Over the five fascinating years I’ve been interviewing jazz musicians, a curious trend has emerged. It has interested, confounded and occasionally annoyed me—the last probably due to a (misguided) sense that my musical passions and practices are being slighted by implication. I’m talking about the tendency for pro musicians to begin their journey with piano lessons, before switching the instrument out for another one that eventually makes them famous—be it brass, woodwind, strings or their own voice.
Sometimes the player keeps up piano as a secondary interest: clarinetist Ewan Bleach (of Frog and Henry, Tuba Skinny, and more) learned keys before making woodwind his professional focus. But he never lost his love of tickling the ivories, telling me last year: “When I learn a song, I always learn it on the piano.” He performs solo gigs playing keys with one hand and licorice stick with the other, while his website describes him as “a clarinetist, saxophonist, pianist, singer, bandleader [and] composer.”
But pride in one’s piano-playing roots seems rare amongst pro jazz musicians, most of whom seem to drop the instrument—and any mention of it in their curriculum musicae—sooner or later. Of the folks I’ve spoken to, the following all began on piano before becoming noted pros on some other instrument: Hailey Brinnel (now known for her trombone playing), Corina Kwam
