Not Your Ordinary Musical Experience: The Fusion of Classical Music and Jazz
>> Apr 30, 2015
You’ve probably heard of the adage, “Oil and water don’t mix.” It’s simply saying that some things are
not meant to go together, because of their marked differences. But jazz pianist Richard
Kimball proves this idea wrong—in music, at least. Who
could’ve imagined that classical music and jazz would form such a great
combination?
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| Richard Kimball -image:facebook.com |
Kimball’s distinct kind of music
Richard Kimball is one of those
few musicians who succeed in making two entirely different music genres blend
exquisitely. His innovative style in combining these two genres has resulted in
a one-of-a-kind musical experience.
It can be argued, though, that Kimball’s ability to unify varying
types of music rooted from the expertise in his preferred genre—jazz. His
profound knowledge about it, as well as that of the complex world of
composition, enables him to effortlessly collaborate with other musicians. It
is not altogether surprising. After all, Kimball earned both his bachelor’s and
master’s degrees in composition at Juilliard School of Music in New York City.
In his official website, he recalled an
account when he successfully played with fellow artists he met for the first
time:
“Let’s suppose Richard – that’s me - the
bass player (I got into jazz first as a bass player before I transferred over
to jazz on the piano), Al - the singing piano player, Sonny - the singing
drummer, are all thrown together by our cheap and tacky quasi-gangster agent on
a gig at a country club… Of course Al and Sonny knew each other – minimally,
but I’d never met them, and we’d never played together. No sweat. How’d we do?
Not bad. How come? The jazz format.”
The jazz format
Tune, key, feel and technical know-how—these aspects are what Kimball
refers to as the must-haves so as not to get lost in a band-you-just-met.
“First, you’ve all got to be playing the
same tune; Then you’ve got to be playing in the same key. What’s that? Well, it
basically means, since you can start any tune on any note, we’d all better
start it on the same one; everything else falls into place based on that. Now
we’ve got the tune and the key. How about the “feel”? Feel means just about
anything… In addition to the melody, what holds us all together most is the
underlying sequence of chords, the chord changes, or simply the changes … the
harmonic infrastructure… And of course, by then, lucky for us, the band is
synchronized…”
Kimball’s strength and skill as a composer-artist is founded on being
a truly devoted student of Western classical musical tradition. He can easily
integrate its styles, vocabulary and techniques with the language of jazz
harmony and improvisation. On top of it all, Kimball’s music is highly personal
and evokes a mixture of emotions—an experience that most music lovers yearn
for. As what Stacey Laurer Rosen describes in her review: “He is the consummate romantic - the music expressing a kaleidoscope of
emotion, tension and release…”
