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Dick Hyman<br />
Subjective<br />
& Personal<br />
By Aaron Cohen // Photo by Jack Vartoogian/FrontRowPhotos<br />
It takes a certain amount of confidence, or nerve, to attach<br />
possessive punctuation to a hundred years of an instrument’s<br />
evolution. But sometimes that apostrophe mark belongs there<br />
because the musician in front of it has not just lived through,<br />
but played a part in, those 10 decades of changes. That would<br />
be the case with the five-CD/one-DVD survey Dick Hyman’s<br />
Century Of Jazz Piano (Arbors).<br />
The collection (originally released on<br />
CD-ROM in 1997) is Hyman’s admittedly subjective<br />
and personal survey of jazz piano history.<br />
That “personal” encompasses a lot. Throughout<br />
the musical and video lessons, Hyman demonstrates<br />
ragtime’s syncopation and boogie-woogie’s<br />
loping octaves, describes how he believes<br />
Thelonious Monk’s compositions should work<br />
as improvisational vehicles and addresses Cecil<br />
Taylor’s rapid percussive attack. All of which<br />
provides only a few glimpses into Hyman’s own<br />
multifaceted career and why, at 84, he continues<br />
to inspire generations of proteges.<br />
“I’ve never had a greater teacher than him,<br />
and he continues to teach me,” said pianist Bill<br />
Charlap. “Most importantly, his beautiful touch,<br />
and very unique and individual harmonic perspective.<br />
Dick’s in his eighties, practices every<br />
day and sounds great. His lust for music never<br />
diminishes. He never sits back on his laurels; he’s<br />
always discovering and doing something new.”<br />
That desire is why Hyman continues to perform<br />
and write so energetically. It’s also why his<br />
earlier works are still sought. He plays around<br />
his Florida home for the most part, but occasionally<br />
returns to the New York club scene,<br />
where he took part in jazz’s biggest changes of<br />
the 1940s during his off hours as a busy session<br />
musician. His wide interests are also why he<br />
has distinctive followings that don’t even know<br />
of the other camp’s existence: Hyman’s lively<br />
and impeccable presentation of early stride<br />
and proto-swing styles has made him an honored<br />
guest at such historic-minded events as the<br />
Bix Beiderbecke Festival in Davenport, Iowa.<br />
This summer, he presented new classical chamber<br />
music scores that reshaped one of his earlier<br />
compositions. At the same time, DJs and electronic<br />
music mavens have been scouring Ebay<br />
and other crate-diggers’ outlets for his innovative,<br />
sometimes intentionally funny, synthesizer<br />
recordings of the 1960s. Cinephiles are also<br />
familiar with his name, which appeared on dozens<br />
of movie scores during the ’80s and ’90s.<br />
Even with this still-active career, Hyman<br />
isn’t given to introspection or expounding too<br />
much on any wider, deeper meaning of his<br />
music. As the Century project shows, he’s more<br />
given to direct explanations of how the music<br />
works. But, when prodded, Hyman will give a<br />
simple reason for his continued determination.<br />
“I have to keep explaining to my retired<br />
friends down here, you don’t stop doing<br />
this,” Hyman said a few months before the<br />
Beiderbecke festival in August. “You keep doing<br />
it until you can’t do it anymore.”<br />
Or, as Hyman shows, just keep building on<br />
what began in the late-’40s. Coming from a musical<br />
family, he was a humanities major at Columbia<br />
University and after a stint in the Navy took some<br />
classes outside of college with his uncle, Anton<br />
Rovinsky, a classical recitalist. “He began to show<br />
me the subtleties of expression and composition<br />
in the Beethoven sonatas—that stayed with me,”<br />
Hyman said. “Matters of touch. Things a good<br />
teacher would show you, not just running through<br />
and memorizing pieces, but how they work and<br />
how to make them sound well.”<br />
But it was 12 lessons he won after entering a<br />
radio contest that made as much of an impact.<br />
Teddy Wilson was the first-prize teacher. (With<br />
uncanny memory, Hyman added that if he had<br />
come in second place, then he would have studied<br />
with Mary Lou Williams.)<br />
“Teddy was a lovely man, very generous, and<br />
he gave me my complete philosophy,” Hyman<br />
recalled. “I said, ‘I really play OK sometimes,<br />
and other times I feel I’m not making it at all,<br />
36 DOWNBEAT SEPTEMBER 2011