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Date: May 08 2012
JOE CHINDAMO is not averse to mischief. The pianist-composer loves playing Dolly Parton's Jolene to jazz audiences. And it is fair to assume that at least one stuffed shirt was ruffled by his last gig at the Melbourne Recital Centre, Chopin - the First Jazz Pianist.
Tomorrow, he and the violinist Zoe Black will have their wicked way with Dolly and Frederic, as well as Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and more as they launch their album Reimaginings in Melbourne.
However, mischief is furthest from the rearranger's mind. "The biggest problem when jazz musicians get hold of classical music is that it can sound like a gag," Chindamo says. "It's like, 'I'm not sure if I'm trying to legitimise my music or make your music cool'.
"I wanted none of that. What I tried to do was go back to first principles and deal with just the melody and the basic chord structure, almost as if it were a song George Gershwin … has just written and he says 'Here, do something with this'."
The notion of doing much beyond what is notated is, of course, a kind of sacrilege for some people, but Chindamo tends to read the dots more like weather patterns than constellations.
"Bach and Mozart and Chopin were jazz musicians in the sense that they applied the same process of coming up with a tune, then orchestrating it," he says.
"Bach was an arranger. Just because we hear Air On a G String or the Brandenburg Concertos performed in a certain way, that's not to say that's the only way you can do them. That's just what he did that week."
The division between composition and arrangement is at the heart of Chindamo's philosophy as an interpreter. Most Frank Sinatra or Beatles fans understand the crucial creative roles of Nelson Riddle and George Martin. The lines are not so clear in the classical world. "Most classical musicians don't think beyond the published page," he says.
"They don't tend to think of the process. [Bach's] Goldberg Variations are 30-odd variations on a basic theme, using the same chord structure on which to base the next variation. Now if that isn't the jazz process then I don't know what is."
The Goldberg Variations are at the piano in Chindamo's living room, where he has taken to playing them every day - a symbol of the two-way street opened up by his romantic relationship with Black. "When we first got together … there was a lot of stuff I needed to prove," he admits. He recalls writing her a piece in the harmonic style of Ravel "to let her know I understood her music", much as a less-gifted guy might make a girlfriend a mixed tape.
Reimaginings finds them redefining their comfort zones. Black improvises a couple of extended intros while Chindamo has mostly scored his arrangements in full. One of his original pieces, Zoe, sounds like the pair of them locked in a fluid, if slightly manic, dance that both are leading.
She confesses to being "astounded" by it at first. "I suppose I was expecting a romantic ballad full of love and yearning and I find this erratic array of moods which is more me. That's probably why I find it so enjoyable to play."
Asked if he feels his other subjects would feel equally chuffed, Chindamo chooses his words carefully. "I suspect Chopin would be pleased that somebody was playing his music. I think he would have more in common with me, who changes music and sees it as an ever-evolving thing, than with a classical pianist who's going to play the notes and may or may not understand what he or she is playing."
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