| |
| |
 |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
SINGAPORE : It pays to start young. Japanese pianist Makoto Ozone, a powerhouse in the Japanese world of jazz, began playing music at the age of two - or so his parents claimed, he said.
And at seven, he started improvising and also began performing on television with his jazz musician father Minoru - all this before he even took proper piano lessons.
Ozone, who was already able to play a few tunes with one finger, did give music lessons a go when he was five but gave that up because it was "boring".
"I did this text book called Beyer. I am sure a lot of people have done that when they are starting out piano lessons but I could not take that music, it was so boring," he said, referring to the repetitive finger exercises he was made to do on the keyboard.
"It's not music, they are just exercises."
But that didn't stop him from making music. Without formal training, Ozone relied on records as his teachers, the 49-year-old said in an interview with Primetime Morning.
It was only after watching Canadian jazz pianist and composer Oscar Peterson perform at the age of 12 that Ozone finally decided to give piano lessons another go, and he never looked back.
The pianist from Kobe has since released more than 20 albums and his latest "Jungle" has received critical acclaim from jazz legends Chick Corea and Sergio Mendes.
However in recent years, the Jazz Compositions and Arranging major from Boston's Berklee College of Music has spent more time focusing on classical music which he got into about seven years ago "by accident".
"I had the chance to play 'Rhapsody in Blue', a Gershwin composition that's a mixture of jazz and classical, and one time, I was invited to play with the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra for their monthly concert," he recounted.
"I took the offer and I didn't make sure about the programming, so I told my manager to call them just to make sure it is 'Rhapsody in Blue'. He called me back in three seconds and said they wanted Mozart. I froze. I did freeze for five minutes at least."
Fortunately, Ozone was free to select any composition he wanted so he went to the CD store and bought a whole set of Mozart piano tunes so he could pick one.
"I didn't even know one of them. I was going to roll the pencil or something!" he said. "Then I picked No 9. That was my first experience playing 'classical classical' music and that's how I got into it."
However, Ozone wasn't pleased with his performance so a year later, he went back to school to study classical music for one semester.
"I knew I wasn't going to be an instantaneous classical pianist by going to school got one semester but still I wanted to see how the classical musicians were hearing and constructing music and so forth. It was completely different," he revealed.
"I loved it [classical music] but I hated to see the fact that I could not do it. About a month into the semester, I was too scared to play the piano because everything I was doing was wrong according to classical music - I was banging the piano, whacking the keyboard."
Unlike jazz, there is little room for spontaneity and improvisation in classical music, but Ozone said it is not impossible. Though orchestras and conductors shoot him looks of confusion when he takes off and starts doing his own thing, he assures them that they will hear the 'landing'.
"I go out but the important thing is the landing part... you have to make sure everybody feels I am landing. So I go back to the same key, I look around, make sure eye contacts are there and here's your four bars. And I repeat four bars and they can come right back."
"And they have so much fun when I do that," he said. "It's like having a live conversation with all the musicians you are playing with."
- CNA/il
|
