KP: Yeah, I started in grade school on trumpet and that was my instrument I’ve spent my time practicing and getting all my musicality stuff worked out on, and I picked up piano because of the harmony. I started hearing chords, hearing other music, hearing what are these chords? What’s this harmony? And I’m still intrigued to this day by what colors harmony does for me. I see colors, I feel colors with certain chords, especially chords with upper extensions. They provide the whole visual landscape for me in these colors and I still love that. So that’s where the piano came into play and I’m lucky enough to have this touch that, you know, I mean, a piano player, you’re playing on the same instrument and yet you can tell when Joe Sample plays, you can tell when Bob James plays, you can tell hopefully when I play, and the list goes on….you can tell when Herbie’s [Hancock] playing, and you can tell the difference between Bud Powell and Bill Evans, and it’s all based on the touch.
Jazz Monthly: Yes, so true.
KP: And luckily I have a defining touch on the piano, but yeah, trumpet was the first instrument and I played in a lot of big bands and played in a lot of small group jazz stuff, and I really loved that too. I loved playing everything from the hard bop tunes up to some Wayne Shorter stuff.
Jazz Monthly: Yes.
KP: Yeah, I love that stuff.
Jazz Monthly: Now you’re talkin’ my language! (Both laugh.)
KP: I teach at the University of Cincinnati, the College Conservatory of Music, and the jazz studies program that is one of the Top 10 in the country, and so the level of the students there is incredible.
Jazz Monthly: Very cool!
KP: And I really enjoy the interaction of teaching and spending the whole day just discussing jazz and playing jazz and getting better at jazz because there’s a whole world of music that can fit, I mean, there’s a lot of room for students today to pick what kind of jazz music they want to play. I love the teaching aspect of it and I love the writing and the playing.
Jazz Monthly: Yes, so talk to me about when you first picked up the trumpet in grade school and now you’re at the other end of the spectrum and now you’re teaching. Do you incorporate some of the methods and some of the techniques of learning back then to dispensing that to your students today?
KP: Well, I do to the extent of I always quiz them on a couple of details first because one of the biggest things I tell all of them is that if you want to play jazz music, if you want to play music in general, you need to love the music because nothing else—if you really love the music, you can make a career out of it, because if you don’t love the music, then other hardships will get in the way at some point and it won’t mean enough for you to sustain through those periods.
Jazz Monthly: Profoundly true.
KP: But if you love the music and that is your deep passion, then that overrides everything. That overrides the fact that I’m gonna practice six hours a day for a year and a half straight because that’s what I have to do to get to the level I need to get to on the instrument, and that kind of thing. It doesn’t matter because you’re on a goal, you’re on a pursuit. I want to be sure that the students understand the dedication they have to have to play this music because John Coltrane spent 12 hours a day working on his craft and he didn’t let anything go to waste. And the guys that spent the time to perfect themselves and play the music and do it as well that you can play it, they didn’t leave anything to chance.
So these students who come in here, if you’re gonna play this music today, you have to have a serious level of dedication and want to do this because, number one, the music is hard but, number two, the best part of it is when you can express yourself where the, let’s say the notes don’t matter, it’s the expression, you aren’t thinking “C sharp minor flat 5 is A minor 7, what am I going to play?” You’ll get past the, you know, we study this stuff now, you have these options, these options, blah-blah-blah, these patterns you can play. Well, that all goes away when you’re really playing music. That stuff has to be in there so deep that you just draw upon that.
Jazz Monthly: Right.
KP: So those are some of the things that I try to do right away and, I mean, there are several ways to do it, but it’s a serious business and there are some really great young musicians coming up you’re gonna be hearing about because there’s some big talent out there.
Jazz Monthly: Oh, there is, and I wish we could provide more of a medium for them, and it’s incredible what you hear now from some of the young musicians and it always gets me excited, yeah.
KP: Yeah, it’s exciting and I also have a graduate class that I do, an analysis class that’s very deep, and then at the end of the year-long session we need to spend time talking about how the method for delivering music today is so different than it was when Pensyl Sketches No. 1 came out as far as record labels go, as far as Internet goes, and downloading on Internet sites, and it’s a whole new world for the record industry, if you want to call it that. So they need to be aware of that as well. In some ways, there’s many more opportunities and some ways if everybody has a My Space site, how can you get traffic to notice you? And the whole history where labels would in some ways kind of nurture you along for a career, that kind of thing, well, as you probably already know, that’s not done in the jazz world these days too much.
Jazz Monthly: Right.
