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Passion at the Piano
Michel Camilo inspires all during a week on campus.
By Rob Hochschild
Berklee.edu Editor
January 8, 2004
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Michel Camilo performs with his trio during the first half of the concert. |
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Farnsworth/Blalock Photography |
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Near the beginning of pianist Michel Camilo's recent concert at Berklee, he made the sort of declaration you expect to hear from musicians who play rock, not jazz.
"We plan to blow the roof off the building tonight," he announced after the first song of a sold-out concert at the Berklee Performance Center.
Bravado, sure, but when you've been leading bands for nearly 20 years, as Camilo has, you've earned the right to swagger some. Throughout the concert, the Dominican Republic native delivered, first on seven tunes with his trio and then three more with Berklee's Concert Jazz Orchestra, a 23-member student ensemble.
The trio set with bassist Charles Flores and drummer Cliff Almond burned as it moved from up-tempo Latin tunes to softer ballads. But it was during the second half of the concert—the first time Camilo had played with students on tunes from One More Once, his Count Basie–inspired 1994 album—that the audience received a glimpse of what students learned from Camilo during his weeklong residency.
According to Camilo, the 14 horn players who performed that night struggled a bit when they first ran through the charts with the composer five days before the show.
"It was a big challenge because they hadn't had a chance to sit with me beforehand," Camilo said the day before the concert, which was part of Song's Nothing Conservatory About It Concert Series. "But the progress from day to day was incredible. Yesterday they really sounded like a band. I was really happy with them at the end of rehearsal. I drilled them really hard on articulation, because that is what defines the music, makes it sing. And now I got it coming back at me."
Camilo embodies a childlike playfulness every minute of the music-making process. He repeatedly ran from the piano to another part of the stage to conduct the band. When he would return to the piano, he often covered the 15 feet in a sprint and then leaped over a monitor next to his bench. At one point, he seemed to channel rock singer David Lee Roth, jumping high into the air to signal a tune's ending with his landing.
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| Camilo counts off a rhythm for students during his trio clinic. |
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| Photo by Nick Balkin |
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Camilo's visit came as part of his work as a Herb Alpert Visiting Professor, and included master classes on composition and arranging for large ensembles, piano technique, and trio performance. During his trio clinic, Camilo urged students to avoid falling into the trap of playing jazz tunes with no more thought to arrangement than playing the head of the tune, then solos, then the head out.
"There is more to music than jamming on changes," he said.
Camilo gave an example of how he likes to structure tunes by telling students about his composition "From Within." He ran through it with Flores and Almond, piece by piece, dividing it into about 15 parts, including A and A1 sections, the bridge, riff-based interludes, sections of solos that required varying accompaniment approaches, and many others.
"I try to think of (my trio) as a chamber music ensemble," Camilo said during a backstage interview. "It's important to realize how groove changes from section to section."
He also talked to students during the week about how to find their individual artistic voices, how to achieve strong interplay with other musicians, and the importance of dedication to a practice routine. Camilo also compared the work that musicians do with that done by visual artists.
"Music is very much like a painting," Camilo said. "You can focus on the center of a painting or you can look in the corner and see something else...it's exactly the same thing with music. You really need to have a keen eye. You really have to have a very curious child in you that has to come out and therefore you will start listening to music differently because you will start looking for these kinds of angles in music. Music is not just one thing. It's like a prism with many different facets."
Learning how to hear music that way, Camilo emphasized throughout his residency, requires an open mind, but musicians who don't take an earnest approach to their studies at Berklee won't fully develop.
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Camilo conducts the Berklee Concert Jazz Orchestra.
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Farnsworth/Blalock Photography
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"I hope they realize what a luxury they have [at Berklee]. This is like a treat," he said. "I would be practicing all day if I was them. That's what I emphasized for the pianists. Practice, practice, practice. I tell them you'd be surprised what you can accomplish in one hour and one year. You can become a totally different musician in one year."
But it was Camilo's playing itself that really hammered home the point. Students were amazed by his demonstrations in the master classes, and the 1,200 people at Camilo's sold-out concert gave him several standing ovations throughout the show. In the end, the roof of the Berklee Performance Center stayed in place, but Camilo's music seemed to linger in the air.
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