Learning The Word

I went to Gallery 345 near Dundas St. W and Roncesvalles for some piano improvisation. According to gallery owner Edward Epstein, he decided to hold small concerts there in response to the recent recession. The L-shaped gallery does seem to have good acoustics.probably Mr. Epstein has 2 grand pianos at the gallery: he bought a Baldwin, and was given a Steinway B from a friend at York University. In fact, both pianos will be in use at the upcoming 2 pianos 4 hands concert. He is also looking for soloists and small groups to perform there.

There were only about 25-30 people at the show although the owner said that his largest concert had 140 people, though there's only seats for 100. I'm curious if the piano would be placed in the middle of the long side of the gallery for such a concert and have the audience on both side to minimize the distance to the last row. In any case, this show had probably 80% Jews there, probably because the pianist, Marilyn Lerner, is apparently known for her compositions of traditional Jewish songs, as well as jazz pieces.

I sat at the front row for the 1st set, and at the last row (about 8 rows back) for the 2nd set. I sounded better to my ear at the back, probably because I'm deeper into the long end of the gallery instead of being in the more spacious intersection where the piano was located. It was a bit of an odd concert for me. The only piano improvisation I've heard before is jazz or blues. Marilyn Lerner seems to be more in the classical mold with a bit of modern thrown in. Not being a pianist, I wasn't quite sure during her pieces which parts were composed and which improvised.

She played a number of original compositions, a Dizzy Gillespie piece, a serbian folk song, and a number of Yiddish and Hasidic songs. In fact, my favourite piece was a Hasidic song where she was blunting the piano hammers with her left hand, resulting in a very 'synth-bass' sound. It had an almost an electronic dance feel. Other times, she strummed and plucked the piano strings. It's probably not that impressive if you're a professional pianist, but I was struck by how she improvised her chords, harmonies and melodies with her eyes usually closed. One piece descended into cacophony with her using her palms, elbows, and finally forearms to simply bang out sounds. Given her slight stature, I almost laughed because essentially it's no different than a rowdy child. Of course, the difference being that the noise slowly re-assembled into recognizably music again.

The evening ended with a Rogers and Hammerstein song from South Pacific, This Nearly Was Mine is my guess, and theoretically another original composition of a Romanian song. She picked the South Pacific song because she saw the musical last week with her daughter and partner. However, apparently the improvisation of "This Nearly Was Mine" was so inspired that she decided to end the concert there. It certainly sounded good to me. Well, she had an assistant with 3 small video cameras set up, as well as 2 directional mikes over the piano, to record the concert for archival purposes. So I guess if the piece was, on a second listen, that good it'll end up on her next CD.