Chesky Records; and Jane Monheit, who was at one time one of Mr. Eldridges many talented students, features Peters song Surrender as the title track on her acclaimed 2007 CD and also features the Eldridge duet Around Us, based on a James Thurber quote, on her 2003 Encoded Music DVD, Live from the Rainbow Room. Jane and Peter also recorded a duet for her most recent album Home entitled “It’s Only Smoke”. One of his many choral pieces, simply entitled Prayer, was recently recorded by New York Citys own Marble Collegiate Sanctuary Choir, on its recording With Many Voices. In spring 2006, Peter was invited to join Kurt Elling, Jon Hendricks, and Mark Murphy for a ‘concept concert’, the Four Brothers. He is also a member of the vocal group Moss, which combines the talents of Luciana Souza, Kate McGarry, Theo Bleckmann, and Lauren Kinhan. The debut album by Moss was named one of the best CDs of the past decade by Downbeat. Peter also regularly performs with his own band in venues in New York and internationally. He has also worked with Bobby McFerrin (lending his voice to McFerrin’s recent ‘Vocabularies’ project), Michael Brecker, Meredith Monk, Fred Hersch, George Benson, Kenny Werner, David Byrne, Jim Hall, Larry Goldings, the Roches, Jonatha Brooke, Bill Charlap, Betty Buckley, Joshua Redman, and many others. Peter recently wrote the musical score with composer/conductor Adam Waite for the documentary film, ‘No Job for a Woman’, which tells the account of women reporters in WWII, as well as writing his first full-fledged musical with Chicago playwright Cheri Coons about the life, loves and art of Gustav Klimt. He has also recently begun a new duo with bassist Matt Aronoff called ‘Foolish Hearts’, which is recording its first studio project and recently performed in Lativa as well as in the States. Peter’s music was recently featured in NYC’s Playwright’s Horizons production of the new play THIS by Melissa Gibson. He is regularly asked to lead master classes and workshops around the world, and as guest conductor has directed All State groups including New York, Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. Rick Holland: Peter, Welcome, and thanks for taking part in the interview process with us. I’d like to first ask you, what led you to this creative field? What do you remember as important experiences that led you to knowing you wanted to sing? Peter Eldridge: Though I’m sure I didn’t realize it at the time, I’m convinced now that I was drawn to music and more specifically, writing music and lyrics as a kid as a means of being able to express myself in ways I just couldn’t in any other capacity. Like a lot of people growing up and being really unsure of themselves, my survival mode was that of a ‘comedian’ to hide the more meaningful stuff, because walking down that road was too intimidating for me. And I played piano first, singing came much later in life, once again because of the vulnerability of it all. The best I could do was add vocal harmonies to tunes when accompanying my older sister and brother, who are both great singers. Singing slowly became less and less of an issue for me, but all those insecurities can still come back to haunt when they want to. I did a lot of choral singing (classical and vocal jazz) in college at Ithaca which I loved, and that helped me to at least realize there was a voice lurking in there. Rick: Did you learn formally? Who were important mentors and teachers in your learning process? Peter: I did study piano formally as a child for four or five years, and then due to financial issues with my family I stopped talking lessons and started playing more by ear. I’d put on my brother and sister’s recordings and try to play along, and I had this system of writing those chords down that was all my own, a system that wouldn’t make sense to anyone else but me. Then when it was getting to be time to think about college I took a year of formal piano lessons again to get me ready for auditions and such. I was pretty behind technically by this point, but looking back I’m glad that part of my life happened - it opened up my ears harmonically, I understood the importance of rhythm more, and it enabled me to start composing my own stuff. I had some wonderful teachers during this time, but I have to say that my best teachers were when I was playing along with Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan (which was the most challenging harmonically) and a slew of other people. Rick: In your latest release Mad Heaven, I’m hearing an ever broad influence of musical styles. I’d like to start by asking you, how you feel your compositional style has developed and matured? I remember a few years back, I heard some of your writing, performed ‘live’, and you were created much of your work from American Song Book--and created AS models. I’m hearing so much broadly influenced music. Tell us how this has evolved? Peter: - My influences have always been fairly broad I think, but when I record I like to think that there’s some sort of ‘through line’ that, even on some small level, connect the tunes on a particular album together. It could be through instrumentation, overall sound, the players involved, or a particular genre of music. On ‘Mad Heaven’ I’m doing my ‘latin pop’ album, to use a pretty loose categorization. I’ve always loved that music, with some of my heroes being Caetano Veloso, Milton Nascimento, Jobim of course, and Ivan Lins who I’ve been doing some writing with the last few years. I’d been gathering a group of mostly original tunes in this bag for quite sometime, would include one or two of them on gigs and it just felt like the right project to do at the time. And Ben Wittman, who’s co-produced my albums with me for many years now and plays drums and (along with James Shipp) percussion on the tracks, lives in this world so confidently and beautifully that it just felt like the appropriate project to do. My earlier albums, though definitely more disparate from tune to tune, each have a decided sonic aesthetic to them - ‘Fool No More’, while eclectic, is very produced and rich sounding, ‘Decorum’ is a bit more stripped down and ‘pop chamber music’ feeling to me, and ‘Stranger in Town’ is the midnight ballad album with amazing players (Lewis Nash, Romero Lubambo, Claudio Roditi, the late Michael Brecker, and on and on) recorded basically in one day. ‘Mad Heaven’ takes a little bit from all those albums and re-interprets them a bit I think. So in terms of broader influences, that’s one of the great things about jazz - there’s always more to learn and be inspired from. Rick: What also interests me Peter is the poet in your music. My brother is becoming an accomplished poet in his own right, he writes constantly. Is this something you do as well? How do you get the poetry in your lyrics? Are there people you have emulated? Peter: More than just about anything, I always appreciate when people bring up the lyric part of my songwriting - writing lyrics is such a hit or miss process for me - I just labor over them and am very demanding on myself because I never want them to feel trite or preachy or insipid. I could probably write a tune a day, but lyrics are another matter completely. I’m always writing little things down, when I’m on the subway or traveling - little lines that come out of nowhere, and then comes the much harder part of mulling over them, focusing them or elaborating on them - that discipline is difficult and I’m still trying to get better at it. I do read a lot of poetry, mostly contemporary - Sharon Olds, John Berryman, e.e. cummings of course, and am inspired by my favorite singer/songwriters who have that more ‘poetic’ stance - Joni, Jonatha Brooke, the Magnetic Fields, Randy Newman, Rufus Wainwright, Elvis Costello, Fountains of Wayne, the Beatles of course, and on and on it goes - there’s this I think very popular group called the Weepies and I just love how beautifully simple yet eloquent and fresh-feeling a lot of their lyrics are. That’s always what I strive for, and perhaps emulate - that there’s some wonderful mystery in the words but there’s also some rather direct simplicity coming through as well. I do workshops in songwriting fairly often and I do believe in that aspect of ‘letting people in’ to some sort of secret - the tunes I’ve written that seem the most personal, the ones that I don’t think anyone will understand but me are always the ones that ultimately the ones that get the most response and seem to be the most universal, the very ones that resonate the deepest with people. If you’re really going through something, a life lesson of some kind, and you’re really passionate about it whether good or bad, that is absolutely the stuff that connects with another soul. It’s very cool, and always unexpected. Rick: Ultimately, what draws me to your music, is you have such an understanding of Jazz harmony. It permeates throughout everything you compose. It is a beauty American music needs. Do you credit this to your piano harmony? Or, are there some other things you can share with us? Peter: I’m thrilled that you get such a strong sense of jazz harmony in my music, and yes I think a lot of that had to do with being a piano player first and growing up listening to the music I listened to. I’ve said this before and I’ll probably say it again, but I don’t think of myself as ‘jazz with a capital-- J’ in terms of who I am as a musician. Nothing to me is more satisfying than hearing that perfect 3 or four minute pop tune - that perfectly crafted and edited tune that only has what’s absolutely necessary in it. On my album ‘Decorum’ I was really striving for that. None of the tunes on that project are over three and a half minutes long, except for the last tune ‘Surrender’. I’m a pop kid at heart but like you said, perhaps the harmonic element is a bit more jazz-based. What slowly but surely drew me to jazz is the sense of adventure - the sky’s the limit in terms of rhythm, phrasing and harmony. Rick: Changing course a bit here, I really believe you have placed yourself in a great musical environment. Not only being in NYC, you also have multiple groups to create in, like Moss, NY Voices, this new 4 Brothers with Kurt Elling…and so on. Talk to us how important musical culture is? And how having different groups with different goals shapes the musician…. Peter: I must say, I really have tried to continue growing as a musician, especially in the last ten years - I’ve certainly learned an amazing amount and ‘went to school’ from my many years with New York Voices and have thankfully grown to a place where I respect all that group represents and continues to accomplish, especially in education. After twenty some odd years I do really ‘get it’ and the four of us can do it with our eyes closed at this point, so involving myself in other creative endeavors only strengthens what I do in whatever group or solo activity I’m in. Janis Siegel from the Transfer is a lot like that too - I admire how she is always trying to learn new things, work with different people, keep the internal fires burning. I have a relatively new duo called Foolish Hearts with bassist Matt Aronoff that is basically voice, piano, bass and some percussion when one of us has the use of a free hand. It developed out of our being roommates in Astoria for a few years – I love it, it is completely different than anything I’ve ever done and organic in developing, and I hope it has a shelf life of its own. I’m also writing a musical with a wonderful playwright friend of mine in Chicago, and am developing a film-scoring production company called Maple Grove Music - there’s always something needing my attention which I love. And of course there’s the love child Moss, which seems to have really made a strong impression on a lot of folks. The hardest aspect of that collection of souls is that everyone is living in different parts of the country and/or busy on their own, so it’s very tricky to get together. I love it all, and am grateful for it all, and it continues to challenge me to sing better, play better, compose better. Rick: Who really inspires you musically? Today and yesterday? Peter: the list of people who inspire me is pretty endless and all over the map - too many to mention really. My current list of ‘required listening’ contains everybody from that Ben Folds/Nick Hornby project to James Blake, to some Janelle Monáe and old Tom Tom Club. I also am crazy for an old Jackie Parris album I just discovered, and a singer named Lucky Lucy Ann, a not-very well known vocalist I discovered online, from the 50’s I think - she just kills me with her sweet phrasing - and I’ve been studying some of the orchestral works of Ernest Bloch on the road as well - so passionate, so Jewish and earthy. It’s inspiring my film-scoring side. That’s who I’m into right now, off the top of my head. Rick: Peter, I believe Jazz is always at a virtual crossroads, fighting for survival and audience. Tell us how vital creating curriculum is for young people wanting to learn this music? On a personal note, I believe Jazz Vocal Education gets the short stick in Higher Ed. Do you believe this can change? If so, how? Peter: Crazy to think this, but I’m starting my 18th year teaching at the Manhattan School of Music, so between that and doing workshops all over the place on my own or with the Voices, I see what’s going on out there. And-- in answer to your question, yes Jazz does always seem to be at a crossroads of some kind, but really no more than any other form of music these days. I have to say I think there are so many inventive and compelling musicians in jazz right now – both vocalists and instrumentalists, who are not just brushing the dust off the American songbook (but even then it’s done in new and yet respectful ways), but adding their own real deep and personal expression. I do think Jazz means just about anything these days, thankfully, because for so long it seemed like it had to sound like 1957 for the hard core jazz folks to like it. I absolutely see the need to respect the history and to use it, and there’s nothing quite as satisfying as when someone is swinging their ass off, but there does seem to be a concerted effort to move the art form along in beautiful and innovative ways. And I like to think that jazz education is catching up with that philosophy as well. I want to thank Peter for taking some time out of his schedule, and interview with me. For more information about Peter’s music, please visit: petereldridge
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 13:33:50 +0000
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