Jamal, born in 1930, has been recording since 1951, primarily in the trio format (initially piano-guitar-bass, then piano-bass-drums), and his new release, "It's Magic" (Birdology/Dreyfus), hews to the latter format — Jamal is joined by his regular group, the drummer Idris Muhammad and the bassist James Cammack, plus Manolo Badrena, who discreetly contributes additional percussion.
Barry initially played the piano and trumpet at dances and as an army bandsman during his military service.
Initially a reluctant piano student, Mr. Weston fell in love with the music of Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, Earl Hines, Thelonious Monk and other masters of black music.
Initially he considered making piano strings from Flexinol, a nickel-titanium shape memory wire, which flexes in specific ways in response to temperature changes.
A suggestive title can provide hints: Anthony Coleman's "Atropine," named for a prescription drug derived from deadly nightshade, doled out initially attractive gestures on piano, violin, cello and percussion in increasingly stiff fits and jerks.
He wrote the song "I Am a Cinematographer," for instance, after reading Robert Bresson's "Notes on the Cinematographer," and initially agreed to play piano on Johnny Cash's cover of his song "I See a Darkness" despite not knowing how to play piano.
So when Prince initially postponed his A Piano and a Microphone tour minutes before tickets were due on sale, tweeting a picture of a vulture with the pointed message "Multiple choice: A. Scavenger B. Vulture C. Tout D. All of the above", the purple one tapped in to a growing exasperation among music-industry figures and fans alike at the behaviour of the secondary-ticketing market.
One of seven siblings, he grew up in Port Of Spain, Trinidad, initially learning to play the piano, and subsequently steel-pan.
Neither Chout, turned down initially by Diaghilev, nor the piano concerto, rejected comprehensively by its muse Paul Wittgenstein (the LPO's soloist was Leon Fleisher), quite banished that impression of mechanical note-spinning.
He started learning the clarinet and piano aged six, initially improvising around the Czerny studies and rearranging Debussy's Études before emulating the classical-meets-improvised-jazz grooves of Keith Jarrett and Jan Garbarek.
Initially in rehearsals 'round the piano, Nicholas sounds weird to us, but not in his formerly good way.
