Channeling the experimental art of Pablo Picasso, Jason Greenwald will bring his own style of improvised piano performance to Athens on Sunday
Channeling the experimental art of Pablo Picasso, Jason Greenwald will bring his own style of improvised piano performance to Athens on Sunday.
Greenwald has been performing live music for about 20 years and currently performs as Piano Picasso — an improvised piano show which also features some original songs.
Greenwald started out playing classical style piano and then moved on to jazz improvisation with the band Jazz Ethics. He had stopped playing music for a brief time when he began going back to school, but when he felt the urge to play again he joined up with a pop band with whom he plays on the weekends.
“I’ve always been playing freeform piano in the basement on my keyboard,” he said. “(It’s) abstract, expressionist type of music. I decided I wanted to do that in front of people.”
Greenwald began Piano Picasso in April. He decided on the name because the music reminded him of the style of painting Pablo Picasso did. This is because for this act, nothing is pre-planned.
“There will be a lot of dissent notes, changes in tempo and different things within the Piano Picasso piece,” he said. “Some of it will sound weird but be very interesting. I balance those with songs I’ve written that have a pre-planned structure that will sound more natural to people’s ears.”
His shows, which typically last for about an hour and 20 minutes, go back and forth between improvised pieces and more structured pieces. These structured pieces includes a medley of Mother Goose songs and “Cantaloupe Island,” a classic song by Herbie Hancock.
His improvised pieces are generally between five and 10 minutes.
“It comes from my subconscious and my hands combined,” he said. “Other times, I say ‘Okay, what do I want to start out with?’ … There’s some conscious level of thinking with the improv, but once I get that first notion going, it’s what my head and my hands do together.”
Greenwald will have his new album Piano Picasso available at the concert. It’s $10 and also available on CD Baby and for purchase and instant download on Amazon.
“If I could play improv piano every night of the week, whether it would be solo or with a group, that’s what I would do with myself,” Greenwald said. “My first love is piano.”
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