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Hey there, PianoPod friends and listeners!
Welcome back to our show!
You're tuning in to the second episode of Season 5
and we're so thrilled to invite Steinway artist,
composer, educator, and host of the renowned radio show
Between the Keys, none other than Jett Dissler.
The piece you just heard at the beginning of this episode
is the second movement from Mr. Dissler's work
for two pianos titled Loose Changes,
performed by the renowned piano duo Quattromani.
A big welcome to all of our first-time listeners and viewers.
I am Yukimi Song, a classical pianist and educator
based in New York City.
Whether you are pursuing a piano career,
working in the classical music industry,
or simply passionate about piano music,
this podcast is your backstage pass
to the fascinating world of the piano.
Let me give you a quick overview of the PianoPod.
In our bi-weekly episodes,
we dive into captivating conversations with guests
who are making waves in the classical music industry.
Our mission is to build a vibrant community
that embraces fresh ideas,
ensuring classical music stays alive
and meaningful in our ever-changing world.
If you haven't already,
please check out the introductory episode of Season 5
to get a sense of what's in store for this season.
And don't forget to catch up on our previous seasons
available on your favorite podcast platforms
or on our YouTube channel.
Now, let me tell you a bit more about today's guest,
Jed Disler.
I have been a long-time admirer of his radio show
Between the Keys for its insightful commentary
on various piano recordings.
What truly impresses me is Jed's ability
to break down complex musical concepts
in a way that's accessible to all listeners.
I've also gained so much from the show's eclectic
and diverse playlists,
which span from classical staples
to contemporary works in jazz.
Last spring, I came across Jed's profile on Facebook
and I couldn't resist sending a friend request.
And to my delight and to my surprise,
Jed accepted my request right away
and soon after he also became a listener of the piano pod.
After several email exchanges,
he graciously invited me to his home in Manhattan.
And during my visit, I was warmly welcomed,
not only by Jed, but also by one of his cats, Shuby.
So cute.
I had a chance to see the behind the scenes
of his radio show and I was amazed
by his vast collection of CD albums and records
sent by artists and recording companies.
It was a delightful experience,
capped off with a lovely meal,
a true testament to his kindness and hospitality.
Jed is a powerhouse in the music world.
As a composer, pianist and educator,
he has earned acclaim for his brilliant transcriptions
of jazz legends like Art Tatum and Bill Evans.
His innovative piano recitals have premiered works
by some of the most significant names in contemporary music.
His creativity knows no bounds.
Jed founded Composers Collaborative,
which set a 2013 Guinness World Record
for the largest keyboard ensemble,
featuring one of his compositions
performed on 175 electronic keyboards.
In a groundbreaking performance,
he became the first pianist to play
all Thelonious Monk's works in a single 90-minute concert.
Currently, Jed is composing an astonishing 1,827 bag of tales
to celebrate Beethoven's anniversary in 2027.
His solo piano CD, Fearless Monk, is a must-listen
and is recorded extensively
for the high-resolution superior player piano by Steinway.
In addition to his award-winning radio show
Between the Keys,
Jed has also added podcasts to his resume
with the launch of his new podcast,
the podcast Maven with Jed Dissler in July 2024.
So before we dive in,
I want to take a moment to thank our amazing TPP fans
and loyal listeners for your continued support.
If you enjoy the show, please take a moment to rate
and review it on your favorite podcast platform
because every rating review will help people find my show.
Now get ready to uncover the secrets behind
Jed Dissler's remarkable, multifaceted career
as a Steinway artist, composer, and educator,
as well as the success of his radio show
and newly launched podcast.
So please sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.
["Movie of the Year"]
You are listening to the PianoPod,
where we talk to the brightest minds in the industry
about how they are bringing the piano into the future
and thriving in a complex, ever-evolving world.
Welcome to the PianoPod, Jed.
It's an absolute honor to have you.
Thank you.
Well, the honor is mine to be with you,
and I am a big, big fan of the PianoPod.
Oh, my goodness.
I'm the biggest fan of your radio show
from the Classic Network, Between the Keys.
Thank you so much.
You know, I just produced my 480th episode.
I can't believe it.
Oh, my goodness.
Wow.
Which means 500 is around the corner.
We have to do something about that.
Yes, you have to do something about it.
And so, you know, as I was researching your life and career
and you've done so much, so much.
You've been a composer and pianist,
but also you're the curator, producer.
But I think it's proper that we will start with the topic
of your radio show, Between the Keys,
as I have been the biggest fan,
but also you have a lot of huge fan base, right?
And then this program has become a cherished gem
for music and piano lovers,
and worldwide, blending insightful commentary
with musical tradition.
And I think that's one of the biggest musical treasures
that truly showcase your deep passion for the piano
and highlight your expertise.
So how did it come to life?
Oh, that's a really good question,
as I would expect from you.
It was a matter of serendipity.
You know, I have always been a big radio fan
since I was a little boy.
Classical radio with jazz radio, any radio.
And I had a little tabletop radio, and in my bedroom,
I would listen to the radio all night long,
even when I was sleeping.
And even when I was a little boy,
I would talk to myself in my bedroom
and pretend to be a DJ, and I would make playlists.
So this has been an obsession all my life.
And then as I got into college, you know,
in my late teens, early twenties,
I became a big fan of a show called Concert Grand,
which was hosted by Bruce Posner
and my late dear friend, Joseph Patrick,
who passed away last December.
And for 17 years, they had a wonderful piano show
where they'd play recordings,
they would compare performances at the same pieces,
they interviewed many distinctive pianists.
And also David DuBall had a radio show
when he was the artistic director,
the music director of WNCN,
a wonderful New York station that no longer exists.
And he would do something similar,
making comparative, playing comparative performances
and interviewing artists.
And this really turned me on
to a lot of the piano repertoire
and made me aware of just how important interpretation was
along with the works themselves.
And then as I started establishing my so-called career,
I began appearing on many radio shows
on New York Public Radio, being a guest.
And I loved that experience so much.
And I kept thinking, boy, I wish I was
in the other chair being the host.
And I always had fantasies about having a piano radio show.
So I met at a concert, purely by chance, David Osenberg,
who is the music director of WWFM, the Classical Network.
And I just blatantly said to him,
you know, I've always wanted my own radio show.
Is there any chance I could do something like that?
I just blurted it out, you know, with no rhyme or reason,
because I'm like that.
I'm very brash and direct and tactless, you know?
And David said, well, you know,
I've wanted to have you on as a guest.
So why don't you come down to the station?
And I thought, okay, I'll be coming down
and maybe we'll talk about my being a guest on his show,
because he has a wonderful show called Cadenzo,
where he interviews musicians all over the world.
It's an, and he's one of the best interviewers ever.
So I show up at the station and instead of talking
about his show, he and the general manager of the station
start interviewing me and saying, well,
what kind of show would you like to have?
And I thought, what?
What is this?
And I just started winging it and I said, oh, you know,
I want to have a piano radio show
where every week is different.
Like one week I'll play all the Chopin etudes
with one different pianist in each etude with it,
repeating a pianist, or then maybe the following week
I'll have a composer like, oh, I don't know,
Terry Riley or Elliott Carter, even though he was dead,
I could still ask Elliott Carter.
You know, somebody have them be a guest DJ
or put a playlist together.
Or I was just, you know, winging it.
And they said, you know, that sounds like a good idea.
Well, let's give you a show and we will also make you
our artist in residence.
Oh my goodness.
And I thought, whoa, this is all falling into my lap.
It was all happening so fast.
And so I quickly learned how to use their recording
of software, Adobe Audition.
And I learned about the parameters of, you know,
within 58 minutes and 30 seconds,
I can do whatever I want,
but I do have to do some station identification,
you know, every once in a while.
So I thought, this is amazing that I have a show
or I have complete freedom.
At the same time, I really try to use
the freedom responsibly.
For instance, you know, I'm not gonna play 58 minutes
of unlistable 12 tone music, you know.
You know, I'm not gonna play the Ralph Shapie
from Variations, or maybe I will sometime, you never know.
But to really, you know, treat the show as, you know,
have a mission and really do what I set out to do.
And so I've put a lot of time and thought and effort
into this over the years.
And I've gotten a lot of good feedback and suggestions,
and it's gonna go into its 10th anniversary next year,
which is kind of wonderful.
But what I did consciously try to do was
to not make the show time sensitive,
meaning that I wouldn't talk about an immediately
upcoming concert or upcoming event,
because I wanted the shows to be kind of timeless
in that they can be archived somewhere,
and they are archived online so that if you listen to them,
they can really be from any era.
Now, of course, there are exceptions,
because I have done some shows to promote upcoming concerts.
And I don't do those often, but I have done those where,
let's say, a publicist approached me saying,
can you do a program about this artist's upcoming concert,
and I can give you an exclusive interview?
And I'm very happy to do that,
because I'm happy to have the interview,
so I don't feel like I'm compromising my integrity at all.
So each episode, is it more like a spontaneous process
when it comes to like thinking about the theme,
or is it well planned ahead?
It's both, actually.
Sometimes I will plan things ahead,
or I'll think about a show,
and I always write down ideas for episodes.
And of course, these are all subject to revision
and negotiation and rejection over time,
but I do plan these in advance,
and I also try not to have similar kinds of shows
in close proximity.
For instance, if I do a program,
let's say I talked about the ideal Chopin Opus 10 etudes,
where I will play all 12 etudes with one pianist
for each etude without repeating a pianist,
I may do that one week,
but I'm not gonna do something similar the following week,
or even the next month, maybe.
I might just take a couple of months
in between that kind of programming.
And if I have a program with a guest,
I don't wanna have two or three programs with a guest
in one after another, over two or three weeks,
although sometimes it can be unavoidable.
Recently, I did two programs
featuring young Italian pianists,
and because I really wanted to give them attention,
because I have friends who've been giving me CDs,
and they really wanted to have a forum for these artists,
and understandably so,
I thought I'll just do two programs, part one and part two,
one week after the next,
and I thought that was perfectly fine.
I don't do that all the time.
So I really try to strike a balance
so that there's something for everyone.
At the end of July this year,
I put on a show one large-scale work,
which is a piece called 48 Variations for Two Pianos
by John McGuire, which is, I think,
one of the great minimalist masterpieces
in the piano literature,
and it's a mesmerizing kind of piece,
and this is the kind of thing that,
ordinarily, you'd never hear it on the radio,
and it takes almost an entire program.
But now, I probably would not have programmed this piece,
let's say, early in the show's run,
but I think since we have developed a following,
and I've been on the air for so long,
I thought, well, I could do something different,
and people who usually tune into the show,
I can say, look, trust me, I wanna try something new,
and just check your expectations at the door,
just give yourself over to this music,
and don't worry, next week we'll have
Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms, and Chopin, you know?
And I also think it's very important to be as inclusive
as possible as far as composers and performers.
You don't wanna have just dead male Austrians
or dead male Polish pianists.
You know, you wanna have everybody,
because the piano world is so vast,
and so broad, and so wide-ranging,
and there is so much wonderful piano playing
and piano music from all over the world,
and I think it's important to represent it
as best that I can.
And another thing that I do is,
let's say if I wanna put a Chopin waltz into the mix,
I will look for a recording by a pianist
who maybe isn't so well-known or has a CD on the small label,
but it's a really good performance
that deserves to be broadcast,
so instead of pulling out the usual Arthur Rubinstein,
you know, I love Arthur Rubinstein,
but he doesn't need my promotion,
but this young pianist will need more promotion.
And David Duball actually does this on his program,
The Piano Matters, and I think that's a very noble thing,
because he's been involved with teaching
and mentoring young pianists for a long time,
and I think that's also part of my mission, too,
to just have the past and the present and the future,
you know?
That's awesome.
That's quite a progressive idea.
Now, what kind of feedback
do you usually receive from listeners?
Is there any particular feedback that touched you
or surprised you, or how does this feedback influence
the direction of the episodes, future episodes?
Well, sometimes I'll get a suggestion from somebody saying,
can you devote a program to this artist or this composer?
And I will usually consider that,
or even if I don't do a whole episode,
I will seriously consider, you know, a piece of music.
What I often don't consider is people,
a lot of people sometimes I'll say, you know,
would you like to interview this artist or that artist?
And sometimes if I don't really like the music,
then I'm not gonna give them the time of day.
And I'm usually very honest with publicists.
You know, like if somebody says,
can you have this person on your show?
I'll send them some reviews that I wrote.
I'll say, well, I don't think this person wants to meet me
because I said that their recording of this piece
or that piece is the worst one ever made.
And I, you know, that's, you know,
that's kind of, you know, trying to balance out the reviewer
and the presenter and the host, you know,
that it can be kind of difficult.
I have gotten some feedback from people saying
that the show really helped them get through an illness
or get through a difficult time in their life.
And during the pandemic, when there were no concerts,
I was getting a lot of feedback from people saying
that I'm so happy to have your show
because this is something that makes me happy
and makes me calm.
And that kind of feedback really, really means the world
to me.
Also, I often get feedback when I will play a recording
of a pianist who I think is rather obscure or unknown.
And I'll get an email from out of nowhere,
from a total stranger saying,
oh, thank you for playing the piano recordings
of Webster Aitken.
I studied with him and they gave the whole backstory
and that's so fascinating.
And I remember I played a recording of a composer
who I knew nothing about.
And I got a very extensive email from somebody
who knew this person or this person was a relative
or something like that.
So it's always getting the feedback
with the personal connection saying,
oh, I didn't realize you played my mother's piece
and I didn't realize that this composer's son
was listening.
So that kind of thing makes me happy.
It's gonna be 10th year next year?
Well, the first show I did was March, 2015.
So if we get into March, 2025, then I guess that's 10 years.
But having regular faithful listeners is great
but what's even more important
is getting more people to listen.
And for those who are just discovering the show,
for them to know that there are webcasts of the program
that are posted on the station's website
for whenever you want to listen.
Wfm.org.
.org and the classical network.
And they also post webcasts for their other special programs
because they have a lot of varied programming
that is so interesting
and all very specialized in different ways.
It's a really wonderful station
and I am so grateful for the freedom that I have.
And you've done an amazing job
and somehow your voice through everybody.
You have the vocal quality tone that is through there.
It's so interesting.
Well, I was never trained as a radio personality.
Although I remember when I was talking with Joe Patrick
years and years ago about wanting to be a radio host,
he said, oh, your voice is too high.
You have a tenor voice.
It's not gonna work on the radio
because so many radio commentators have very low.
Oh, yeah, that's true.
Low, comforting voices.
And that was the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven.
Or there is one, and of course they have very
an affection in how they pronounce things.
There's a very famous radio station
where they had an announcer say,
and that was the Overture to Candide.
Candide, not Candide.
Candide by Leonard Bernstein.
Bernstein?
Well, like what is this Germanization of come?
Aw.
But I did hear that.
I swear to God, I heard that.
And it's interesting because the first shows I did,
I script everything I do
because I can't speak spontaneously to save my life.
But I scripted these.
And when I hear how I was reading the scripts and talking,
it sounds so stilted and so formal.
And I cringe a little bit.
And then I worked with a friend of mine, Darren Zimmer,
who was a fantastic soprano.
And she had listened to some of the first shows.
And she said, you know,
you have to work on your vocal quality.
So she gave me some coaching.
But I try to modulate my voice
and I try not to make it sound like this.
And that was the Italian Concerto of Bach.
I just tried to do it conversationally.
Like I'll write a script.
Then when I'm reading it, I look away.
And, you know, of course I do a lot of editing
where if I go, mm and ah,
or if I mess up somebody's name
because my pronunciation of foreign names,
especially Eastern European names,
leaves a lot to be desired.
So if you listen to my unedited vocal tracks on my show,
you'll hear me messing up pronunciations
and then practice and then have to edit everything.
And then, and then I,
and sometimes you'll hear me cursing
when I screw something up.
In fact, I think there was one broadcast
where I messed up an edit and a four letter word went by.
And I don't, and nobody complained about it,
but apparently in the webcast,
somebody heard the webcast and wrote back saying,
hey, you said the F word.
And I thought, oh my God, this went on the radio.
I'm getting, I mean, on podcasts,
certain podcasts you can curse,
but you can't on the broadcast radio.
Sure, sure, sure.
You are right now joining this conversation
from your home, right?
And I- This is my music studio.
You've been here.
I know, you invited me.
You- Yes.
And then we had a great time.
So is that the room actually,
you do the recording session for-
Yeah, this is, this is, this is the chamber.
Yeah.
Oh wow.
This is the torture chamber.
And I see, I see the stack of CDs and-
Well, in my music studio here,
all the CDs are only piano
and they are meticulously organized and alphabetized.
In other rooms in the hallway are my non-piano CDs,
classical jazz, world music, whatever.
But then I have other closets where I have box sets
that are not piano box sets, because as a reviewer,
I get sent so many things.
And also because I write booklet notes
for a lot of these releases, I get copies of them.
And I still have a lot of vinyl.
I keep, I play a lot of vinyl on my show
because there are so many recordings
that have never been transferred to a digital format.
And often when I do programs of rare recordings
that I like to share, which is, I consider kind of a mission,
sometimes I'll pull down vinyl.
And I also have a lot of hard drives that have digital files
which I get from all kinds of places.
And these files are, these drives are backed up
in triplicate because you don't want them to crash.
And then, so where I'm sitting now is,
this is my reviewing broadcasting desk.
But then I have another desk, which is my composing desk,
which is right next to one of my pianos
because I have two pianos in the studio.
So there's a lot in the studio,
but I try not to have it cluttered or disorganized
because it's so easy for me to discombobulate things.
And I live in the terror of ever becoming a hoarder.
I don't know if you know that television show, Hoarders?
Have you ever seen that?
Yes, I've seen it, yes.
I am so afraid of this because my parents,
who died a long time ago, had hoarding tendencies.
And my father's father was a very serious hoarder.
I mean, it's not like he had garbage piled up,
but he would buy things in bulk.
I think this was an attitude among people
who were affected by the Depression,
where if they had to buy a pencil,
they would buy boxes of pencils because they'd be afraid
that you wouldn't be able to find these anymore.
And they would have a pantry full of canned food
that was there for years and years.
And I've seen this a lot.
And I'm a thrower outer,
but I get so much mail every day
that it's really hard to negotiate that.
And sometimes things just pile up.
And so organization does not come naturally to me,
but like what I was talking about,
organizing the radio show and organizing my life,
I'm a compulsive list maker.
And I just make sure things are put away as much as possible,
or I can always renegotiate the spaces.
But sometimes I'll forget about things and I'm thinking,
oh my God, what are all these CDs doing here?
I haven't opened them in a year.
It's hard to keep track of all that, as you can imagine.
Yeah, yeah, but it's a really fun room.
I sit there and then there are so many,
and you showed me this and that, different kinds of CDs.
So, Spinoff, with your charm and kindness, Jed,
you're after all a music critic.
So how can one make it onto your good list
rather than the bad list?
For me, I think it's just,
I'm just always in pursuit of excellence.
That's simply that.
And I think artistic excellence is its own justification.
Often somebody will say,
I just recorded a CD of Schumann's Chrysler Rihanna.
How many recordings of Chrysler Rihanna
do we need in the world?
Because there are only about 10,000 of them out there.
954 are probably excellent.
But I think excellence is its own reward
and whether one needs something or not,
you have to just take each really case by case.
And I'll give you a wonderful example of this.
About 20 or so years ago,
I received a recording on a small Polish label,
actually not all that small,
by a Polish pianist playing the Prokofiev 7th Sonata
along with works of Skriabin and Rachmaninoff.
And I thought, okay, I've never heard of this pianist
and this is a small label
and how many recordings of the Prokofiev 7th Sonata
do we need?
And it was a knockout.
It was one of the best performances of this piece
I had ever heard.
And I made comparisons with Maurizio Polini
and Sveta Savvikter and Glenn Gould
and it yielded nothing to that.
And you can say the same for so many other pieces
of standard repertoire.
Now, of course, when I'm reviewing something like this,
you can't compare it to every previous recording
because you'd go nuts.
But I think that it's important as a critic
to know the catalog because you know something
about performance practice and the evolution of styles.
So if somebody is gonna come out
with a new cycle of Beethoven sonatas,
I will make certain comparisons
but I won't compare it to everyone.
But I may say that this pianist is closer in style
to the intimacy of Wilhelm Kempf
than the more dynamic Arter Schnabel version
or people like that.
You know, I mean, these aren't the best examples
but at least you can provide a small context.
And then if the performer does something
that's kind of unique or interesting,
you would mention that.
But you have to talk about what the performance sounds like
in the most clear and accurate yet entertaining words
as possible.
So I think for me, it's just the pursuit of excellence
is what I look for.
The pursuit of excellence is really everything.
But specifically, do you look for in technical precision,
emotional depth into one recording or maybe perhaps,
well, the pianist has to be excellent
but blend of everything, blending of those qualities or?
Oh, ideally, yes.
I think that also with modern recordings
because the standard of engineering and also
technical proficiency is so high
that you really do have to judge the performer.
One problem is because the technical standard is so high,
it can be very difficult to ascertain
the different levels of excellence,
like what is more excellent than another.
But you want to have a combination
of technical proficiency and musicality
and emotional involvement and communication
of musical meaning.
And you do get that a lot,
but because there's so much out there,
sometimes it's to really try to find these,
it can be difficult.
But the truth is that there are more excellent recordings
of classical music on the market at lower prices
than at any other time in history.
The catalog just abounds with wonderful releases.
I mean, the standard is higher than ever before.
So what's the opposite end?
What makes a recording fall flat, for example?
There can be many things.
It could be substandard engineering.
It could be a performer who is just very mannered
or it's not just a matter of not following
what's in the score, but imposing so many things
on the interpretation or micromanaging things.
And you do find a lot of really fine musicians
overthinking or micromanaging their performances
where they focus on little details
that draw more attention to themselves than to the music.
And they don't really have to do that
because if you have a strong personality
and you just play a piece of music as straight as possible,
the personality is gonna come out anyway.
But there's a lot of micromanaging
and a lot of performers behaving badly.
And I think it's just this determination
to do something different.
For the sake of being different.
Now, for the sake of being different,
can you do that by having to have a very interesting layout
in a CD album, for example,
like a combination of different composers
that will make one album stand out
or more thoughtful way of programming?
Well, actually, that's a really good solution
because there are more and more pianists
who are making CDs that are more like DJ sets
where they're mixing and matching pieces
from all over the place.
And I think that this is a very refreshing
and interesting idea because a good example of this
is Yuja Wang because most of her solo releases
mix and match repertoire in really interesting
and provocative ways.
She is not one who's gonna come out
and record all the Chopin nocturnes,
but she may record one or two nocturnes
in conjunction with a Ligeti etude or a Philip Glass etude.
And then another piece that you may think
has nothing to do with it,
but actually the program trajectory really works quite well.
And she's done this both on record and in concert.
And it's an interesting concept.
And I think that this concept
and I think that this kind of thing can be very healthy
as long as it's not gimmicky.
If it's about the gimmick in and of itself,
then there can be problems.
But I think that this is one way how contemporary culture
like DJ culture where you're mixing and matching things
and making playlists is having a positive impact.
Really, you think?
Well, I think in terms of programming
and coming up with unusual yet provocative
and artistically valid ways of presenting the music,
because if this is a good way to introduce the repertoire
to listeners or performers,
then it gets them into the music.
And then there are pianists who do want to put out
an all Schumann recital or do a cycle of pieces.
And that's certainly very valid,
but I think there's so many other ways of doing it.
And in a way, I think these mix and match playlists
parallel what I try to do with Between the Keys,
because I don't always play complete works
on Between the Keys,
or if I'm focusing on a certain artist
or I'm focusing on the genre,
I'll break up pieces like this.
But then every once in a while I may do a show
where I'll just have one or two large works.
Like recently I did a chamber music show
focusing on the cellist Pablo Casals,
and I had a complete Bach sonata with him
and pianist Miezeslar Hrushovsky,
and then a Beethoven sonata with Wilhelm Kempf.
And this isn't the kind of program I do all the time,
but I think you need both.
I think they compliment one another.
Wow, interesting to hear that thought
on music streaming services, because I had a question.
Well, let's get into the question.
So, I thought you would be like totally,
well, you can't say anti because technology is there
and everybody listens to music from Spotify, Apple,
and so on.
But those giant companies,
they provide literally unparalleled access
to that vast array of music at your fingertips.
And however, from a musician's point of view,
given the dominance of these streaming giants,
it's nearly impossible to avoid them
if you want to reach a wide audience.
But how do you see the trade-off between the accessibility
and then the significant loss of revenue for artists?
I'm afraid I'm not really qualified
to answer this question.
No, no, thank you for being honest.
But I'm so happy to hear actually you're really for it.
I feel that any way to get the music out there,
either with a physical product or streaming
or really any format or any future format
that we haven't even thought about, I think is valid.
And of course, there's always the question
of how one pays for this.
In fact, the record producer, John Colshaw,
who was one of the most important classical producers ever,
he was the one who produced
the George Shulte ring cycle in the 60s.
He predicted this kind of thing 50 years ago.
He said that, I won't be surprised
if somebody just puts a credit card in a machine
and then they get their music whenever they want to.
It wasn't necessarily like streaming or computer,
but he realized that there were gonna be future technologies.
And I use all of these technologies
in a very fluid and fluent kind of way.
A good example of this is with streaming services.
If I'm writing a review of, let's say,
a new recording of the Beethoven Waldstein Sonata,
and I need to make a very quick comparison,
but I don't wanna go through all of my shelves,
or maybe I'm writing this review
where I'm out of town and on my computer,
and I don't have access to my physical files
or physical CDs, I'll just go to Spotify
and I'll do a search and I can check things.
I can check how pianist X plays measure 25 versus piano Y.
And that's a wonderful way to use that kind of technology.
And for me, often I will use this to look for music
or look for performances.
If I have to find a performance of a certain piece of music,
but it can't exceed four minutes, let's say.
Then when I'm looking at Spotify,
or if I'm looking at iTunes, or I'm looking through,
you know, any of these digital sources,
I see all the timings right before me.
But I always use physical CDs or CD quality files
for my broadcast because it's the best quality.
And I like having the physical discs
because you have the notes and you know, you have.
And I think as a collectible product,
they really have a lot of value.
And there are some record companies
that really put a lot of care and consideration
into the physical product.
So you're getting a collector's item
where you can look at wonderful records
and look at wonderful booklet notes and photos
and sturdy binding, you know,
where it's really done in a very intelligent
and respectful way.
That's why I think a lot of these box sets coming out
are so important, like these complete editions
that, you know, the big companies are putting out.
For instance, I just got this.
This is a collection of Paul Robeson's complete Columbia,
RCA, HMV and Victor recordings.
And it's the first time his complete recorded output
for these labels have been assembled
and remastered all in one place.
And he was such an important cultural figure in America
who's been all but forgotten,
but he was a incredible bass baritone
who sang spirituals and traditional songs.
He had an extraordinary voice.
He and Fyodor Shalyapin were the greatest basses
of their generations.
And this assembles all of the recordings,
but also the documentation could not be more thorough.
There are wonderful annotations
by his granddaughter and by scholars.
And you cannot imagine a more comprehensive,
a more thorough and more caring representation
of Paul Robeson's artistry.
And Sony BMG has done wonderful projects like this.
They've done some box sets containing
the complete recorded rehearsals of Vladimir Putin
and the complete rehearsals of Vladimir Horowitz
leading up to his 1965 historic return
and his 1966 follow-up concerts.
And I wrote the notes to that box set.
There's some other people who wrote notes too,
but that was done in such a thorough and caring way
where not only do you have all of the music
and the conversation,
but you also have the conversation written out,
so you can follow it if you don't understand it.
I think this represents the best
of what physical products can offer.
Of course, there's some box sets that are put together
in a very slapdash shoddy way too.
Yeah, sure.
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So, so far we've talked about from you being the producer
and host of the show, of your radio show,
but now I'd like to focus on your career
as a pianist and composer.
So I began this episode by playing one of your works
for two pianos.
It's the second movement from Lose Changes.
And I actually heard the whole thing on YouTube.
Yes, there was the whole thing.
Yeah, it was, they are very fun pieces, fun.
Like 10, 11 movements, 10 movements.
Yeah, well, you know what happened?
I had this commission to write a piece for Quattromanni
who are one of the best two piano teams
around, they're extraordinary musicians.
And I was so excited by the commission
that I could make up my mind
what kind of piece I wanted to write.
And I was just coming up with all kinds of ideas.
And I thought, oh, screw it.
I'm just gonna write 10 or 11, however many little pieces
and just throw all those ideas together.
And I wrote the piece fairly quickly,
but what's interesting about how I wrote the piece,
I still have a very vivid memory of how one or two
of the pieces came together,
which is that I actually wrote it on a bus
going from New York to Washington, DC,
because I was going to a big massive protest
against the Iraq war.
I think this was in 2005.
And I remember taking the bus back and forth to Washington.
And I always carry these Moleskine music notebooks
to sketch in because I write a lot of music away
from the piano, believe it or not,
because I was really trained to do that.
I always check things at the piano.
And it's interesting that when I'm writing solo piano,
I do tend to sit at the piano.
But if I'm writing for two pianos,
I get distracted and I get confused.
And I find it so much easier
to write away from the piano
because then each piano has its own voice
and its own duties.
So it's a little easier for me to do that
without being burdened by two hands trying to play
what four hands are gonna do.
Of course, when I get home, I check everything
and I make revisions.
I always do because I don't totally trust my hearing.
But a lot of loose changes happened on those bus rides.
It's kind of funny.
But I had so much fun with it.
And they and Quattromanni just played
the living daylights out of this piece.
Their recording is just phenomenal.
That's one reason why I've been reluctant
to perform the piece myself
because I don't think I could do it better than them.
Yeah, it's a fantastic recording.
The album is called Kindert Spirits, right?
Yes, yes, yes.
Yes, it's a compilation with different composers.
Yeah. That's true.
That's right.
So when I research your life
and you started as a jazz pianist, correct?
Oh yeah, I thought I was gonna go into jazz.
That was my...
I often say that it's a first language
that I seldom speak.
But when I speak it, when I have the opportunities,
I have so much fun and I love it so much.
But I didn't really pursue a jazz career.
I probably could have,
but I think there's an episode of The Simpsons
where Bart Simpson is placed in a special class
and he says, oh no, I'm supposed to be in this other class.
And the teacher says, oh,
it looks like you have a case of the Spostas.
And I kept thinking, oh,
I'm supposed to study classical piano.
I'm supposed to be composing.
And I was so interested in it and I wanted to compose,
but I think I was going into it a lot out of guilt,
out of a feeling I should be...
Why am I playing jazz?
I should be learning the Chopin etudes.
I should be learning the Beethoven sonatas.
It's the should-ofs and the Spostas.
And I thought that would make me
a little bit more legitimate maybe.
I don't know.
It's not that I have no regret
because contemporary classical music
and classical music has been very good to me
and I've gotten so much out of it.
And I have a pretty diverse body of composed work.
I haven't written as much music as I wanted to.
I go through very prolific period,
but I suppose I really should be composing full-time
and not doing any of these activities.
If I was given all the money in the world,
that's probably what I would do.
But I love the radio show and I love playing the piano.
I've played classical recitals and I've done collaborations,
but there's certain things
I just don't want to play in public.
Like you're never gonna hear me play a Mozart concerto
in public ever because there are too many people
who do it really well.
About maybe 10, 12 years ago,
I had to play the Mozart-Kegelstadt trio.
I worked my butt off on the piano part
because it's really like playing a piano concerto.
It's a wonderful piece, but I worked like crazy on it
because the flow of the phrasing
maybe didn't come as natural to me as I would have liked.
And I was just preparing it and sweating buckets
and the performance went well,
but I have to say I did not enjoy it at all.
I do not enjoy recording classical music
because the pressure is just too much.
And I made a decision that I would never record
classical music again, unless I'm recording my own works,
because if I mess something up, nobody's gonna know, right?
But thank you for telling me all this
because I think lately, especially,
I'm sure you noticed this as a radio show host too,
but you can really find your own identity through music.
So there's no like, oh, you have to play this piece
and then you have to go through this specific program
or route to become-
Look, don't get me wrong.
I am so happy that I learned the Chopin etudes
at a young age when I did.
I mean, not that I can,
it would take me a while to get them back in my fingers,
but if I'm teaching master classes,
because I know this repertoire, I can demonstrate things.
I mean, I can't play any of these pieces
as well as the students who bring things into me,
but I can look at them and I can give them suggestions
about how to make something technically easier
or ways of getting around things
or ways to communicate what's in the score
in a better and clearer way.
So I have no regrets at all.
I don't think it was certainly not time wasted,
but are you gonna see me playing the Chopin etudes
in front of people?
No, of course not.
Who needs it?
On the other hand, there are some contemporary pieces
that I'm very happy to play in public,
which I feel very comfortable doing
and I think that I can bring something to them.
I actually have some recital programs planned for next year,
which I'm very excited about the program.
Tell me more.
Well, one piece is a set of variations
called We Sing for the Future by Cornelius Cardew.
And he was a close friend and colleague of Frederick Siewski,
who was a very close friend and kind of a mentor to me
at the great composer pianist.
And Frederick turned me on to this piece
and it was the last piece that Cardew wrote
before he was murdered in a hit and run accident.
And it's a very tonal piece,
but it also uses the piano in very ingenuous ways.
And it's part of a concert of music
that has to do with heroism, has to do with pieces,
has to do with some kind of political import, I suppose.
And then after the Cardew, I played the funeral march
from Beethoven's Eroica Symphony in the Liszt transcription.
What a juxtaposition.
Then the second half of the concert,
I'll probably write a new set of variations,
I guess, based on the Ukrainian national anthem.
Then I play Frederick Siewski's fantasy
based on John Lennon's Give Piece a Chance,
which I've played many times.
And there's also room for improvisation.
Also, in these pieces, one can improvise.
And I love to improvise in classical contexts.
That's why I love playing a lot of Siewski's pieces,
because he also gives room for one to play optional cadenzas.
And then I finished the concert with a piece by Alvin Curran,
who's a wonderful composer and pianist.
And he and Frederick and the late Richard Teitelbaum
formed Musica electronica viva in Rome in the late 1960s,
which was a great collective improvisation group
that had really tremendous impact on their time.
Alvin wrote a piece in memory of Cornelius,
because he was a friend of Cornelius also.
It's called Four Cornelius.
And it's a piece that opens with a kind of lament
that wouldn't be out of place in Eric Satie's Gymnopédie.
And then it goes into this relentless section
of these building tremolos in both hands
that builds to an extraordinary climax.
And this is a piece that's been in my repertoire for ages.
It's an extraordinary piece.
So I think the trajectory is kind of interesting,
starting with Cornelius's last piece,
and then a piece written in memory.
Then you have Give Peace a Chance, and then the Funeral
March, and then Give Something of Mine
to Reflect the State of the World.
So you have the subtext that I'm talking about,
but also musically, it all is very unified and makes sense,
and it's very diverse.
And programming is very important to me,
I think, as you've gathered, as a piano player,
as well as a radio host.
I think programming in order and contrast,
this has all been very, very important to me.
And it's interesting how a lot of really wonderful pianists
really are not very good programmers.
Yes, yes.
I guess one must keep researching these pieces
and getting to know contemporary composers.
Oh, well, there's so much out there.
I mean, there's just such a vast amount of music.
Another thing that I've been doing in my piano playing life
over the last two or three years after the pandemic finished
and concerts opened up, I started
playing symphonic repertoire in piano forehand arrangements
with different friends in the US.
And I've been doing Mahler.
My first experience was playing the Mahler Ninth Symphony
with my dear, dear friend Jerry Kuderna,
who is a pianist who's based in Berkeley.
He's a great teacher, a wonderful artist,
and he's probably my closest friend among pianists
in the United States.
And we had the opportunity to play the Mahler Ninth Symphony
at the Catacombs in the Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn
at a series that Andrew Owsley produces during the summer.
It was really extraordinary to play the Mahler Ninth
Forehands in this small catacomb with a very small audience.
And this is the cemetery where Leonard Bernstein is buried,
so I'm sure he was listening to the Mahler
and probably cringing.
I could have imagined his spirit saying,
get off that piano bench and let me show you how it's done.
And then Jerry and I played the Mahler several more times.
In fact, we will be playing it on the Salon Concerts
at Clavier House series, for which
I became artistic director.
I also played the Mahler Second last year
in a benefit for Ukraine in London with the pianist
Gabriele Baldacci.
I played Mahler Fifth in Milano with Massimo Giuseppe Bianchi.
What a wonderful pianist.
I've played the Mahler First in New York
with Drew Peterson, who won the American Pianist Association
Award in 2017.
He's one of the most gifted pianists of his generation.
And it's not official yet, but there
looks like there's going to be a Mahler Six in Helsinki in 2025,
I hope, but I don't really know.
I also played Shostakovich Ninth with Peter Jablonsky
last year in Karlskrona, Sweden.
That was such a wonderful collaboration.
And that is Shostakovich's own arrangement,
and it worked so well for the piano.
Some of his other symphonies I don't
think would be as effective on the piano,
even though he did the arrangements.
Like Symphony No.
11, I think, relies so much on the orchestration
and also the ambient atmosphere in a concert hall
that it might be a little fatiguing to hear that.
I don't know.
It's kind of strange.
You have to really be selective.
Some of these transcriptions really
lend themselves to public performance.
Certainly Shostakovich Ninth does.
Mahler Ninth really works very well on piano.
The Mahler First does, although you have endless tremolos,
and I think this probably is served better
by an orchestra maybe.
Are these transcribed by who?
Different people.
Bruno Walter did the Mahler First and Second,
and he was Mahler's disciple.
So that has a lot of validity to that.
A lot of the others were done by house arrangers,
because a lot of these music publishing companies
had arrangers who were not really well-known musicians,
but they made a living making transcriptions,
because this is what you had before you
had radio and recordings.
If you wanted to hear the new Brahms Symphony,
either you had to take a horse and buggy to Vienna
for three days, or otherwise you'd
buy the forehand arrangement.
Actually, Brahms either did his own arrangements
or supervised other people doing them,
or you would play it yourself at home.
And the piano, as you know, was the home entertainment center
from about 1840-something up until the early 1930s.
And I have a big collection of forehand music.
I love playing these things.
When I have my pianist friends over,
I rope them into sight reading through Haydn quartets
or Debussy, La Mer, or whatever.
And what I like about that is that it's fun,
and there's no professional pressure attached to that,
although ironically, it's becoming a profession for me.
So I do have the professional pressure.
But at the same time, because they're transcriptions,
like if you have some passages of ridiculously hard octaves,
I'll usually leave stuff out, because hey,
it's a transcription of a transcription or something.
And you've done so many interesting gigs.
But one thing I realized was, what
is this 175 electronic keyboards, the Guinness record?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
This is a fun project.
What happened was I was involved for quite a few years
with Make Music New York, which is an organization that
produces free concerts, mostly in outdoor venues,
all over the city on June 21.
I was involved with the first one done in New York in 2007,
where I led a performance of Terry Riley's minimalist
manifesto, a minimalist masterpiece,
in C with 100-plus musicians on Cornelia Street in Greenwich
Village, because the Cornelia Street Cafe was
a place where I hosted a monthly contemporary music
series for years.
And I was very, very involved with musical activities
at the cafe.
And the owner of the cafe, Robin Hirsch,
who is an actor and writer, was very supportive
of my musical activities.
So when this opportunity came up with Make Music New York,
I asked Robin, do you think we could do a big thing
on the street?
So we got permission from the city
and the other businesses knew about this.
So it was very, very successful.
It was a lot of fun.
And so for the next several years,
my music nonprofit organization, Composers Collaborative,
produced or either co-produced big events
on the street on June 21.
So what happened is, on June 21, 2013,
Make Music New York was interested in doing
a multi-keyboard project where Yamaha would
donate 175 or so keyboards, however many keyboards it
would take to break the Guinness Book
Record of number of keyboards playing simultaneously.
So they asked if I was interested in participating.
So I thought, well, why don't I write a piece of music for this?
So I wrote a piece called Broken Record,
which was a piece that was more of an installation
and a kind of environmental piece where there were written
notes, but there were also gestures,
like I would have blocks of time saying,
from two minutes and 30 seconds to four minutes and 40 seconds,
you just play arpeggios.
And so I had all of these keyboards.
And my wife, Maria Scarpini, who is a visual artist,
arranged the look of the keyboards on the street.
She did the chenography where she
made an outline of where to place the keyboards
and also where to place the five conductors that I had.
And she did this in a way where pedestrians could walk up
and down the street and hear the piece
from different perspectives because things sounded
very different from wherever you were on the street.
Now, the thing was is that we wouldn't
have been able to qualify for the Guinness record
unless we played a familiar composition.
And who the hell knows Jed Disler's composition,
Broken Record?
But everybody knows the Pachelbel canon, right?
Yeah.
Right.
So what did I do?
I made an arrangement of the Pachelbel canon
for 175 keyboards.
And we opened with that.
Wow.
Wow, I can't imagine.
Oh, well, there's if you go on YouTube,
you'll find a video of this.
It's really kind of amusing.
I'll send you a link to it.
It was a lot of fun, but it was also a lot of hard work.
But it's a project that I would love to do again,
but to do it on a larger scale in another outdoor venue,
but also to have an infrastructure that would
include a sound engineer and really good financial support.
Because I think it's something that can involve communities.
And a lot of the people who participated
were not professional performers.
Like there were a lot of school kids.
In fact, one of the school kids was
Cameron Glass, whose father is Philip Glass.
And of course, Philip showed up.
And then we roped him into playing.
So I can say that Philip Glass performed my compositions.
But there are a lot of other composers there.
The late Noah Krzyzewski, who was
one of the great electronic composers of his generation.
And who was a dear, dear friend he played.
And he never showed his face in public,
because he wrote his electronic music in isolation.
And that he showed up to this and participated
meant so much to me.
But just this kind of a community spirit
was so much fun.
And this is the kind of thing that we need more and more of.
Because it just shows that people can participate
in live music and be a part of something that is bigger.
What's the cliche?
More than the sum of its parts?
Or it adds up to more than the sum of its parts.
But I would love to, anyway, I don't
want to talk too much, because somebody else
might steal the idea.
But I do have some ideas for venues and sites,
where I think this could really work.
I would love to do it again.
We're doing two things.
I wrote a piece for 175 electronic keyboards
in grand piano, which is called Broken Record.
And it's a piece that really uses
the entire length of the street as kind of a soundscape.
Where waves of sound are going from one place to another.
And there are some sections where
people can play what they want within certain parameters.
Another project you are working on, which is the 1827 Bagatelle's
project.
Oh, yeah.
I'm composing 1,827 piano Bagatelle's for the Beethoven
death anniversary.
And each Bagatelle is dedicated to a different pianist,
musician, friend, or somebody involved in this.
You are in my database of people.
Me?
By the way.
Oh, yeah.
Of course.
You're one of the recent entries.
Oh, my goodness.
That's an honor.
So some of these have been performed.
I'm up to about a third way through.
But the thing is, some of the Bagatelle's
are only like five seconds, six seconds long.
And they're all very stylistically diverse.
Also, because I'm constantly sketching things
and tossing the sketches away.
But I keep everything, although they're all filed.
Again, it's that hoarder tendency or tendency
not to hoard.
I can go back to a lot of these pieces
that I forgot about from years ago,
like something I started, never finished.
And then I just say, OK, I'll do this.
I'll just keep it intact.
It's a Bagatelle.
So I spend several hours a day just copying the damn music
and then when I'm copying, I do little revisions.
And one can play any amount of these, as many or as few
as one wishes in any order.
There's no rules or regulations about it.
It's really just like a big gift to the piano community.
And then I retire.
I don't think so.
Do you plan to do this like maybe some sort of,
I don't know, event or like putting something in there?
There's already talk about doing the entire cycle
in a couple of European cities.
I can't really talk about details.
But I don't know whether I would play the whole thing
or somebody else would.
I mean, I imagine the whole thing
would total maybe eight hours of music altogether.
It wouldn't be all that long, honestly.
There is one Bagatelle that's actually one hour long,
but that's because you have hundreds of repetitions.
And that was actually written for a friend of mine,
Nicola Orvat, a really fantastic pianist who plays
Satis Vexations by himself.
I don't know how he does that.
He does 24 hours or so playing straight through.
I don't know how he does that.
So that's kind of dedicated to him.
But we'll see what happens.
I mean, I'm open to suggestions.
I'm open to funding.
I'm open to.
Oh, and we should talk about my podcast, shouldn't we?
Oh, sure.
Let's talk about it.
So you just gave a birth to a podcast show.
Yes.
And I have to thank you for helping me set it up
and for all of your support and your ideas and feedback,
because I wouldn't have been able to do this without you.
But it's called The Piano Maven with Jed Distler.
And it's a very simple premise where
I talk about piano recordings.
There isn't any music, because you
have to deal with getting rights if you have
music in a podcast format.
Whereas on my radio show with webcasts,
you can't download those, although I'm
sure people can find ways to do that illegally.
But the radio is a very different thing.
But what I do is I discuss recordings.
However, I provide links to how you can access the recordings,
purchase them, or hear them in authorized YouTube site.
In fact, I've been getting a lot of feedback
from listeners who've discovered the podcast through YouTube.
And they send comments.
And they're very supportive and interesting.
And what's been wonderful is that my podcast has opened up
a lot of dialogues about recordings and repertoire.
And I'll talk about new releases,
or I'll talk about unusual things.
It's kind of like between the keys in the sense
that I'm trying to give a lot of variety,
and not just to have only new releases or only dead pianists.
I try to mix it up.
I also have episodes about jazz pianists
that will be coming up, and not your usual suspects
among jazz pianists.
There'll be some surprises.
Pianists who you probably haven't even thought about.
And also, the listeners who are writing in
or drawing my attention to pianists who I didn't even
know about.
So it's this back and forth that I think is just so wonderful.
And it just shows what a community
we have in the piano world internationally,
and how we have to keep the community cultivated,
and alive, and nurtured.
It's so important.
And you've been doing this to such a wonderful extent
with the piano pod.
And I hope that I've been doing this with my work, too.
Oh, you are my inspiration.
But thank you so much for such encouraging words.
It means so much.
But this is the reason why we do radio show to podcasts,
because we love piano so much.
And it's not this compositions by the usual suspects,
but it's just so much more.
And I think the important thing is,
another thing I should have said about my radio show before is,
and when we talk about community,
we're not just talking about people
who've been a part of the community for a long time,
because we don't want to always preach to the choir.
We want to be inviting new people.
There are always going to be people tuning
into your podcast, my podcast, and my radio show,
who may be just discovering a Beethoven piece,
or learning about the piano for the first time.
And you have to present something
in a way that will make it attractive for them
to come back for more.
One thing that I never liked about reading sports columnists
is that they always presume a kind of prior knowledge
among readers.
And they use jargon that I never understand.
And I'm often turned off by that,
because they assume you know so much.
And there's all this insider information
that kind of alienates me.
I feel the same way often about reading opera critics,
because they're talking a lot in technical terms
or in very arcane language that I think would turn off
people who just want to listen to opera and enjoy the singers.
And I know that when I write record reviews,
sometimes I can get a little technical,
or I can get involved in this kind of jargon.
But I try not to do that.
And I try not to do this when I'm putting a radio show
together.
Even sometimes it's unavoidable.
But you want to invite somebody who may not know about this
and to give them information, but make
them want to learn more.
And then they can discover all this on their own.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But where does that big heart come from?
My parents.
I had very loving, supportive parents.
And I had three younger brothers.
And we were raised to be kind and to be civil.
We didn't always have to like one another
all the time in the house.
But respect and civility were always important.
And there was always a sense of support and generosity
from my parents, even if we didn't always
share the same loves.
My father was not artistic at all.
He was really into sports.
I wasn't into sports.
But his sense of right and wrong,
his feeling of being protective of those he loved,
and his authenticity, and how he related so naturally
with people is something that I've tried to emulate.
I don't know if I do it successfully.
But my mother was a teacher and a poet
and somebody who was just very open and curious about all
of the arts.
And living in a house with an artist who had
all kinds of things going on.
And when I was a kid, she bought records for me all the time.
She bought secondhand records of all styles.
And it didn't really matter what it was.
And just being non-judgmental, but also setting limits,
of course.
But I think it's their kindness and their ethical blueprint.
I think that this is, and having mentors
who are generous, and also knowing how not to be.
Because there's some teachers I had
who were just very small minded and not very generous.
So I knew who not to be like.
So I really think it was my upbringing, honestly.
So I'm just very lucky.
Not everyone is lucky to have close family ties.
I was just in Colorado recently because one
of my younger brother's daughter had a wedding.
It was just a wonderful occasion to be with my brothers
and their kids who are all grown.
And they all have that very sweet and generous nature.
They're all doing interesting work.
There are no musicians among them,
although I do have a nephew who studied French horn
very seriously.
And he's a sports fanatic.
And he works in broadcasting.
And he just loves it.
But we're going to do a Between the Keys episode together
where we talk about the introduction of the Brahms
Second Concerto, because there's that horn solo.
So he's going to comment on the horn solos
without knowing who's playing.
And then I'm going to comment on the pianist
without knowing who's playing.
We're going to see what we come up with.
Oh, how lovely.
It would be so much fun to collaborate with him on this.
And as I get older, I feel that friends and family are really
the most important thing.
And when I'm with my wife's friends in Italy,
because she's from Milan and we spent a long time,
there is this loyalty among friends
that you don't always find in the United States.
I think in New York City, even though it's such a big city
and there's so many people, it can often
seem so isolated because we're all so obsessed by our work
and we're all alone in our studios working.
And you don't always have that sense of community
that you can have.
I mean, I will see friends and colleagues at concerts.
But it's not that we always go out of our way
to make time to go have coffee or have dinner.
You have to really make the effort to do that.
Whereas when I'm in Milan or even when I'm in the Bay Area,
it's a little different because my pianist friends are always
going to one another's concerts and listening to run-throughs
and helping each other out.
And it's something that's really quite wonderful.
It's very Italian.
And the best example of this is I remember,
oh, I think it was a couple of years ago, we were in Milan.
And my wife was staying a few more days beyond me.
I had to leave a little earlier.
So these friends of ours drive all the way across the city.
The morning I'm going to leave, I have an afternoon flight.
They drive over in the morning, just have coffee with us,
just to say hi and goodbye.
Does that ever happen in New York City?
I don't think so.
Rarely.
I mean, this will happen in a small town somewhere.
And these are people who I'm very fond with.
But these are old friends of Mima's, of my wife's.
And I've come to know them.
And I'm very fond of them.
But they're busy people.
They don't have to do this.
But this is what happens all the time.
And this is what I value really more than anything.
I think friends and family are really,
that's the top priority for me.
I can always make music.
And I can always do my musical projects.
But you can't get another family.
Jed, you mentioned in the guest form you filled out for me
that you've always pursued your dreams and obsessions
to their final goal, seeking out like-minded individuals
for support and feedback.
We mentioned about community and so on today.
So in the often solitary pursuit of artistic excellence,
especially being a pianist and composer as well,
how do you balance the drive for personal achievement
with the need to create community
and build steadfast relationships?
Maybe you answered that question.
You already talked about family and friends.
I think that the pursuit of artistic excellence
and the pursuit of community can be one in the same.
I think that these work within one another,
they feed in and out of each other.
It's a very natural kind of thing
because so much of what is done artistically
is community oriented in terms of having a team working
together.
I mean, otherwise you wouldn't have orchestras.
And in writing pieces for many people,
we're bringing a lot of people together
to perform something.
I think it's a very organic kind of thing.
If you think about what Bach did in composing his Passions
and his Cantatas, these were pieces
that were written not just for performers,
but for the members of the congregation
because they would sing the chorales.
They were very much a part of this.
So this is something that is not a new idea.
And the last question would be, what
is your thought on our gift or maybe duty
as classical musicians to society?
Oh, that's a tough question.
We have to remember that in classical music,
we are in a service industry.
We are serving the composers.
We are bringing the music to the public.
And we do this through performing,
through hosting radio shows, through presenting,
through curating, through artistic directing.
However we do it, the important thing
is just getting the music to the people
and sharing it with them, not reaching it to them,
but sharing it and just giving people an opportunity
to hear this music and to get to know it
and to create contexts in which they can get to know it better
should they want through discussions or lectures
or books or reviews or whatever.
Oh, totally.
Beautiful.
Thank you beautifully said.
So for our listeners, please check out
Jed's website for all the work he has done in the past,
but also maybe to keep you posted on his new project.
So his website is jettlisler.com, J-E-D-D-I-S-T-L-E-R.com.
Correct?
Yeah, that's it.
And then be sure to check out his radio show on WWFM.org
Between the Keys and his newly launched podcast,
The Piano Maven by Jed Disler.
And I also should mention that I am the new artistic director
of the Salon Concerts at Clavier House, which
is a weekly recital series that takes place for the most part
on Sunday afternoons at 2 o'clock.
And these concerts are live streamed,
but you can attend in person.
Concerts are free, but there's a suggested donation.
And the series presents a very broad range
of emerging and established pianists alike.
And this series was founded two years ago
by Joseph Patric, who was a fantastic recording engineer
and a mentor to pianists and somebody
who had an extraordinary presence in the piano world.
And he was a very close friend of mine,
and we collaborated on many projects together.
And after his death, I was brought in to keep the series
going, and we are continuing it into this season.
So you can find this online.
And all the concerts are booked through June 2025.
And I'm going to be performing on a bunch of these, which
will be a lot of fun.
So you can go to event.clavierhouse.com
to purchase tickets.
No, no, you don't have to purchase tickets, but get a more
important one.
Well, you should donate.
You have a moral obligation to donate,
even though you don't have to.
But you should.
Absolutely.
You should have, would have, supposed to.
Yeah?
Yes, that's right.
Well, it has been a wonderful, inspiring conversation.
It was a master class.
Thank you.
So thank you.
Thank you.
But before I let you go, we have one more thing to do.
It's called.
One more thing to do.
OK.
Of course, rapid fire questions.
And this is the part of the show where
I get to ask fun questions to each guest.
Here's a little twist.
As silly as these questions may sound,
your answers may reveal who you truly are, so ready or not.
Please answer each question with the shortest response
as possible.
And no.
As quickly as possible?
Short, as short as possible.
The quick, you can take your time to think a little bit.
But no explanation.
Like three or four words.
Sure.
Yeah, yeah.
One word.
Yeah, it depends on the question.
But question one.
Question number one.
What is your comfort food?
My homemade meatballs from chicken.
How do you like your coffee in the morning?
Black, strong.
Cats or dogs?
Cats.
Yes, I met one of your cats.
You met Shubi.
Pablo, I don't think you met.
But you met Shubi.
So sweet.
And next question is sunrise or sunset?
Sunrise.
Summer or winter?
It's hard to say.
It depends on which country.
I would say summer.
Next question is a little bit more difficult.
What skill have you always wanted to learn
but haven't had a chance to?
Diving.
What is your word or words to live by?
Be yourself.
Good one.
What is the most important quality
you look for in other people?
Authenticity and kindness.
Name three people who inspire you, living or dead.
My wife, Maria Scarpini.
Oh, God, this is so hard.
So many people inspire me.
I don't know how to answer this,
but certainly my wife would come first.
That's good enough.
Thank you.
And then two more.
Name one title in your current playlist.
I'm so curious to know this.
Oh, Little Brother Montgomery's album
called Pharaoh Street Jive.
He was a blues pianist based in Chicago,
and this is a 1968 album on Folkways.
He's just a wonderful blues boogie woogie player and singer
and just such inviting music.
Lovely stuff.
Oh, I need to listen to that.
Well, sounds lovely.
The last question.
Fill in the blank, please.
Music is blank.
Fun?
Yay.
Why not?
Absolutely.
Because I just want to have fun,
and I have fun doing everything that I'm doing.
That's great.
Wonderful answer.
So this concludes this episode of The Pianopod.
Thank you, Jed, for joining my show today
and sharing your story, insights, and expertise.
It was my pleasure.
I just enjoyed our time together so much.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
You can learn more about Jed and his amazing work
through his website at jettlister.com,
and you can listen to his new podcast show, Piano,
The Pianomave, wherever you listen to your podcasts.
All the links are listed in the show notes.
And thank you to my wonderful audience and fans
for tuning in today.
If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate and review it
on your favorite podcasting platform.
Remember to hit the thumbs up button
and subscribe to my YouTube channel.
Follow The Pianopod on, that's right, social media
to get the latest piano news via Facebook, Instagram, TikTok,
and then LinkedIn.
I will see you for the next episode of The Pianopod.
Thank you, Jed, and thank you, everybody.
Bye.
Thanks so much.