1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:11,000 You're listening to the Piano Pod, where we talk to the brightest minds in the industry 2 00:00:11,000 --> 00:00:16,640 about how they're bringing the piano into the 21st century. 3 00:00:16,640 --> 00:00:21,760 Welcome back to the Piano Pod and welcome to the very first episode of Season 2. 4 00:00:21,760 --> 00:00:23,560 I am Yukimi Song. 5 00:00:23,560 --> 00:00:25,160 I'm Clara Zhang. 6 00:00:25,160 --> 00:00:26,840 And I am Eric Hunter. 7 00:00:26,840 --> 00:00:29,000 I hope you had a great summer. 8 00:00:29,000 --> 00:00:34,360 We took a two-month hiatus to relax and work on our own individual projects. 9 00:00:34,360 --> 00:00:39,440 Now that we are all well rested and refreshed, we are very excited to be back on air and 10 00:00:39,440 --> 00:00:43,160 looking forward to this new season. 11 00:00:43,160 --> 00:00:46,840 We have some great guests lined up for this season. 12 00:00:46,840 --> 00:00:53,040 A couple of weeks ago, we did a special introductory episode for Season 2, where we go over the 13 00:00:53,040 --> 00:00:54,040 lineup. 14 00:00:54,040 --> 00:01:00,240 So check it out if you want to see what's in store over the coming month. 15 00:01:00,240 --> 00:01:04,480 We also talked about our summer adventures and our other plans for the Piano Pod in the 16 00:01:04,480 --> 00:01:05,560 year to come. 17 00:01:05,560 --> 00:01:06,560 So don't miss out. 18 00:01:06,560 --> 00:01:09,040 The link is in the description. 19 00:01:09,040 --> 00:01:14,920 Today we are proud to welcome our first guest of the season, Mr. Jeffrey Beagle, a world-renowned 20 00:01:14,920 --> 00:01:20,720 concert pianist, Steinway artist, recording artist, composer, and arranger. 21 00:01:20,720 --> 00:01:26,560 He has performed with many major orchestras throughout the world, such as the London Symphony, 22 00:01:26,560 --> 00:01:33,080 the BBC Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the National Symphony, among many others. 23 00:01:33,080 --> 00:01:38,680 And he is a professor of piano at the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College. 24 00:01:38,680 --> 00:01:44,920 Mr. Beagle is a great champion of new music, having commissioned over a dozen projects. 25 00:01:44,920 --> 00:01:51,800 His recording of one of them, Kenneth Fuchs Piano Concerto, won the 2019 Grammy Award 26 00:01:51,800 --> 00:01:54,840 for the Best Classical Compendium. 27 00:01:54,840 --> 00:02:01,860 Mr. Beagle's own compositions, Three Reflections, originally written as a solo piano solo, include 28 00:02:01,860 --> 00:02:07,980 a dedication to the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, will have its premiere 29 00:02:07,980 --> 00:02:14,720 as a piano concerto with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra on October 7, 2021. 30 00:02:14,720 --> 00:02:17,720 So everyone, let's welcome Mr. Jeffrey Beagle. 31 00:02:17,720 --> 00:02:18,720 Yay. 32 00:02:18,720 --> 00:02:23,080 Thank you so much for joining us today. 33 00:02:23,080 --> 00:02:24,080 Thank you. 34 00:02:24,080 --> 00:02:26,240 It's a pleasure. 35 00:02:26,240 --> 00:02:33,360 And as we were learning about your career and life and music, I mean, we were so blown 36 00:02:33,360 --> 00:02:34,360 away. 37 00:02:34,360 --> 00:02:37,200 I mean, how many CD albums you produced already? 38 00:02:37,200 --> 00:02:42,200 Majority of the things I've done have been commissioning new works. 39 00:02:42,200 --> 00:02:49,240 Okay, well, as far as I know, you have quite a lot of albums and we were overwhelmed. 40 00:02:49,240 --> 00:02:55,720 And also we saw a lot of video clips of your performance from the past, even from early 41 00:02:55,720 --> 00:03:00,440 90s on GMA, Good Morning America. 42 00:03:00,440 --> 00:03:08,680 And we found out you were actually born with disability, deaf. 43 00:03:08,680 --> 00:03:11,560 So we would like to start with that. 44 00:03:11,560 --> 00:03:14,320 I mean, what a challenging life. 45 00:03:14,320 --> 00:03:19,920 And you had a surgery at age of three that and then you call it the reverse Beethoven 46 00:03:19,920 --> 00:03:20,920 phenomenon. 47 00:03:20,920 --> 00:03:23,400 So could you explain to us and tell us the story? 48 00:03:23,400 --> 00:03:27,800 You know, I went through the childhood and teen years and even my twenties. 49 00:03:27,800 --> 00:03:33,960 I didn't even talk about it because it just didn't seem like anything to talk about. 50 00:03:33,960 --> 00:03:38,080 And I didn't want to separate myself in any way for any reason. 51 00:03:38,080 --> 00:03:42,240 I never even told my teacher, Adele Marcus at the Juilliard School that I was born that 52 00:03:42,240 --> 00:03:43,240 way. 53 00:03:43,240 --> 00:03:45,480 It didn't make a difference to me. 54 00:03:45,480 --> 00:03:48,120 It was my normal. 55 00:03:48,120 --> 00:03:54,440 But looking back, I mean, it was a journalist who asked me a question about my early childhood 56 00:03:54,440 --> 00:03:55,960 and I happened to mention that. 57 00:03:55,960 --> 00:04:01,800 I just kept going talking about other things and he said, Whoa, stop, back up. 58 00:04:01,800 --> 00:04:10,000 And I started to realize that perhaps not being able to hear had a greater impact on 59 00:04:10,000 --> 00:04:13,160 my life and always. 60 00:04:13,160 --> 00:04:21,200 And it forced me to use other senses to become dominant. 61 00:04:21,200 --> 00:04:25,720 And that means touch and sight. 62 00:04:25,720 --> 00:04:31,000 And I was able to look around me all the time to see what was happening in the world because 63 00:04:31,000 --> 00:04:32,760 I couldn't hear it. 64 00:04:32,760 --> 00:04:36,400 But my parents knew there was an issue and took me to different doctors and finally one 65 00:04:36,400 --> 00:04:41,280 doctor faced me to a wall and called my name and I didn't answer. 66 00:04:41,280 --> 00:04:46,320 And that's when he realized that it wasn't because I didn't want to, it's because I couldn't. 67 00:04:46,320 --> 00:04:48,920 And that's a big deal. 68 00:04:48,920 --> 00:04:52,720 So that kind of formed the framework as to why music. 69 00:04:52,720 --> 00:04:56,080 Because vibrations of sound became my first language. 70 00:04:56,080 --> 00:05:03,280 I was able to hear a little bit, very shoddily sounds of things. 71 00:05:03,280 --> 00:05:09,600 Like if you would cover your ears and try to imagine what you're listening to. 72 00:05:09,600 --> 00:05:14,920 And I would listen to sounds of music coming through big speakers, through the big, what 73 00:05:14,920 --> 00:05:18,920 we called stereo speakers when I was a child. 74 00:05:18,920 --> 00:05:23,040 And for some reason, as soon as I was able to hear, I started to go to a piano and try 75 00:05:23,040 --> 00:05:30,080 to make those sounds come out of the piano because they were in me. 76 00:05:30,080 --> 00:05:32,080 And I would start to play by ear. 77 00:05:32,080 --> 00:05:34,080 Little things, whatever. 78 00:05:34,080 --> 00:05:38,080 And I would make chords in the left hand. 79 00:05:38,080 --> 00:05:39,640 But I knew I needed another one. 80 00:05:39,640 --> 00:05:41,640 I wasn't advanced enough to do this. 81 00:05:41,640 --> 00:05:50,640 But I just went to a neighbor tune, back to C. So I knew I had my less developments and 82 00:05:50,640 --> 00:05:55,920 I went back to where that was, little songs that I heard as a child. 83 00:05:55,920 --> 00:05:57,520 And then I started to write little pieces. 84 00:05:57,520 --> 00:05:59,120 I still have them somewhere. 85 00:05:59,120 --> 00:06:02,080 Little melodic things, little easy pieces. 86 00:06:02,080 --> 00:06:07,240 And the first experience I had, I mean I had lessons at age seven. 87 00:06:07,240 --> 00:06:10,800 The teacher didn't want me to start until I was able to go to school and learn to read 88 00:06:10,800 --> 00:06:15,120 and to write and understand what I was looking at. 89 00:06:15,120 --> 00:06:16,720 The John Schaum series. 90 00:06:16,720 --> 00:06:22,160 I did Pre-A, the A book, the red, the blue B book and the C purple book. 91 00:06:22,160 --> 00:06:23,680 I did all of these. 92 00:06:23,680 --> 00:06:29,720 And all the Hanon exercises and all the Clementi Sonatina, 12 of them. 93 00:06:29,720 --> 00:06:36,160 And by three years he sent me to another teacher and I had a teacher, Morton Estrin, wonderful 94 00:06:36,160 --> 00:06:38,840 American pianist for about six years. 95 00:06:38,840 --> 00:06:40,960 And then at 16 I went to a Dome Arcus. 96 00:06:40,960 --> 00:06:45,640 But the first, when I was a kid we called them record albums. 97 00:06:45,640 --> 00:06:50,920 The first record album we had, my parents bought me, was Vladimir Horowitz. 98 00:06:50,920 --> 00:06:51,920 Beethoven sonatas. 99 00:06:51,920 --> 00:06:52,920 You know there's this one. 100 00:06:52,920 --> 00:06:55,840 That one's on there. 101 00:06:55,840 --> 00:06:57,880 But the big one was the Appassionata. 102 00:06:57,880 --> 00:07:04,440 And this was the first piece that I related to coming out of this handicap and meeting 103 00:07:04,440 --> 00:07:06,960 up with my destiny basically. 104 00:07:06,960 --> 00:07:07,960 It was this. 105 00:07:07,960 --> 00:07:22,000 And then the silence followed by this chord. 106 00:07:22,000 --> 00:07:26,680 That's quite remarkable. 107 00:07:26,680 --> 00:07:33,520 So that was my exposure from early childhood moving forward into what would eventually 108 00:07:33,520 --> 00:07:36,120 be my life. 109 00:07:36,120 --> 00:07:37,120 That's incredible. 110 00:07:37,120 --> 00:07:40,800 So you didn't actually start lessons until you were seven years old? 111 00:07:40,800 --> 00:07:41,800 Wow. 112 00:07:41,800 --> 00:07:45,200 So you were just experimenting on your own before then. 113 00:07:45,200 --> 00:07:47,960 Could you talk to us a little bit about your studies with Adele Marcus? 114 00:07:47,960 --> 00:07:50,000 She's such a legendary name. 115 00:07:50,000 --> 00:07:54,200 I'm glad to hear that people still remember who she was. 116 00:07:54,200 --> 00:07:59,360 I guess they think of Adele Marcus now the way I thought of Joseph Levine and the names 117 00:07:59,360 --> 00:08:05,040 Isabel Van Gereve and these incredible, powerful personalities. 118 00:08:05,040 --> 00:08:10,320 And Adele Marcus was seventy when I went to play for her. 119 00:08:10,320 --> 00:08:12,840 And it was an experience. 120 00:08:12,840 --> 00:08:18,400 I told her when I was playing, and she would say that's very advanced repertoire, I remember 121 00:08:18,400 --> 00:08:22,880 saying I was learning the Chopin concerto in E minor. 122 00:08:22,880 --> 00:08:34,160 So I was playing, I said, she says, oh dear, do you always start with the third movement? 123 00:08:34,160 --> 00:08:38,600 I said, no, I just happen to really like that. 124 00:08:38,600 --> 00:08:41,880 And it was kind of what I wanted to learn first. 125 00:08:41,880 --> 00:08:44,680 That was my first experience with Adele Marcus. 126 00:08:44,680 --> 00:08:53,000 But she would play and the sound was something I had never heard come out of piano. 127 00:08:53,000 --> 00:08:59,120 She would get a sound that was very vocal. 128 00:08:59,120 --> 00:09:04,440 And she used to say that her father was a cantor, a rabbinical cantor. 129 00:09:04,440 --> 00:09:09,080 And you could hear when she would teach, she would sing. 130 00:09:09,080 --> 00:09:11,080 It was an incredible kind of experience. 131 00:09:11,080 --> 00:09:16,880 You would hear this very soft cantorial sound coming out of her mouth. 132 00:09:16,880 --> 00:09:18,720 I do that when I teach too. 133 00:09:18,720 --> 00:09:36,000 Like she would go... 134 00:09:36,000 --> 00:09:37,960 Everything that she sang came out of her fingers. 135 00:09:37,960 --> 00:09:40,440 I couldn't figure it out how to do it. 136 00:09:40,440 --> 00:09:42,340 Frustrated her to pieces. 137 00:09:42,340 --> 00:09:46,360 She also didn't understand why I had all these fingers. 138 00:09:46,360 --> 00:09:51,040 I could do anything that she would tell me to play, quick as anything. 139 00:09:51,040 --> 00:09:52,840 And she would love having me do that. 140 00:09:52,840 --> 00:09:53,840 We would do... 141 00:09:53,840 --> 00:09:54,840 She would say, yeah, that's fun. 142 00:09:54,840 --> 00:09:55,840 That's great. 143 00:09:55,840 --> 00:10:07,560 She could shape all that. 144 00:10:07,560 --> 00:10:15,320 But she would try to get the musical sound and level to match that pianism. 145 00:10:15,320 --> 00:10:16,600 And it was frustrating for her. 146 00:10:16,600 --> 00:10:20,800 And I never told her that I couldn't hear as a child and I was very inhibited. 147 00:10:20,800 --> 00:10:21,800 That was hard. 148 00:10:21,800 --> 00:10:24,920 She used to say, I don't know how to pull the music out of you. 149 00:10:24,920 --> 00:10:25,920 And it took a while. 150 00:10:25,920 --> 00:10:30,040 And finally it started to happen. 151 00:10:30,040 --> 00:10:33,880 And it just had to be probably I needed someone to do that for me. 152 00:10:33,880 --> 00:10:34,880 And she did. 153 00:10:34,880 --> 00:10:37,160 She used to talk about Joseph Levine. 154 00:10:37,160 --> 00:10:38,960 I didn't know who he was really. 155 00:10:38,960 --> 00:10:42,000 She was a student of his and assisted him for seven years. 156 00:10:42,000 --> 00:10:44,560 And Joseph Levine was a brilliant pianist. 157 00:10:44,560 --> 00:10:50,080 His wife Rosina Levine, they took the Juilliard School right through to the middle of the 158 00:10:50,080 --> 00:10:51,640 late 40s, 1940s. 159 00:10:51,640 --> 00:10:57,400 Then their students took the traditions further until the end of the 20th century. 160 00:10:57,400 --> 00:11:02,360 And she said to me once, which was a very strange experience. 161 00:11:02,360 --> 00:11:04,840 I don't remember what I was playing even. 162 00:11:04,840 --> 00:11:07,840 It could have been this. 163 00:11:07,840 --> 00:11:14,600 This pre-op and etude, and usually she would stop you every two measures or pounding out 164 00:11:14,600 --> 00:11:17,600 the rhythm or whatever it was. 165 00:11:17,600 --> 00:11:21,200 And I finished playing the piece and she was sitting in her chair. 166 00:11:21,200 --> 00:11:23,000 It was in her apartment at the time. 167 00:11:23,000 --> 00:11:27,000 I was not a Juilliard School yet. 168 00:11:27,000 --> 00:11:30,440 And I looked at her and I thought, well, she's either going to scream at me and tell me never 169 00:11:30,440 --> 00:11:34,840 to play the piece again or something else. 170 00:11:34,840 --> 00:11:37,160 And it was something else. 171 00:11:37,160 --> 00:11:42,400 And she said to me, you know, she sat there like this and said, you know, and she didn't 172 00:11:42,400 --> 00:11:43,400 really look at me. 173 00:11:43,400 --> 00:11:45,960 I think she was spooked out. 174 00:11:45,960 --> 00:11:49,320 And she said, it's very interesting, dear. 175 00:11:49,320 --> 00:11:56,320 I didn't know what she was going to say because every word she said meant my life, you know. 176 00:11:56,320 --> 00:12:00,920 And she said, you remind me of Mr. Levine. 177 00:12:00,920 --> 00:12:04,600 You look like him when you hover over the keys. 178 00:12:04,600 --> 00:12:10,080 You play like him with the high wrists and you sound like him. 179 00:12:10,080 --> 00:12:15,360 And I didn't understand what she was really talking about because I didn't know enough 180 00:12:15,360 --> 00:12:17,240 about him. 181 00:12:17,240 --> 00:12:22,320 And then that kind of propelled me into a new avenue to, I went and bought the LP recordings 182 00:12:22,320 --> 00:12:27,880 of the immortal Joseph Levine, recordings that he did on piano rolls. 183 00:12:27,880 --> 00:12:30,720 At least we had that. 184 00:12:30,720 --> 00:12:38,200 And you know, I went into a lesson once and played this for her. 185 00:12:38,200 --> 00:12:42,080 I played that. 186 00:12:42,080 --> 00:12:54,440 And I remember playing it once. 187 00:12:54,440 --> 00:12:55,440 That was a Levine piece. 188 00:12:55,440 --> 00:12:58,440 And she said, learn the Blue Danube, the Schultz. 189 00:12:58,440 --> 00:12:59,440 I played Blue Danube. 190 00:12:59,440 --> 00:13:03,440 I didn't really, I heard his recordings and I thought, I've got to play it. 191 00:13:03,440 --> 00:13:05,560 That's how I hear it in my head. 192 00:13:05,560 --> 00:13:09,040 And I went into a lesson once and played it and she walked out of the room. 193 00:13:09,040 --> 00:13:12,760 Oh, that wasn't a good thing. 194 00:13:12,760 --> 00:13:16,920 She came back and said, dear, you can't play it like the recording. 195 00:13:16,920 --> 00:13:19,920 He didn't play it that way. 196 00:13:19,920 --> 00:13:22,200 Like, how did he play it? 197 00:13:22,200 --> 00:13:23,200 That's the way it is. 198 00:13:23,200 --> 00:13:28,900 They took the piano rolls and spread them up so that they would fit on the whatever. 199 00:13:28,900 --> 00:13:32,600 She said he played it much more musically and more stylistically. 200 00:13:32,600 --> 00:13:34,640 You don't go by those rolls. 201 00:13:34,640 --> 00:13:37,200 That is hilarious. 202 00:13:37,200 --> 00:13:41,840 And she said that Rosina Levine came to her once and said, you know, Adele, this is not 203 00:13:41,840 --> 00:13:44,960 the way my Joseph played. 204 00:13:44,960 --> 00:13:46,560 That's the technology they had. 205 00:13:46,560 --> 00:13:47,560 That's what we had. 206 00:13:47,560 --> 00:13:48,560 I mean, he would do. 207 00:13:48,560 --> 00:13:56,000 He played the double thirds. 208 00:13:56,000 --> 00:13:57,440 So I get it. 209 00:13:57,440 --> 00:14:02,040 I understand that now, which actually was a relief because who's going to be able to 210 00:14:02,040 --> 00:14:03,360 play like that? 211 00:14:03,360 --> 00:14:08,960 I mean, you know, I heard him differently and I realized, well, oh, so, you know, that 212 00:14:08,960 --> 00:14:12,640 did seem rather fast, how he would play. 213 00:14:12,640 --> 00:14:21,360 And she had me learning a lot of double note pieces that he would do like to practice that. 214 00:14:21,360 --> 00:14:22,360 That's hard. 215 00:14:22,360 --> 00:14:23,360 The state, too. 216 00:14:23,360 --> 00:14:44,840 And then I remember studying her with her this. 217 00:14:44,840 --> 00:14:48,400 Schumann, Toccata and all these other pieces that he played. 218 00:14:48,400 --> 00:14:53,840 And it was a wonderful adventure to do that and study them with her because she remembered 219 00:14:53,840 --> 00:14:55,680 how he played them. 220 00:14:55,680 --> 00:15:04,960 So there was that component of it, but then it was also studying with Adele the Schnabel. 221 00:15:04,960 --> 00:15:08,480 And she went and studied with him in Berlin for two years. 222 00:15:08,480 --> 00:15:15,320 And I'll never forget playing the Schubert D major sonata with her. 223 00:15:15,320 --> 00:15:28,000 That was quite remarkable how she would do, you know. 224 00:15:28,000 --> 00:15:32,400 And I didn't understand what she was doing, but she did it so clearly. 225 00:15:32,400 --> 00:15:36,880 She said that Lendler, the way to get the style, and it was very simple. 226 00:15:36,880 --> 00:15:40,360 She says it's every other measure you have to lift after two. 227 00:15:40,360 --> 00:15:51,280 So the little lift after two, every other measure. 228 00:15:51,280 --> 00:15:55,600 I was like, oh, well, that's how it is. 229 00:15:55,600 --> 00:15:57,720 And Schnabel was fabulous. 230 00:15:57,720 --> 00:16:03,360 So many things he would teach her, but he told her two lessons on each piece. 231 00:16:03,360 --> 00:16:08,920 You bring it, I show you, you come back next week, next, you get it or you don't. 232 00:16:08,920 --> 00:16:10,760 Yeah, he was famous for that. 233 00:16:10,760 --> 00:16:14,000 Jeffrey, I'm sorry, can I interrupt you for a second? 234 00:16:14,000 --> 00:16:16,280 I have a question about technique. 235 00:16:16,280 --> 00:16:20,680 You just played excerpts of so many difficult pieces that are just in your fingertips. 236 00:16:20,680 --> 00:16:22,120 I mean, it's kind of mind blowing. 237 00:16:22,120 --> 00:16:26,640 And it makes me wonder, have you always had that kind of technical facility? 238 00:16:26,640 --> 00:16:31,080 Or is this something that you learned with Adele Marcus and how does she teach technique? 239 00:16:31,080 --> 00:16:41,440 I had what was called pianistic ability, there's a difference between pianistic ability and 240 00:16:41,440 --> 00:16:42,440 technique. 241 00:16:42,440 --> 00:16:44,080 She would say technique is like money. 242 00:16:44,080 --> 00:16:47,080 It isn't everything, but without it you can't do anything. 243 00:16:47,080 --> 00:16:55,520 To me, a technique is the style in which one takes the pianistic components and marries 244 00:16:55,520 --> 00:16:57,640 them to what's happening in the music. 245 00:16:57,640 --> 00:17:00,880 It could be a totally different pianism for everything. 246 00:17:00,880 --> 00:17:08,120 I mean let's say you're doing, she would teach me how to do double notes for instance. 247 00:17:08,120 --> 00:17:13,760 I always had this ability to play fast, whatever, but it meant nothing. 248 00:17:13,760 --> 00:17:18,380 She used to say, good, she would yell at all the kids, you're all fingers, fingers, fingers, 249 00:17:18,380 --> 00:17:20,720 but you're not making music. 250 00:17:20,720 --> 00:17:27,960 And she would teach double notes, for instance, she would say to do the schumann, let's say, 251 00:17:27,960 --> 00:17:33,480 staccato on top, staccato underneath, because the thumb and two are strong fingers. 252 00:17:33,480 --> 00:17:52,680 She wanted to make four and five the strong fingers, so we would do. 253 00:17:52,680 --> 00:17:57,160 Very purely mechanically to grind it into make the weak fingers strong. 254 00:17:57,160 --> 00:18:01,640 Then little by little, what I like doing is shifting accents. 255 00:18:01,640 --> 00:18:02,640 So instead of. 256 00:18:02,640 --> 00:18:03,640 I would do. 257 00:18:03,640 --> 00:18:04,640 See what I'm doing? 258 00:18:04,640 --> 00:18:05,640 Or. 259 00:18:05,640 --> 00:18:33,920 It's hard to do, but it's shifting the strong beat to the weak beat. 260 00:18:33,920 --> 00:18:39,320 For me, I learned a lot from Adele, but I took that as a stepping stone to something 261 00:18:39,320 --> 00:18:40,320 else. 262 00:18:40,320 --> 00:18:45,960 Like I say to students to put the metronome on and make the weak beat the strong beat 263 00:18:45,960 --> 00:18:46,960 of the metronome. 264 00:18:46,960 --> 00:18:47,960 If it's this. 265 00:18:47,960 --> 00:19:07,560 So that's a strong beat, but it becomes the weak beat. 266 00:19:07,560 --> 00:19:11,920 And I'm a big about people asking me, and Adele used to be, you get a tempo from an 267 00:19:11,920 --> 00:19:12,920 upbeat. 268 00:19:12,920 --> 00:19:29,320 So I get the tempo from the upbeat, but I feel the weak beats give us the tempo. 269 00:19:29,320 --> 00:19:39,960 To me, weak beats are important because the heartbeat is strong, but you get a better 270 00:19:39,960 --> 00:19:43,400 sense of tempo for pulse from weak beats. 271 00:19:43,400 --> 00:19:49,080 And I always tell my students play to the heartbeat of the listener. 272 00:19:49,080 --> 00:19:53,480 Because if you play, but they could play in the first. 273 00:19:53,480 --> 00:20:02,400 If it's not great, I'm like, no, because it's. 274 00:20:02,400 --> 00:20:10,040 Because you've got beats there that are breathing too, and that's very important. 275 00:20:10,040 --> 00:20:15,280 A lot of pianists tend to go over that. 276 00:20:15,280 --> 00:20:21,160 My phrases basically are a combination of what Adele Marcus said and what I think is 277 00:20:21,160 --> 00:20:23,920 a good way to get people to do it. 278 00:20:23,920 --> 00:20:27,360 Sing what you see and play what you sing. 279 00:20:27,360 --> 00:20:29,480 Let the fingers follow the voice. 280 00:20:29,480 --> 00:20:31,160 And that has changed my fingers. 281 00:20:31,160 --> 00:20:35,240 You know, I have a friend, Glenn Dictero, the violinist. 282 00:20:35,240 --> 00:20:41,600 He once wrote something about Barbara Streisand, about her voice and how it inspired him as 283 00:20:41,600 --> 00:20:43,280 a classical artist. 284 00:20:43,280 --> 00:20:44,280 I have felt that way. 285 00:20:44,280 --> 00:20:49,840 I wrote to him and I said, Glenn, I felt that way my whole life listening to her voice. 286 00:20:49,840 --> 00:20:57,960 And I wrote what he printed in social media and sent it to her office and she loved it 287 00:20:57,960 --> 00:21:01,000 and sent a beautiful note back to him. 288 00:21:01,000 --> 00:21:07,000 Because it's not just because it's pop music or Broadway music or she did classical music 289 00:21:07,000 --> 00:21:08,400 very beautifully. 290 00:21:08,400 --> 00:21:15,200 The human voice is the most important instrument we have. 291 00:21:15,200 --> 00:21:20,400 And I always tell students, sing out loud, oh no, I'm afraid I can't do my voice. 292 00:21:20,400 --> 00:21:25,080 I said, if you want to come out of your fingers to the instrument, it has to come out of here. 293 00:21:25,080 --> 00:21:27,320 Your fingers are not part of your body. 294 00:21:27,320 --> 00:21:30,560 They look at me like I'm from Mars. 295 00:21:30,560 --> 00:21:33,240 What do you mean my fingers aren't part of my body? 296 00:21:33,240 --> 00:21:36,160 And I do the same thing with children as adults. 297 00:21:36,160 --> 00:21:38,720 I say, you are a tree. 298 00:21:38,720 --> 00:21:43,280 This is like kindergarten coloring book. 299 00:21:43,280 --> 00:21:44,280 You are a tree. 300 00:21:44,280 --> 00:21:46,000 I am a tree. 301 00:21:46,000 --> 00:21:48,600 This is my tree trunk. 302 00:21:48,600 --> 00:21:50,320 These are the branches. 303 00:21:50,320 --> 00:21:51,320 These are the leaves. 304 00:21:51,320 --> 00:21:55,960 These are the roots. 305 00:21:55,960 --> 00:22:00,120 And the pedal is like the soil. 306 00:22:00,120 --> 00:22:02,000 It enhances what's above it. 307 00:22:02,000 --> 00:22:03,200 It enhances the sound. 308 00:22:03,200 --> 00:22:09,440 I said, if you sing what you see, it will make your fingers become more vocal. 309 00:22:09,440 --> 00:22:13,640 And that's what I learned from Adele Marcus is the singing touch because she sang. 310 00:22:13,640 --> 00:22:18,560 I said, if you sing, whatever you sing, it's going to come out of your fingers. 311 00:22:18,560 --> 00:22:24,000 If you want a lower voice to come out more, then you sing that voice. 312 00:22:24,000 --> 00:22:28,440 Your fingers will follow that, an inner voice, whatever it is. 313 00:22:28,440 --> 00:22:30,880 Like if you do. 314 00:22:30,880 --> 00:22:42,560 Immediately the lower voice came out a little more there. 315 00:22:42,560 --> 00:22:45,800 I wanted it there because I sang it. 316 00:22:45,800 --> 00:22:50,600 So I treat the piano like an orchestra but also a chorus. 317 00:22:50,600 --> 00:22:52,840 I feel it's very vocal that way. 318 00:22:52,840 --> 00:22:55,640 So that was what stands for the Adele Marcus work. 319 00:22:55,640 --> 00:23:00,440 I could go into some of the tie reads because she would get very frustrated and really let 320 00:23:00,440 --> 00:23:01,440 us have it. 321 00:23:01,440 --> 00:23:02,440 Oh, please. 322 00:23:02,440 --> 00:23:04,360 We don't want to miss out on that. 323 00:23:04,360 --> 00:23:05,360 Give us a couple. 324 00:23:05,360 --> 00:23:06,360 You're supposed to be talented. 325 00:23:06,360 --> 00:23:07,360 Why did I give this to you? 326 00:23:07,360 --> 00:23:16,360 I was doing 12-time guarantee and an absentee of lists. 327 00:23:16,360 --> 00:23:17,640 Oh, God. 328 00:23:17,640 --> 00:23:22,160 That night she called me and said, I may have been a little tough on you. 329 00:23:22,160 --> 00:23:23,160 Keep going with it. 330 00:23:23,160 --> 00:23:24,920 You're going to play it really well. 331 00:23:24,920 --> 00:23:30,760 All the pieces that she really got down on me for became my best pieces. 332 00:23:30,760 --> 00:23:31,760 I'll never forget. 333 00:23:31,760 --> 00:23:37,480 I had to actually take a cassette recording and erase the lesson because it was just like 334 00:23:37,480 --> 00:23:39,480 just yelling how long to hold a pedal down. 335 00:23:39,480 --> 00:23:40,480 I had to count. 336 00:23:40,480 --> 00:23:45,480 And she'd go like one, two, three. 337 00:23:45,480 --> 00:23:48,440 Screaming at me because I was holding that C for so long. 338 00:23:48,440 --> 00:23:49,440 So now I just do. 339 00:23:49,440 --> 00:23:59,480 She brought out that E. All of these things. 340 00:23:59,480 --> 00:24:00,480 But it was all singing. 341 00:24:00,480 --> 00:24:05,360 And the thing that she would do that was remarkable, she would sing the note before she had to 342 00:24:05,360 --> 00:24:07,880 play it. 343 00:24:07,880 --> 00:24:09,920 That was such a great lesson. 344 00:24:09,920 --> 00:24:26,440 All that kind of stuff she was great with. 345 00:24:26,440 --> 00:24:27,440 She played so beautifully. 346 00:24:27,440 --> 00:24:31,680 Now, she did say something to me once because I was doing. 347 00:24:31,680 --> 00:24:38,920 I was doing Prokofiev III and she, you know, Byron Janis studied with her and he plays 348 00:24:38,920 --> 00:24:45,360 the best Prokofiev III, the old recording in Russia with Kondrashin conducting. 349 00:24:45,360 --> 00:24:46,360 It's incredible. 350 00:24:46,360 --> 00:24:49,840 But I had trouble with it because I was playing. 351 00:24:49,840 --> 00:24:53,400 See what I mean? 352 00:24:53,400 --> 00:24:57,000 It was the same. 353 00:24:57,000 --> 00:24:58,520 She goes, oh no. 354 00:24:58,520 --> 00:25:03,480 And she heard Prokofiev play the third concerto in New York, 1921. 355 00:25:03,480 --> 00:25:08,120 She said he had, it was a sound she said she couldn't get out of her ear. 356 00:25:08,120 --> 00:25:09,120 There was a resonance. 357 00:25:09,120 --> 00:25:22,480 It's such an uneasy, kind of creepy quality to that. 358 00:25:22,480 --> 00:25:27,480 But I would play. 359 00:25:27,480 --> 00:25:32,560 And she was like, well that's just black and white dear. 360 00:25:32,560 --> 00:25:34,680 She said you have to point your fingers. 361 00:25:34,680 --> 00:25:38,320 She actually said your hands are not built for this music. 362 00:25:38,320 --> 00:25:43,920 I mean if you said something like that to a student today they'd go, you know, they'd 363 00:25:43,920 --> 00:25:47,000 be like closed their lid and walk away and do something else. 364 00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:49,640 Well yeah, I felt a little weird when she said that. 365 00:25:49,640 --> 00:25:52,480 But I think we were tough back then. 366 00:25:52,480 --> 00:25:55,360 We certainly cried after lessons. 367 00:25:55,360 --> 00:25:57,680 But she didn't pull any punches. 368 00:25:57,680 --> 00:26:00,480 She told you what the reality was. 369 00:26:00,480 --> 00:26:03,320 She used to say better you hear it from me than you could us. 370 00:26:03,320 --> 00:26:11,480 But then she taught me how to point my sound or how to practice. 371 00:26:11,480 --> 00:26:18,440 And she would say to get the staccato, you need to practice very slowly in staccatissimo. 372 00:26:18,440 --> 00:26:20,300 Point your fingers more. 373 00:26:20,300 --> 00:26:22,760 You hear that sound? 374 00:26:22,760 --> 00:26:29,480 Think up, don't think down, think up. 375 00:26:29,480 --> 00:26:31,080 C, D, D, D, C. 376 00:26:31,080 --> 00:26:38,080 There's so much character in that, but if I didn't hear her play it, I wouldn't have 377 00:26:38,080 --> 00:26:39,080 known. 378 00:26:39,080 --> 00:26:41,080 Because that's what teaching is. 379 00:26:41,080 --> 00:26:44,360 You have a lot of teachers who maybe, they don't have to play for their students. 380 00:26:44,360 --> 00:26:47,160 They can tell them, I need to do both. 381 00:26:47,160 --> 00:26:55,880 I always say, you know, it's an oral R to teach O-R-A-L, but you learn more from A-U-R-A-L, 382 00:26:55,880 --> 00:26:56,880 what you hear. 383 00:26:56,880 --> 00:26:58,920 The piano is the teacher. 384 00:26:58,920 --> 00:27:03,640 And I tell my students, you know what, your voice is going to be your best teacher. 385 00:27:03,640 --> 00:27:08,960 Whatever you sing, and even if you have a lousy voice, you're a good enough musician 386 00:27:08,960 --> 00:27:12,440 to be able to sing it the way you want it to sound on the piano. 387 00:27:12,440 --> 00:27:15,600 You just don't realize that's what it takes to do that. 388 00:27:15,600 --> 00:27:20,560 And when they start, it turns into a totally different piece. 389 00:27:20,560 --> 00:27:26,760 Disconnect between the person and here, or disconnect between the person and the audience 390 00:27:26,760 --> 00:27:27,760 or something. 391 00:27:27,760 --> 00:27:28,760 And you have a wall there. 392 00:27:28,760 --> 00:27:34,760 I'll never forget one of the greatest lessons I ever had was Lucille Ball. 393 00:27:34,760 --> 00:27:37,040 I love Lucy. 394 00:27:37,040 --> 00:27:43,080 And I knew a friend of hers, and five months before she passed away, he was able to, within 395 00:27:43,080 --> 00:27:47,440 an hour, he said, go to her house tomorrow at 4.30. 396 00:27:47,440 --> 00:27:49,680 I was in California. 397 00:27:49,680 --> 00:27:52,600 And visited Lucy for two hours. 398 00:27:52,600 --> 00:27:55,520 I mean, she was amazing. 399 00:27:55,520 --> 00:28:01,760 She says to me, do you talk to your audience before you play, or do you just walk out and 400 00:28:01,760 --> 00:28:02,760 play? 401 00:28:02,760 --> 00:28:05,040 I said, we usually just walk out and play. 402 00:28:05,040 --> 00:28:06,880 And she says, well, I don't understand that. 403 00:28:06,880 --> 00:28:08,160 I couldn't do that. 404 00:28:08,160 --> 00:28:12,720 We couldn't just go out and shoot an episode without having an interaction with the audience 405 00:28:12,720 --> 00:28:15,960 to kind of loosen us up, loosen them up. 406 00:28:15,960 --> 00:28:20,160 She says, otherwise there's a wall between you and your audience. 407 00:28:20,160 --> 00:28:22,480 She says, you should try, you should talk to them first. 408 00:28:22,480 --> 00:28:26,440 I said, it's hard to do that when it's a big hall. 409 00:28:26,440 --> 00:28:29,240 She says, well, use a microphone. 410 00:28:29,240 --> 00:28:31,040 Just talk. 411 00:28:31,040 --> 00:28:33,680 Get them, warm it up. 412 00:28:33,680 --> 00:28:37,160 And I was playing some concerts after that, and I did that, and I talked about the music 413 00:28:37,160 --> 00:28:43,680 a little bit, and it freed me a little bit, and it gave me a feeling of belonging with 414 00:28:43,680 --> 00:28:44,680 the audience more. 415 00:28:44,680 --> 00:28:47,280 And it really worked. 416 00:28:47,280 --> 00:28:51,240 And when I got back I called her office and said, please tell Lucy she was right, and 417 00:28:51,240 --> 00:28:52,640 I'm going to do it forever. 418 00:28:52,640 --> 00:29:00,920 It was a great master class in communication, away from the piano, but just audience and 419 00:29:00,920 --> 00:29:04,040 artists, stage to audience communication. 420 00:29:04,040 --> 00:29:09,160 And those are all things that I've taken with me for over 30 years since that meeting. 421 00:29:09,160 --> 00:29:10,400 It was really interesting. 422 00:29:10,400 --> 00:29:11,400 Wow. 423 00:29:11,400 --> 00:29:12,400 That's really good. 424 00:29:12,400 --> 00:29:14,680 Thank you so much for sharing all the wonderful stories. 425 00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:18,560 And I also want to find out a little bit more. 426 00:29:18,560 --> 00:29:21,520 Let's talk about Steinway. 427 00:29:21,520 --> 00:29:27,480 You are a Steinway artist, and you've done some few Steinway collaborations, produced 428 00:29:27,480 --> 00:29:34,680 an album, and also you've done some experimental things back in 1997, live stream. 429 00:29:34,680 --> 00:29:41,520 I mean, during that time, I remember I was using AOL, and then my phone line was actually 430 00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:43,080 the internet access. 431 00:29:43,080 --> 00:29:47,240 So you are way ahead of time in terms of your mindset. 432 00:29:47,240 --> 00:29:50,480 So could you tell us about the collaboration with Steinway? 433 00:29:50,480 --> 00:29:51,480 Yes. 434 00:29:51,480 --> 00:29:52,840 It was an idea I had. 435 00:29:52,840 --> 00:29:54,480 I didn't even have a computer yet. 436 00:29:54,480 --> 00:29:56,400 I didn't have an email address. 437 00:29:56,400 --> 00:29:58,920 It was 1997. 438 00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:00,680 I remember reading a USA Today. 439 00:30:00,680 --> 00:30:02,680 I was traveling somewhere, and it said cyberlisting. 440 00:30:02,680 --> 00:30:04,160 So I'm like, that's interesting. 441 00:30:04,160 --> 00:30:05,160 They're doing things online. 442 00:30:05,160 --> 00:30:11,960 Wouldn't it be cool to kind of do what they did in the 1950s, where there was one or two 443 00:30:11,960 --> 00:30:17,080 TVs in the apartment building, and everybody would meet there to watch I Love Lucy or something? 444 00:30:17,080 --> 00:30:19,520 How about a concert online? 445 00:30:19,520 --> 00:30:21,800 A lot of people don't go to concerts. 446 00:30:21,800 --> 00:30:24,400 Well, then bring it to them. 447 00:30:24,400 --> 00:30:31,520 How about a classical concert you could see and hear in your home, in your office, whatever? 448 00:30:31,520 --> 00:30:35,320 And I saw cyberlistings was in USA Today newspaper. 449 00:30:35,320 --> 00:30:40,080 I thought, how about cyber recital? 450 00:30:40,080 --> 00:30:41,840 A cyber recital. 451 00:30:41,840 --> 00:30:44,520 Cyber was the word of the day. 452 00:30:44,520 --> 00:30:50,480 And I approached Peter Gutrich, who was the director of artist services at Steinway & Sons 453 00:30:50,480 --> 00:30:51,480 in New York. 454 00:30:51,480 --> 00:30:58,640 I said, Peter, how would you like to have the first live classical streaming recital 455 00:30:58,640 --> 00:30:59,640 from the Rotunda? 456 00:30:59,640 --> 00:31:02,480 He says, that's kind of cool. 457 00:31:02,480 --> 00:31:03,880 And they asked me what kind of piano. 458 00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:09,280 I said, I want the 500,000 Steinway with that wild case and all the signatures in it. 459 00:31:09,280 --> 00:31:10,840 It's the half million Steinway. 460 00:31:10,840 --> 00:31:12,840 They got it. 461 00:31:12,840 --> 00:31:19,160 We scheduled it and I did some fundraising and hired a team to come to do it. 462 00:31:19,160 --> 00:31:22,680 We did it on July 8, 1997. 463 00:31:22,680 --> 00:31:28,440 The transmission was a little delayed because a lot of it was dial-up and there were very 464 00:31:28,440 --> 00:31:30,960 few what they call T1 lines. 465 00:31:30,960 --> 00:31:33,560 What did I know? 466 00:31:33,560 --> 00:31:39,960 And we did it again in July 25 of that month. 467 00:31:39,960 --> 00:31:42,920 I remember my son's school in the library had a T1 line. 468 00:31:42,920 --> 00:31:43,920 They watched it. 469 00:31:43,920 --> 00:31:44,920 It was streaming. 470 00:31:44,920 --> 00:31:45,920 It was live. 471 00:31:45,920 --> 00:31:46,920 It happened. 472 00:31:46,920 --> 00:31:51,840 And then I was approached by a company called Sightways, I think it was, in the Netherlands 473 00:31:51,840 --> 00:31:55,240 and they brought me over to Europe to do one there. 474 00:31:55,240 --> 00:31:59,400 First European live stream. 475 00:31:59,400 --> 00:32:01,640 And then we saved the files to the audio engineer. 476 00:32:01,640 --> 00:32:02,640 His name was Norman Greenspan. 477 00:32:02,640 --> 00:32:03,640 He was terrific. 478 00:32:03,640 --> 00:32:08,600 Anyone watching this who may remember Norman Greenspan's name did concerts all over the 479 00:32:08,600 --> 00:32:10,000 New York area. 480 00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:12,240 He said, I saved all your files on DAT. 481 00:32:12,240 --> 00:32:14,720 I said, what's DAT? 482 00:32:14,720 --> 00:32:17,000 What's DAT, DAT, DAT? 483 00:32:17,000 --> 00:32:20,600 He said digital audio. 484 00:32:20,600 --> 00:32:22,360 So the DAT files he saved. 485 00:32:22,360 --> 00:32:26,120 He says, if you ever want to make a recording of this one day, here they are. 486 00:32:26,120 --> 00:32:28,840 He says, they're not edited because we didn't edit. 487 00:32:28,840 --> 00:32:30,660 You just played through. 488 00:32:30,660 --> 00:32:32,860 Not mastered or anything. 489 00:32:32,860 --> 00:32:36,000 So the acoustic of the rotunda was so remarkable. 490 00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:43,400 If you've ever been to the old Steinway Hall, that wasn't until recently, it was it. 491 00:32:43,400 --> 00:32:46,600 The rotunda, it made us sound great. 492 00:32:46,600 --> 00:32:48,160 Those beautiful pianos. 493 00:32:48,160 --> 00:32:51,560 You just sounded so good at the rotunda of Steinway Hall. 494 00:32:51,560 --> 00:32:53,200 I used to love playing there. 495 00:32:53,200 --> 00:32:58,200 Even going back to the late 1970s when friends would try buying pianos there, I loved going 496 00:32:58,200 --> 00:33:00,600 just to play the pianos. 497 00:33:00,600 --> 00:33:02,120 And that's where it took place. 498 00:33:02,120 --> 00:33:03,120 Saved those. 499 00:33:03,120 --> 00:33:06,800 And that was the first major collaboration with Steinway. 500 00:33:06,800 --> 00:33:10,880 Jeffrey, you are a leading pioneer of concerto projects. 501 00:33:10,880 --> 00:33:13,440 You've collaborated with so many artists. 502 00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:15,800 Could you tell us a little bit about that, please? 503 00:33:15,800 --> 00:33:19,800 I'll try to make it as brief as I can. 504 00:33:19,800 --> 00:33:23,800 Piano concertos to me are a wonderful chamber music collaboration. 505 00:33:23,800 --> 00:33:26,800 The first time I ever played a concerto, I was 11. 506 00:33:26,800 --> 00:33:40,840 And it was this small sort. 507 00:33:40,840 --> 00:33:42,240 That to me was a wonderful thing to do. 508 00:33:42,240 --> 00:33:46,320 I did not play with orchestra, but I entered a competition and made the finals. 509 00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:47,320 I was 11. 510 00:33:47,320 --> 00:33:56,000 Then I played a year later when I was in sixth grade, I remember, playing the third movement 511 00:33:56,000 --> 00:34:00,360 with the chorus teacher playing the orchestra part for graduation. 512 00:34:00,360 --> 00:34:01,360 That was when I was 12. 513 00:34:01,360 --> 00:34:05,080 When I was 13, I learned the Gris Concerto, the Schumann Concerto. 514 00:34:05,080 --> 00:34:09,280 And then I learned the Liszt Concerto when I was 15, and the Saint-Saens Concerto when 515 00:34:09,280 --> 00:34:12,160 I was 17, when I was studying with Adel Marcus. 516 00:34:12,160 --> 00:34:15,840 I had not played with an orchestra yet. 517 00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:17,120 And I always wanted to. 518 00:34:17,120 --> 00:34:20,520 But the first time I played with an orchestra was in Long Island. 519 00:34:20,520 --> 00:34:23,960 And the great composer, Tanya Leon, was a conductor. 520 00:34:23,960 --> 00:34:26,120 Tanya was my first conductor. 521 00:34:26,120 --> 00:34:31,200 And now we acknowledge together, and she's doing incredibly, that Tanya was the conductor 522 00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:37,120 and we did the first movement of the Saint-Saens Concerto No. 2 at Hofstra University. 523 00:34:37,120 --> 00:34:39,320 And then later on, I had not played with orchestras. 524 00:34:39,320 --> 00:34:44,280 The next time, the first time I ever played a full concerto with an orchestra was with 525 00:34:44,280 --> 00:34:49,120 Sixten Erlen conducting the Juilliard Philharmonia Prokofiev Concerto No. 2. 526 00:34:49,120 --> 00:34:51,520 That was my first time playing a concerto. 527 00:34:51,520 --> 00:34:52,520 Looking back, ay-ay-ay. 528 00:34:52,520 --> 00:34:55,680 I thought that was an incredible experience. 529 00:34:55,680 --> 00:35:01,360 Rachmaninoff, third concerto I didn't play until I was, until 1997, 96 or so, with an 530 00:35:01,360 --> 00:35:02,360 orchestra. 531 00:35:02,360 --> 00:35:05,880 And I had learned it 14 years before that. 532 00:35:05,880 --> 00:35:11,240 So the concerto was an important part of my life. 533 00:35:11,240 --> 00:35:17,280 Playing for living composers is an extremely important part of this driving passion to 534 00:35:17,280 --> 00:35:22,480 want to raise so much money for composers to write music. 535 00:35:22,480 --> 00:35:28,880 I played for Maya Kupferman, an American composer who was my prior teacher to Adele Marcus, 536 00:35:28,880 --> 00:35:29,880 Morton Estrin's friend. 537 00:35:29,880 --> 00:35:31,880 Morton, Morty did a lot of his music. 538 00:35:31,880 --> 00:35:33,440 And he handed me a score. 539 00:35:33,440 --> 00:35:34,440 I was 12 years old. 540 00:35:34,440 --> 00:35:39,440 It's on my website, the Sonata Mystico. 541 00:35:39,440 --> 00:35:49,600 That forms the framework of that incredible sonata. 542 00:35:49,600 --> 00:35:52,040 Memorized, learned it, played it for Maya. 543 00:35:52,040 --> 00:35:55,520 One experience that was, those were the seeds. 544 00:35:55,520 --> 00:36:01,800 And in the 1990s, I played the Ballad of Revolt by Harald Savergud. 545 00:36:01,800 --> 00:36:10,320 And there were these sharp accents in that piece. 546 00:36:10,320 --> 00:36:16,040 And at the competition in Oslo in 1988, Savergud must have been in his 90s. 547 00:36:16,040 --> 00:36:19,920 He came backstage, grabbed my arm, and he liked what I played. 548 00:36:19,920 --> 00:36:26,560 He says, do you know what those notes in the left hand were? 549 00:36:26,560 --> 00:36:27,560 Those sharp notes. 550 00:36:27,560 --> 00:36:31,920 These are the gunshots during the war. 551 00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:36,240 He probably referred to World War I, as far as I know. 552 00:36:36,240 --> 00:36:38,560 What an impact that had as another seed. 553 00:36:38,560 --> 00:36:43,280 Then there was working with Lalo Schifrin when he wrote his Piano Concerto at the Americas, 554 00:36:43,280 --> 00:36:48,920 which the Steinway Foundation commissioned in 1991 for a 1992 premiere with Christina 555 00:36:48,920 --> 00:36:50,000 Ortiz. 556 00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:56,600 I learned that and played it in Honolulu in 1992, I believe it was, and Lalo came. 557 00:36:56,600 --> 00:36:59,600 And he was there, and we talked a lot after. 558 00:36:59,600 --> 00:37:04,520 Four years later I recorded it in Europe with Lalo conducting. 559 00:37:04,520 --> 00:37:11,520 One experience to play music by and for living composers. 560 00:37:11,520 --> 00:37:15,560 By November, December 1998, I had the bug. 561 00:37:15,560 --> 00:37:21,220 I thought, why not go into the next century with creating a whole new set of concertos 562 00:37:21,220 --> 00:37:23,180 by composers? 563 00:37:23,180 --> 00:37:26,120 And Ellen Tafes-Willic was the first. 564 00:37:26,120 --> 00:37:29,400 And now today, of course, people say, well, did you select her because she was a female 565 00:37:29,400 --> 00:37:30,400 composer? 566 00:37:30,400 --> 00:37:31,400 I said, no. 567 00:37:31,400 --> 00:37:32,400 She was a great composer. 568 00:37:32,400 --> 00:37:34,760 Who would have thought of things like that? 569 00:37:34,760 --> 00:37:39,680 And she agreed to take the journey on the yellow brick road with me on this one. 570 00:37:39,680 --> 00:37:44,080 I had to raise all the money for her fee and get all the orchestras to co-commission it 571 00:37:44,080 --> 00:37:45,080 and donors. 572 00:37:45,080 --> 00:37:47,640 And what was I thinking? 573 00:37:47,640 --> 00:37:49,880 But I just felt so driven about it. 574 00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:51,400 And I raised all the money. 575 00:37:51,400 --> 00:37:58,240 It was the first largest consortium of orchestras for a piano concerto, actually for any music 576 00:37:58,240 --> 00:37:59,240 at the time. 577 00:37:59,240 --> 00:38:02,480 There was another composer doing something similar at the same time. 578 00:38:02,480 --> 00:38:05,000 We didn't know each other who we were doing. 579 00:38:05,000 --> 00:38:10,080 And it was a composer commissioning a new piece that he was writing. 580 00:38:10,080 --> 00:38:13,640 And so this was the first big consortium. 581 00:38:13,640 --> 00:38:16,480 And it was Cincinnati Symphony, September 2000. 582 00:38:16,480 --> 00:38:18,960 Ellen was there. 583 00:38:18,960 --> 00:38:24,920 And the composer come on stage to greet the orchestra and the audience after and hug you. 584 00:38:24,920 --> 00:38:28,160 It was just, there were no words for it. 585 00:38:28,160 --> 00:38:31,360 And I got bit by the bug and I thought, I want to continue doing this. 586 00:38:31,360 --> 00:38:34,120 I think this is the right thing to do. 587 00:38:34,120 --> 00:38:41,680 And then I created the first 50 state project in, it must have been November of 2000. 588 00:38:41,680 --> 00:38:43,000 And it was Concerto America. 589 00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:48,600 I went to Charles Strauss, composer of Annie and Bye Bye Birdie. 590 00:38:48,600 --> 00:38:52,640 He was a student of Nadja Boulanger and Darius Mio and Copland. 591 00:38:52,640 --> 00:38:54,920 I mean this was an incredible guy. 592 00:38:54,920 --> 00:38:57,520 Wrote pop music and Broadway music. 593 00:38:57,520 --> 00:39:00,440 And he decided to write Concerto America. 594 00:39:00,440 --> 00:39:01,440 That was the project. 595 00:39:01,440 --> 00:39:05,680 Every orchestra had this project in their email by then. 596 00:39:05,680 --> 00:39:08,280 And I raised the money for it so they didn't have to pay for it. 597 00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:12,400 9-11 happened and I just abandoned the idea of the project but it did get premiered in 598 00:39:12,400 --> 00:39:14,880 the Boston Pops and Hollow Little Symphony. 599 00:39:14,880 --> 00:39:20,360 And then started the idea of commissioning more music by people I went to Juilliard with 600 00:39:20,360 --> 00:39:28,200 like Loa Lieberman and Richard Danielpour and then William Balkham and more and more. 601 00:39:28,200 --> 00:39:36,000 And I decided that would be the way to go but not just within the U.S. borders. 602 00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:39,360 The Lieberman Third Piano Concerto is an incredible piece of music. 603 00:39:39,360 --> 00:39:44,360 I mean the second is great, Loa loves the third and that really should be played by 604 00:39:44,360 --> 00:39:47,720 many more pianists these days. 605 00:39:47,720 --> 00:39:49,480 I decided to take it outside the borders. 606 00:39:49,480 --> 00:39:55,540 We had 17 orchestras in the U.S., Milwaukee Symphony Premier and then a European orchestra 607 00:39:55,540 --> 00:39:56,840 in Germany. 608 00:39:56,840 --> 00:40:02,020 And we did five performances in Germany which brought Europe into an American composers 609 00:40:02,020 --> 00:40:06,080 consortium which was unusual, never happened. 610 00:40:06,080 --> 00:40:11,160 And then after that with Bill Balkham I brought in Canada for the first time. 611 00:40:11,160 --> 00:40:16,680 Calgary Philharmonic and Chorus because I wanted to develop repertoire for piano, orchestra 612 00:40:16,680 --> 00:40:18,480 and chorus. 613 00:40:18,480 --> 00:40:23,480 And then Ellen Zwillick ten years after the Millennium wrote Shadows for me and that brought 614 00:40:23,480 --> 00:40:26,480 in the Niagara Symphony to be in the project. 615 00:40:26,480 --> 00:40:32,640 Now Shadows during the pandemic she restructured for piano and seven players and the world 616 00:40:32,640 --> 00:40:39,040 premiere of that is September 20 something in Idaho with the Idaho State Civic Symphony. 617 00:40:39,040 --> 00:40:43,880 So that would be a premiere of a new version based on the pandemic of a piece she wrote 618 00:40:43,880 --> 00:40:45,920 ten years prior. 619 00:40:45,920 --> 00:40:54,040 And then Jake Runnestead's Dreams of the Fallen and PDQ Bach's Concerto for Simply Grand Piano 620 00:40:54,040 --> 00:40:59,040 and Orchestra brought in orchestra in Finland. 621 00:40:59,040 --> 00:41:02,600 This concludes part one of our interview with Jeffrey Beagle. 622 00:41:02,600 --> 00:41:06,720 Tune in next time to hear about Jeffrey's compositional process, how he spent lockdown 623 00:41:06,720 --> 00:41:11,040 and his advice for young pianists, as well as more incredible playing demonstrations.