You're listening to the PianoPod, where we talk to the brightest minds in the industry
about how they are bringing the piano into the 21st century.
Last time we spoke to concert pianist Jeffrey Beagle about his love of piano concerti, his
pioneering work with technology and contemporary composers, and his studies with legendary
pedagogue Adele Marcus.
And now the conclusion.
Jeffrey can I jump in for a second?
Sorry to interrupt you.
First of all, I wanted to mention the PDQ Bach concerto is on YouTube, which I was checking
out the other day and it's absolutely hilarious.
I recommend for everybody to go search that up.
I have a technical question for you because I'm just sitting here in awe of what you're
able to do at the instrument and you have so much repertoire at your command from every
different time period, you know, Baroque to the most contemporary.
How are you able to remember all this music?
How many hours of repertoire do you even have in your fingers?
I don't know.
I mean, I work out what I need at the moment and then if I know something's coming up,
I like to.
You know, I always say the things you remember the most are the things you learned when you
were young.
That's true.
I remember my cell soaking it up like a sponge, you know, sponges get old too.
And I just remember things that I'll say, let me go get the score.
I can't find it.
I'm playing the thing.
I was like, how do I remember that?
I just think it has to do with that.
Just remember things that you, I always say to students, don't stay on the same piece
forever.
It's not going to make it any better.
You're going to go back to it 60 years later and you'll get it.
I gotta wait that long.
I said, yes, so did I.
But you know, you get things as well as you can, but you remember things.
Wonderful.
But with new music, I use the score.
I've been using score now for almost everything because I don't trust it.
I trust my memory for certain things, but for performing, even when I would do online
concerts for the Sonata Piano Camp in Vermont, we were remote, still are to some extent.
Everything I did with all the YouTube concerts online, in the pandemic forced me in a way
to go away from concertos because you couldn't go to orchestras and dug out all the standard
repertoires, playing so much standard repertoire again, which was great.
It's a weird way to have to do it, but it was a positive way to deal with the situation.
So that's how I remember.
Yeah.
So speaking of pandemic, you've done quite a lot of compositions.
I've saw some of the YouTube clips.
And so could you tell us about your life during COVID?
I remember the last concert I did was in Florida in March with this Kenneth Fuchs Piano Concerto.
And I came home and that was it.
I went to teach at Brooklyn College that week, last day.
That was it.
We shut down.
And that was like March 8th, 9th, 10th, around there.
By the 27th, I was feeling really caged in.
And I don't think I did the YouTube.
I started doing weekly YouTube concerts from home and music of all styles.
And I decided to write.
I really haven't written much piano music at all because I thought, who am I competing
with?
I mean Chopin, forget it.
But it was a time in my life and in the lives of everybody where we were soul searching,
returning within.
And I just heard music in my head.
And so I'll play a little of this first piece I wrote March 27th.
It's a Waltz of Hope.
And that was it.
It develops.
And then a few weeks later, one of my siblings got COVID and I was devastated and upset.
Who knew what was going to be with anything?
So I wrote a second Waltz of Hope.
But then I got COVID and I wasn't exact.
That's the second piece.
What's interesting though, when I write music like this, and I don't know if she knows it
or not, I've certainly plastered it as much as I can everywhere around for True Letter
and Numb to Barbra Streisand.
When I write music I hear your voice.
I hear it Del Marcus' voice.
People would say, but do you hear your voice?
That is my voice.
It's the voice I don't have.
My raspy, horrible singing voice.
But you do.
Those are the voices you hear.
And I hear that when I'm writing these kind of pieces.
Later on in the year, like come September or so, I wrote a little sonatina, like an
homage to Clementi.
But it was after Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away, I just didn't know.
I was kind of starting to feel burnt out in October.
And you know, online teaching, online playing, I wrote these pieces.
I just said, it's just not there.
It's just, nothing's there.
I remember my wife said, go write something, go write some music.
I thought, nah, there's nothing there.
I sat down and I thought of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
In a way there's a strange connection.
I've never met her, but my father-in-law knew her.
They grew up in Brooklyn together and he knew her when they were teenagers.
And I don't know how much they knew each other, but they called her Kiki Bader because
her sister called her Kiki and they called her Kiki Bader.
Why did I feel this connection?
Maybe because of him.
Oddly he passed away three months to the day before she did.
And they were both attorneys.
He was a real estate attorney and she of course became Supreme Court Justice.
But I felt this need to write something about her, which inevitably filtered in this past
July into two more pieces.
One for JFK and one for MLK, Martin Luther King.
That's the three reflections.
The second movement of that concerto was the only piece.
And during the pandemic I wrote this piece for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which has been orchestrated
by a student of mine at Brooklyn College, Harrison Sheckler, who's now gone on this
year to start his doctoral studies in Tucson.
And he's going to orchestrate the other two movements.
It's an amazing job he did.
That's what Dallas will be doing with me there in October.
I thought, what do I write?
Where do I begin?
I thought, think of the names.
And a friend of mine told me later on, well Schumann did that with Carnival.
He took all the names and wrote music out of their letters.
I thought, oh that's right.
I didn't think about that.
I didn't want to be Robert Schumann.
I didn't even think of anything at that point.
And who could be?
I mean, my gosh.
So I thought, let's make an alphabet of music.
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z.
Yeah.
Well what if it's, can we use a D flat?
If it's a B, which is an R, is D, and a B, a G, or a T, a H, flat?
Can you make it flat?
Yes.
Then I come to her name Ruth.
What do you do with that?
You have a D, a G, an F, and an A. So what can I do?
Or, or, what do I do?
I did this.
And then I put them all together and created this kind of hoping she's in heaven, spiritual
stuff happening with all the themes, all the themes, and then climaxed with this.
Spinal banner, and then big climax.
The gavel.
And then it ends just with her name.
It had a nickname K, I, K, I, Kiki.
So that became that piece.
And from being burnt out to being creative, I don't know if that would have happened if
not for a pandemic.
I wasn't going in that direction.
I was just finishing a music and planning project.
It was a year of reflection, a year of soul searching and just evolving and surviving.
And a little strange year.
I mean, I think as we live through things, we deal with it.
If we survive through it.
I don't think we're going to really feel the impact of this until later on.
It's like a PTSD, we won't really get it until we try to get back into what we knew.
But it was an interesting part of the journey.
And if you told me a year ago you're going to write a piece and it will be orchestrated
and you'll play it with the Dallas Symphony next year, I'd say, well, that's a nice dream
to have.
And you will raise money for Ellen Tate's We'll Look to Write a Piece about Ruth Bader Ginsburg
and Denise Graves will sing it with you in Dallas.
I'll be like, you're a real dreamer.
But sometimes things just happen because they're supposed to.
And I raised money during the pandemic, not only for that project, but also for a project
in two years from now to celebrate Rhapsody in Blue Centennial.
So I asked the lawyer to be the composer for Rhapsody in Red, White and Blue.
I raised all this money during the pandemic so the orchestras don't have to pay for this thing.
The worst thing you could do to an orchestra now is say, can you help support a new project of you coming out of a pandemic?
So working on the premiere in that, I would like to make the 50 state project that I started 20 years ago.
So the pandemic had a different effect on everybody.
And I guess just my voice within from the time I was unable to hear, it just came back to haunt me in a way.
And that's why I wrote music and raised money for a few new pieces to come.
Wonderful. Thank you.
I know we want to keep going. We want to hear more stories.
However, we are running out of time, as always.
So we just want to ask a few things.
So you mentioned about the Ruth Bader Ginsburg piece being orchestrated and being a concerto.
And you're going to perform with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra on October 7th.
And is it going to be live streamed or?
I don't believe they live streamed, but they will record.
I have to ask them how that's going to happen.
The Ginsburg movement, see, it only started as the Ginsburg piece.
And I decided to, I was feeling burnt out again in Hawaii.
So I wrote a piece for Martin Luther King, Reflection of Equality.
And right after that Reflection of Freedom tribute to John F. Kennedy, I thought that's a concerto.
So it will be JFK, RBG, MLK will be the concerto.
I don't have a date yet to do the premiere, but it's starting to get a little buzzy.
So we'll see.
And you have some other projects coming up. So could you tell us briefly?
You have November 5th, Islamé by Balakirev under Steinway label coming up.
They're going to release the Islamé fantasy by Balakirev, which they previously recorded for Grand Romance, but there wasn't room on the disc for that.
So they'd like to release it now, which is very nice. I believe that's coming out in November.
And also you have your personal recording label coming up.
Actually, by the time we release this episode, I think it's out on all music streaming services. So can you tell us a little bit more?
Rhapsody in Blue, one of the most recorded pieces in the history of recordings.
But this will be the 1924 version in the orchestration that was first written.
And it has Soprano and Saxon. It's a different sound in many respects.
Piano part has a lot of extra measures that were cut. So that will be on my label, Naturally Sharp.
And it's with the Adrian Symphony and Bruce Keeslin conducting.
And we actually had to postpone that quite a bit, but finally in June we did the recording sessions in Adrian College in Michigan.
And so that's coming out in September. And that's in addition by Ryan Banigali. It's fabulous.
He did his whole dissertation on that rhapsody. And it's quite interesting to hear it this way.
So that's coming out and wonderful. And then another premiere in January that had been postponed many times by the two Planets Odyssey for piano and orchestra with the Canton Symphony.
My dear friend Gerhard Zimmermann will conduct. Great. Thank you so much for that.
Now we want to ask more questions, but lastly, do you have any advice for young artists, upcoming artists, to students?
Yes. Study as much as you can when you're young. Make as many friends as you can when you're young.
Because they may be composers one day that you will commission to write music for you.
But I always just narrow it down to one line. Follow your yellow brick road.
Sometimes the things you force to happen don't. And some things you work less to happen.
And I think, I mean, I've learned a lot over the years too, but I pushed as much as I can because it was a need for technology.
And honestly, I used to just take a book and call conductors at home.
I really tried to get through somehow. I mean, I remember Arthur Rubenstein was playing a recital in Long Island. I was a little kid.
I couldn't get near him through the crowd.
It's only made me run outside after him when he was going to the presenter's car to go back wherever he was going.
I had him all to myself. So don't let people say no. Follow your heart.
If it feels right, it is right. If it doesn't or something doesn't sit right, walk away from it.
Okay.
Just be true to yourself. Know thyself is what Adele Marcus used to say.
And it's true. And she used to say we make our own careers.
I understand that you have to control all of it yourself to some extent and let others help you.
But don't expect others to do it for you. That puts a lot of pressure on them.
When I grew up, it was like making a debut in competitions, get a manager, you're a star.
No, it's not the way it works.
Some people have been very fortunate to have elder statesmen and artists help them along and help get them situated in managements and have wonderful careers.
It's fabulous. That happens very rarely.
And now with the technology and the Internet, use it to your advantage. Make friends.
There's so much people could do today with technology we didn't do. We couldn't do.
Absolutely.
But we have this advantage. But don't abuse it.
Absolutely. Thank you so much.
So we have this fun segment of the show every episode.
And this is called the piano pods rapid fire question.
So it's a rapid fire. So we're going to ask some really fun questions.
And I would like for you to respond in short answers.
Short is the key to make this one really fun.
Ready or not.
Question number one. What is your comfort food?
I feel like I'm on the dating game.
That's a tough question to ask a musician. I relate everything to food.
M&Ms. I haven't had them in so long.
I lost some weight.
It's okay. We all have. Great. So number two. Cats or dogs?
I've always had dogs. The cats are great too. I'm a dog guy. Beagle. What do you expect?
Absolutely. Right. So what is your word or words to live by?
Integrity. Respect.
Grateful.
Thank you.
What is the most important quality you look for in people?
Correct.
What is the worst quality in people you want to stay away from?
Entitlement.
That's a good one.
Name three people who inspire you. Living or dead?
Beethoven.
Adele Marcus.
My parents.
My wife. I've got five. Sorry.
We will change the question.
Which historical figure or composer do you want to learn or take lessons from if he or she were alive?
That's a tough question because you want certain things from certain composers.
I would say Chopin.
Because it's the instrument that we're dealing with and it's the sound. He was the one who wanted the piano to sound like the voice.
I mean you could study with other people too and Beethoven for things. I would like to ask certain questions. That's part of why I like the commissioning process.
I can actually call Ellen's Willigan and say on that measure, I can't talk to her and say do you want me to go up a little here and use those notes you didn't have because you jumped down an octave?
Of course.
Now is your chance to do that.
Which historic figure or composer do you wish to hang out with or ask the question at the bar if he or she were still alive?
Beethoven.
Because there's so many things in the score. Like while I'm using this piano do you really want to mark that forte in your score? No it's too loud, mark it down.
So many questions for him because he revolutionized the use of the instrument.
All right, my turn. Name one piece in your current playlist.
I don't even have a playlist.
That is fresh and new. I don't have a playlist. I couldn't even make that up because I like to see what's going on at the moment, and I click on it.
So what's the last piece you listened to?
I was just, I don't even remember which one it was. It was a whole bunch of it. I love the piano files of Mark Ayn Lee on Facebook and Instagram because he shares recordings by artists we've never heard of.
Absolutely stunningly beautiful performances from the middle of the 20th century, people that just didn't become famous, but their work was so incredible.
So I definitely recommend visiting the piano files of Mark Ayn Lee, A-I-N-L-E-Y. They are really fascinating.
I mean I could click on the Schultzevler arrangement of the Blue Danube, but there's over a dozen different recordings on YouTube by pianists I never heard of playing it. It's remarkable.
That sounds like an incredible resource. Okay, well what's a book title that you are currently reading?
I'm not reading anything right now. Right now it's The Planet's Odyssey of Daniel Pertue and The Legend of Bijan and Maniz by Farhad Pupel, a new piece that I'm going to learn for next year.
Iranian composer. So the book titles are now like new music. So I haven't been able to really go away and just read something. I don't totally run away and watch HBO Max. I just watched a really wacky series.
I really liked The White Lotus. Whoa, you know I liked it. The scenery, the music sounded like Renaissance Hawaiian music for choir. The music was fabulous. I really enjoyed the series. It was crazy. But the music and the scenery was fabulous.
I'll have to check it out. All right. Everybody loves this next question. You only get one piece to listen to for the rest of your life. What is it?
Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto.
Lovely.
Okay, final question, fill in the blank. Music is blank.
A language.
Ding ding ding. You won the question. So you're the winner. Yay.
I got a new Steinway B.
Yeah, all right.
I hope.
It's coming on your way.
Thank you so much for this wonderful conversations we had. We really are so inspired by your stories and your beautiful music you just demonstrated a little bit for us. So, and thank you for joining us today and so we would like to remind our audience that your Mr. Beagle's digital recording
release from his own label, Naturally Sharp will be available actually at soon, or maybe about the time that we released this episode, all on digital outlets. And that's the rhapsody in blue and tooth excuse me 1924 version.
And also you will be performing it's the premiere of your piece reflection of justice and old to our beachy, which you're going to be performing with the Dallas Symphony on October 7 and November 5 release Steinway label is the may and January.
You will be premiering a planet's Odyssey by Daniel part two. So, yes, and I, we want to thank the audience for joining us today.
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We'll see you for the next episode of the piano pod.
Bye everyone.
Thank you, Mr.
Coming over show.