Music: Now then

Jason Lindner, a 43-year-old American jazz pianist, will bring his Now vs Now trio to the Jerusalem Jazz Festival.

By BARRY DAVIS
Pianist Jason Lindner (photo credit: DENEKA PENISTON)
Pianist Jason Lindner
(photo credit: DENEKA PENISTON)
 Anyone who has attended, or has sent their offspring to, a Steiner school will know that the arts, including music, account for an important part of the curriculum. Not only, say the Steiner educationalists, does this help children to develop their emotional intelligence, and not just their cerebral capabilities, it also gives them tools for their later growth.
Jason Lindner would certainly go along with that idea. The 43-year-old American jazz pianist, who will bring his Now vs Now trio to next week’s Jerusalem Jazz Festival, which will take place at the Israel Museum from December 14 to 16, benefited from a significant boost to his musical evolution at the New York school he went to.
“Music was very much part of the curriculum, with sight singing, a choir; I played trombone and saxophone, too,” he recalls.
The youngster’s jazzy inspirations received a sizable push in the right direction when he was around 14. “I think I was in the seventh or eighth grade when they brought a jazz band to the school. I had never heard anything like that before. I had heard some jazz on records before, but I’d never seen anything like this. That was really exciting.”
There was more where those vibes came from. “That person [the band leader] later came to teach at the school.
We had a biweekly jazz band, I think in seventh grade, in which I let my best friend play piano and I played saxophone.
He didn’t play any other instruments.” That wasn’t only a matter of largesse. “I liked the saxophone, too,” he adds, “so that was fine.”
Things took an incremental upward step for Lindner a year or so later when he moved on to the Fiorello H.
LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. He suddenly found himself surrounding by inspiring peers. “There were a few at the school that were already playing gigs who were quite amazing, so that pushed me to work much harder. I sort of realized where I was at, and where I needed to be.”
Part of the Rudolf Steiner educational philosophy has it that schooling is not a matter of just cramming facts and figures into youngsters so that they can get really good grades and, probably, keep education ministry officials happy. Ideally, children should leave school fully equipped to go on expanding their understanding of themselves and the world around them, on their own. Lindner says that certainly applies to the practitioners of his craft. “I think anybody, but definitely musicians get to the point when they say ‘I need to figure this stuff out on my own.’ That’s what musicians need to do. A teacher can only give you guidance, and then, hopefully, you can be your own teacher.”
In fact, Lindner had a head start on most of his classmates. “My dad played piano. I think I got the music gene – if such a thing exists – from him. I grew up being in that environment where he was practicing and playing and composing at the piano, and he sometimes took me along to his gigs and rehearsals.”
The immediacy of those experiences certainly enlivened Lindner’s initial forays into the mysteries of music making, and he later took on baggage from the other instruments he tried out on.
“Playing the saxophone influenced my love of melodies,” he explains, adding that a subsequent addition to his instrumental arsenal has left a greater imprint on his ivory tickling. “I think playing synthesizers influences the way I play piano much more than having played saxophone.”
Lindner also gained some early hands-on knowledge of the bass, and he says that continues to inform his general approach to jazz. “I have always been drawn to the bass. I think that the drums and the bass certainly influenced me the most, and the kinds of rhythms they make, and the role of the bass and walking a harmonic rhythm is really an infectious sound.”
Growing up in the ’80s, Lindner also got into the contemporary commercial sounds he caught on the radio.
“Madonna and Michael Jackson were getting really popular, and there was David Bowie, in the ’80s period, and there was some early hip-hop,” he says.
That contrasted with, or possibly complemented, the stuff he heard at home. “There was classical music and jazz. And my mom is a big Broadway music fan, so I heard lots of that at home, too. I knew the sound track to [Broadway smash hit] Cats, unfortunately,” he adds with a laugh.
Over the last couple of decades or so, Lindner has put out around a dozen albums as leader, and contributed to many more as a sideman, quite a few of which were fronted by Israelis.
The pianist says he got a lot out of his Israeli intersections.
“I met Avishai Cohen, the bassist, and [bassist] Omer Avital and [trombonist] Avi Lebovich and [guitarist and oud player] Amos Hoffman, pretty much soon after they moved to New York.” That was around 1991-92. “It was cool because they had a unique perspective on music and jazz that seemed a little bit broader or different.”
The said Israelis and, later, stellar saxophonist-clarinetist Anat Cohen, and her younger trumpet-playing sibling Avishai – who happens to be the artistic director of the Jerusalem Jazz Festival – helped Lindner to extend his sonic and cultural hinterland. “They introduced me to a lot of music of the Middle East which I hadn’t previously heard. It was really cool sharing with [bassist] Avishai Cohen a love of Latin music and jazz, and trying to compose music that would embody both of them simultaneously.
I think it was through them [Israeli jazz musicians] that I started making these links between jazz and Latin music, and then Sephardi music and Arabic music.”
Lindner’s artistic exploits have also brought him to the attention of leading professionals outside the jazz community and afforded him the opportunity to mix it with one of his great childhood idols. The pianist’s list of sideman roles includes playing an important part in Bowie’s last release, Blackstar, which came out in January, just two days before the rock megastar died at the age of 69.
“That was a transformative experience and something which changed my life,” says Lindner. “I miss him greatly and wish he was still around, every day.”
But, thankfully, life goes on, and Lindner continues to spread his artistic wings. The current lineup of Now vs Now includes Greek bassist Panagiotis Andreou and American drummer Justin Tyson. The sound of Now vs Now has been described as being “full of black groove suffused with a punk flavor that often steps beyond the recognized boundaries of swing.” Andreou not only feeds off jazz sensibilities and the sounds of his native Greece, he has also become adept at reproducing the Indian rapid percussive vocal technique of konnakol.
While Lindner says the band name did not result from any deep thought, he likes the potential conceptual spin-offs that might be reaped. “I just had to come up with a name, and it stuck. But, as musician, we always have to be in the moment, so that’s fine.”
All that certainly augurs well for a fun and intriguing time for the audiences of the trio’s two gigs at the Israel Museum on December 14 and 15.
For tickets and more information: www.jerusalemjazzfestival.org.il