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Richie Beirach: Indelible Memories and Thought-Provoking Reflections on a Life in Jazz, Part 2
Richie Beirach hovers somewhat mysteriously in the pantheon of the great modern jazz pianists. Some of the others in that category from his generation (coming up in the 1960s/'70s), like
Herbie Hancock
pianob.1940
Keith Jarrett
pianob.1945
Chick Corea
piano1941 - 2021
Kenny Barron
pianob.1943
A centerpiece of his career has been an ongoing collaboration with NEA Jazz Master saxophonist,
Dave Liebman
saxophoneb.1946
Beirach lived and worked as a prodigious sideman in New York at the height of the 1970s jazz scene through the 1990s. At the start of the New Millennium and in the wake of the 911 terrorist attacks, he shifted his home base from New York to Leipzig Germany, where he taught and mentored young pianists for fifteen years. Today, he continues performing and teaching worldwide while residing in Hessheim, a small town not far from Frankfurt and Mannheim, where he values his privacy and freedom. In the above photograph, Beirach is joined by two members of his current European band, drummer Christian Scheuber and keyboardist Regina Litvinova. Beirach is a wonderful conversationalist, so relax and enjoy this extensive autobiographical excursion by a jazz master.
PART 2: THE EUROPEAN RESIDENCY AND BEYOND
From New York to Leipzig
AAJ: For the last fifteen years or so, you've been living and teaching in Leipzig, and you've always worked and taught a lot in Europe even before that. What led you to move to Europe, and what did you find there that you didn't get in your long residence in New York?RB: I came here to Germany in 2001, and here's why and how. After the 911 attack on the World Trade Center, I started to get very weird about living in New York City. I was born in Brooklyn, and had been living in my apartment at Spring and Hudson Streets since 1968, right around the corner from the original Half Note. I came of age there. I loved the music, I had women, we all hung out, parties, rehearsals. I hung out with
Randy Brecker
trumpetb.1945
Stan Getz
saxophone, tenor1927 - 1991
Chet Baker
trumpet and vocals1929 - 1988
Freddie Hubbard
trumpet1938 - 2008
Joe Henderson
saxophone1937 - 2001
George Coleman
saxophone, tenorb.1935
AAJ: It sounds like an ideal situation! Why did you leave for Europe?
RB: I had a small apartment in the Village and loved it. But then, the area started getting built up, all the hippies started moving in, and the lofts were turned into apartments. New York changed in a lot of ways. It became very Republican. Things changed in the jazz scene.
Wynton Marsalis
trumpetb.1961
While living in New York all that time, I had been to Europe a thousand times for gigs and workshops and teaching, and I had a lot of connections in a lot of the jazz schools in Berlin, Stuttgart. Everyone had a jazz school at that time. So I thought it would be great to get out of New York, if nothing else just for a change of scene. So I started calling around, and I found out that people were interested in giving me a teaching position. In Berlin,
David Friedman
vibraphoneb.1944
Finally, I got a call from this guy Ralph Schrabbe, a former student of mine from the New School. He said, "I heard you're looking for a job as a professor in Germany." He was running the school in Leipzig. I thought, he's crazy, because I thought it was in East Germany! But he said, "Richie, the Berlin Wall came down! It's one country now! And, man, we have lots of money from the state!" And he offered me a great salary. But he said, "You have to audition." I said, "You mean if Miles or Trane or somebody wanted to teach at your school, they'd have to fuckin' audition?" And he said, "Yes." So on my birthday, May 23, I went there to audition with fifty other piano players.
A professorship there is a very special job. But I figured I was already 54, with an incredible musical background, so I stood a good chance of getting it. I had to play three classical pieces, baroque, contemporary. And then I had to do improvisations, so I played my own piece, "Elm" and a standard, "Round Midnight." Then I had to teach a beginning student and an advanced student. And I did well with that. But then I had to pass a big interview where there was a lot of politics involved. And some of them wanted to hire an East German, not an American. So they said, "Why do you, such a big shot in New York want to come to our little town of Leipzig to teach?" I just said, "Because I have a chance to build something here." They really liked that. Then they asked, "Do you speak German?" And I said, "No." And they said, "This is Germany, and you have to teach the classes in German." I said, "Jazz is American music, and I teach in English. And all these students will have to go to America eventually anyway." And I got the job!
That teaching position lasted fifteen years (2001-2016). It was at the Mendelssohn Hochshule in Leipzig. I was a professor and the head of the jazz piano department. I loved the job—I had the best kids as students. And I was very involved with them. In a few years, you see them grow up. They were the best young pianists from their little towns around the world. And then at around age 18, they came to Leipzig where they got a dose of the real standards of excellence. I'm a very tough teacher, but very kind and very generous—I'd do anything for them. And in four years, they grew up and became men and women with a sense of adult responsibility. It was fantastic working there with them. But unfortunately, there is a lot of age discrimination in Germany, and there is mandatory retirement at age 67, so I had to leave. I was still rolling, but it's a state job, and I had to go. Today, I'm living semi-retired in a smaller town, Hessheim, Germany not far from Mannheim. I have great friends here. One of them is a drummer, Christian. I'm very happy here.
The European Jazz Experience
AAJ: Nevertheless, you still do gigs and teaching, and you come back to the U.S. periodically. What are some of the highlights of your years living, teaching, and doing gigs in Europe?RB: When I first moved to Leipzig, it was a big adjustment, because I never had a full time job like that. Also, I was lonely, I didn't know anybody. But I made some friends and I really got into teaching. Especially because I could control who came to study with me. I was on the jury for selection of the candidates. So, we eventually had the highest level of young people coming into the school. It wasn't a hard job: 18 hours a week. I had ten private students and two ensembles each week. With lots of holidays, I had time to do a lot of gigs. And a lot of my gigs had already been in Europe anyway, so when I was living here, I got many calls to do festivals and concerts. I'd just jump on a train and go. I did solo piano, duo stuff with violinist
Gregor Huebner
violinb.1967
George Mraz
bass1944 - 2021
Billy Hart
drumsb.1940
So at Leipzig, I worked for a long time. I was busy with concerts, recordings, going to Japan, the whole deal. I did more than I did in New York! And I've had a great life of an American in Germany. I'm still an American citizen by the way.
AAJ: What were a few flashpoints of that time in your life?
RB: One of them was a spectacular concert in Stockholm with the Stockholm Symphony Orchestra in 2010 with a Swedish trumpet player named Anders Bergrantz. His wife, Amalena wrote a concerto for piano and trumpet. We performed it for two nights with the Stockholm Symphony. It was unbelievable! Packed house. The music was breakthrough stuff: contemporary music with jazz improvisation. The people loved it. It was very high class, and it was great.
For my sixtieth birthday, they had a big celebration concert for me in Leipzig, and I was able to invite Dave Liebman, Gregor Huebner, and George Mraz, and a lot of my American friends, to come to Liepzig. We had a big concert and a 3-4 day workshop. That was twelve years ago.
The violinist Gregor Huebner is a very important musician in my life. I have had a twenty year working relationship with him. He is one of the most incredible modern contemporary jazz violinists. He began with me as my piano student, and we quickly moved on to a more collaborative relationship. We work all the time in different situations. I love his playing, and he always surprises me.
Those were very important things. And from 2001-2016, I was going back to New York twice a year. In the winters between 2004-2012, there were big requests for a gig at Birdland with me, Liebman, Billy Hart, and
Ron McClure
bassb.1941
So I'd go to New York twice a year, for a week at a time. And I'd go to Japan, Switizerland, wherever, and people were still buying records and paying for them, so we sold a lot of records. We still had the structure of a record company with its support and promotion. I met wonderful people, had great experiences. On the whole, I would say they were some of the best years of my life. The other special period, of course, was in the 1970s when I was starting out, and I recorded Hubris, and all that stuff with Dave and those folks. That was a golden time.
AAJ: You've worked with Randy Brecker many times. Did you ever work with Michael Brecker?
RB: Of course! I did a whole bunch of recordings with him. We worked concerts here and there. We did a live concert with an audience in a recording studio. The record is called Inborn, a double CD on Jazzline Records (2018). It's a wonderful document. It was recorded in 1992, and re-released last year. Michael was my friend, and he and Randy were like my brothers.
AAJ: To me, Michael Brecker was one of the greatest musicians who ever walked the face of the earth.
RB: He absolutely was.
AAJ: For you as a seasoned musician who worked with him, what was it about him and his music that made it so incredible and memorable?
RB: It was his humanity. His humanity as a person came out in his sound. It was his sincerity, his modesty. He was very hard on himself. He often didn't like what he played and wanted to do another take. There's a track on Inborn where I do a duo with him on my piece, "Sunday Song." He came in and sight read it, and everyone in the studio was crying, including me. His sound was so honest, no bullshit. Plus he had unbelievable chops. He was like Stan Getz in that both had incredible technique, all the right stuff. And for Michael, the saxophone became an extension of him as a person. He was a warm guy, great sense of humor, very self-deprecating. He was a natural on the horn. And the way he developed his ideas was extremely brilliant. Because the instrument was so much a part of him, he could really concentrate on the music. He had perfect intonation, and there was nothing he couldn't articulate at any tempo. He was all about the musical ideas, unlike the guys that have great chops, but they play without any concept of what they're doing.
AAJ: There are very few who literally compose the music while they're playing.
RB: Right. Wayne Shorter was like that. Stan Getz was. But there are a lot who don't have that knack. For example, I love
George Coleman
saxophone, tenorb.1935
Dexter Gordon
saxophone, tenor1923 - 1990
AAJ: Did you play with any of the wonderful European radio big bands?
RB: I played with all of them. I played with the WDR big band with
Gregor Huebner
violinb.1967
Mike Gibbs
composer / conductor
Jim McNeely
composer / conductorb.1949
Count Basie
piano1904 - 1984
Maria Schneider
composer / conductorMaria Schneider is super-talented. We loved Maria when she came to New York from Minnesota. We used to call her "Pinkie" because she had strawberry blond hair. She used to work for
Gil Evans
composer / conductor1912 - 1988
Bob Brookmeyer
trombone1929 - 2011
Comments on the Jazz Business
AAJ: When I interviewed Maria for All About Jazz, one of the things we discussed was the jazz business as such. She's very active in advocating for the rights of musicians, their recordings, performances, and compositions.RB: I have the same passion about it that she does, and we had a lot of contact when she was working with the U.S. Congress to effect changes in the internet copyright laws.
AAJ: You've been around the circuit as much as any musician I know, from the 1970s right up to the present. The jazz business seems to always have had special difficulties, and even more so now. Please share some of your views about what's happening and how it affects the musicians and the music.
RB: When I started my professional life as a jazz musician in 1968, there were BMI, AMRA, Harry Fox, Gema, and a few other organizations that were available to us to collect and distribute our royalties to us. And I had my own publishing company. Back then, there was none of all that digital stuff that we have now, with all the downloads, Spotify, Google, and YouTube. I have mixed feelings about it all.. I'm conflicted because I use that shit myself. I go to YouTube and with one click, I have almost everything ever recorded! But most of it is free or costs a few cents, and musicians are deprived of copyright protection and record royalties. These are our creative productions, and we deserve to make a living from our work and have some control over its use and distribution.
AAJ: It's great for the consumer, but not for the working musicians.
RB: And it also has an upside and a downside for the students. It's so available and easy now to get whatever you want to listen to and study. And that's why we have so many great jazz musicians today, because they have access to everything on the internet. It's great, but it's also bad, because it's too easy. You don't have to pay for most of the music. You don't have to buy a CD because it's on YouTube or Spotify. The digital revolution has been great because it opened up access to the music. Some guy in Zimbabwe with a cellphone can hear my recordings!
In the past, there were simply record companies and there were artists. The only way to make a record was to contact a record producer. I would call Manfred Eicher of ECM, and I would say. "I have a trio recording I'd like to make." And he'd say, "Yes!" Or he would contact me. And then we would negotiate the details: cost, pay, personnel, track and tune details, and so on. So the know-how was all there on both sides.
Now, anyone can make a recording! A musician can self-produce his own CD at his own expense. I get a couple of hundred of these every month. And the truth is there is so much garbage and things that should not be released. The market is flooded with these records. Now this is democracy and in that sense it's great, and people should have every opportunity. But the result is that there is so much poor quality work. Number one, listeners don't know what to buy. Number two, people don't want to pay for a CD. They want to download the tracks for free. The result is there's very little income and respect for musicians. My mother, when I got interested in becoming a jazz musician, said, "Oh no! You should be a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher and play music on the weekends," like a hobby. Jazz musicians are not regarded with respect. You go to a club, and people are drinking, getting drunk, talking loud, making out. They want to party, and they don't realize we musicians are there to work professionally and create art. And this is made even worse by the fact that anyone can make a recording, and there are no high artistic standards to be maintained.
As a result, my record royalties twenty years ago were twice the amount I get now. I'm lucky to have a few hit songs: "Elm," "Zal," "Pendulum," "Broken Wing." These tunes I wrote were recorded a lot by Chet Baker and other musicians. Everybody plays them. Now, nobody buys shit! And it's systematic, it's not because of a decrease in popularity, it's the result of the change in the way music is accessed.
In the U.S., it's worse. Jazz and country music are the only "real" American music. And rap is not really music. It's just a rhythm machine. They're not songs, they're just "hooks." For jazz, the statistics are scary. Jazz is only one percent of all music sold! America is a young country, and it's still a savage country in many ways. It's a good place to do something new, but it's not a place to become a real creative artist. Europe has a cultural awareness that we do not have in America. Only a few cities, like New York, Boston, and L.A., still have an active jazz scene. The rest of the country, no one knows what jazz is, who the musicians are, and so on. I'm still a New Yorker, I'm an American, I love my country. But it's not a good place to be a jazz artist. Even the grants and subsidies for us are going away.
We used to get a few thousand dollars up front for a recording. Now we often don't get anything. What smart popular musicians like Madonna and Sting are doing to compensate for the lack of recording income is charge a lot of money for a concert in a big stadium. And now they even have a gigantic mobile recording truck they bring to the stadium, so they record, produce, and sell the concert album right after the concert! Things have really changed!
Because of the overall financial crunch, Dave Liebman's message to young musicians is therefore to "find something else that pays money, because you won't earn enough from making music. Most of you will not be able to make a decent living from being a jazz musician." I used to make a very good income doing tours, records, and so on. Now all that money is drying up. An exception might be in China, where they have a middle class in Shanghai and the other big cities who are turned on by jazz. But most of the aspiring jazz musicians won't be able to get a sufficient income from jazz. They will have to do what Dave says and find a new way to make a living. I'm lucky in that respect because I was established in the 1970s and everybody knows me for better or worse. They have many festivals, but some, like the Montreux Festival are no longer specifically for jazz. Unfortunately for us, jazz, which used to be the popular music of the time, today is totally a "niche" music, appealing to only a small segment of the population. Again, one percent of all records sold are jazz albums.
AAJ: That is indeed a very sad statistic. What I'm hearing you say is that the art form of jazz is suffering greatly today. Everything seems to be going against the idea of a musician who dedicates himself and his life to creating new music in a community of like-minded musicians and fans. We finally have had a couple of generations of musicians who are not getting hooked on drugs and alcohol, who are talented and very serious about the music, yet they can't be part of a thriving community to develop the art form.
RB: The community is what made it happen. In the seventies for me, it was me and Dave and Randy and Abercrombie and
Steve Grossman
saxophone1951 - 2020
Bob Berg
saxophone1951 - 2002
Lenny White
drumsb.1949
In the 1970s, all the major jazz musicians were there. Stan Getz,
Art Blakey
drums1919 - 1990
Art Farmer
flugelhorn1928 - 1999
Cedar Walton
piano1934 - 2013
Harold Mabern
piano1936 - 2019
Kirk Lightsey
pianob.1937
John Hicks
piano1941 - 2006
Albert Dailey
pianob.1939
Tommy Flanagan
piano1930 - 2001
Hank Jones
piano1918 - 2010
Roger Kellaway
pianob.1939
Jimmy Rowles
piano1918 - 1996
Woody Shaw
trumpet1944 - 1989
AAJ: It was 24 hours of learning and growing as a musician almost every day, while the music itself was happening all around you.
RB: When I heard Tommy Flanagan play "Lush Life," I was amazed by the chord changes he was using. And I went up to him and asked about it, and he sat down at the piano and showed me! And then after hours at Bradley's or the Vanguard after the show ended, guys would hang around, and I heard discussions between
Red Mitchell
bass1927 - 1992
Billy Strayhorn
piano1915 - 1967
AAJ: I thought
Jimmy Rowles
piano1918 - 1996
RB: Cmon! He was in New York all the time. He used to play at Bradley's, He was living in New York with his daughter Stacey, who was a good trumpet player. He stayed in New York after he finished touring with
Ella Fitzgerald
vocals1917 - 1996
AAJ: That seems to contrast with the young musicians today. They do share a lot with one another, and they have great teachers who are working musicians, but they don't have mentors on their gigs, and not many opportunities to interact with them.
RB: Yes, there is a lack of that kind of community that we had in the day. It could be that that's happening now with some cats. I don't know. But we definitely had it with all the major cats alive and burning. I could go hear Chick Corea at the Vanguard and then go hear Bill Evans at the Top of the Gate, and hear McCoy and "Lush Life." These were the major players in their prime. I don't want to be nostalgic and dismiss the great things that are happening today. But back then, there was an incredible world-wide community of jazz musicians all interacting with one another at clubs, festivals, tours all over France, Germany, all the countries. And we'd come back from our trips with a lot of money and great music. And we'd meet so many great people along the way. Today, only a few of the top names can do such tours, like Branford and Herbie. Most of the guys don't get much opportunity to do that today.
AAJ: I really empathize with what you're talking about. There's no ladder to climb any more, and there's no sense of a lively musical community. There are pockets of intense activity in some places, and advanced players like
Steve Coleman
saxophone, altob.1956
Personal Life, Spirituality, and a Message to Young Jazz Musicians
AAJ: What do you like to do when you're not doing music?RB: I'm living in Hessheim, Germany, about an hour from Mannheim, and 40 minutes from Frankfurt. I'm a retired professor, and I have an adequate pension. I'm living and have some friends in a small town. It's a beautiful place surrounded by farms, asparagus, the wine countries in the Rheinphalz. I can walk out of my apartment and see the stars. It's a perfect place for me to live now, because I'm older. If I were 40, it would be terrible because there's nothing happening, even though the locals know me as the American professor.
For the first time in my life really, I have a lot of unstructured time. I use a lot of it for music. I plan recordings, I work some gigs. Liebman works all the time. I do it more as the spirit moves me. My life is very good here as an auslander [foreigner—Eds.], and I do miss my old friends in New York. But I'm in touch with everyone by computer and phone, and I have time now to do what I want. I have time to listen to chamber music and operas.
Aside from music, I love action movies with stunts, Transporter I, II, and III. I like Scott Atkins, the martial arts guy. It makes me relax because I don't have to think about it a lot! I used to read a lot of books, but I don't read so much now. But some books I read again a few times.
AAJ: Who are your favorite authors?
RB: Hemingway, Rilke, James Jones, Phillip Roth. I've read everything Hemingway wrote. I read The Old Man and the Sea every ten years or so, and it means something different to me every time. First, I identified with the shark, then I identified with the old man, then with the young kid, and then with none of them! When you have a real masterpiece, there's so much room to discover new things in it. And the same is true with musical compositions. If you listen to Mahler's Fifth Symphony, or the Shostakovich Fifth, or the Ravel Piano Concerto or Prokofiev, each time you listen to it you get more out of it.
And now I have a new band, a quartet with Chris Scheuber, a great drummer whom I trained to be looser and more contemporary. My bassist is Gregor's younger brother Veit Huebner. Regina Litvinova is a great keyboard player who was my student and now is my colleague. My relationship with Chris and Regina has been growing for the last six years. We have a recording called Gaia on the Jazzsick label (2017). I'm very proud of this record. And, since I have this band, I can record and work as the spirit moves me.
We have a concert here August 10th, at the Festival called JAZZAMREIN. This year, it's a fifty year anniversary tribute to the Miles Davis Quintet. So we're playing tunes like "So What," "Paraphernalia," "Blue in Green." In September, I'm doing a duo gig in New York with Dave Liebman at Mezzrow on September 12th. And then we'll go up to Woodstock, NY and make a trio record with myself, Dave, and Jack DeJohnette. It'll be free improvisation, something I've wanted to do with Jack DeJohnette for a long time. I'm honored that he agreed to do this recording.
After the record date, I'm just going on vacation out to Ohio to hang out with my second wife. We're divorced, but we still love each other. I didn't get along at all with my first wife, but I got a couple of good songs out of her [laughter]. My second wife LeeAnn Ledgerwood, whom I first met at Bradley's in New York, is wonderful. She's a great pianist too by the way. She has about fifteen recordings on Steeplchase. She lives in Ohio now, taking care of her ageing mother. We're close like two peas in a pod. I love her. And she inspires me a lot musically too.
AAJ: Did she inspire any of your songs?
RB: Yes, she did! I wrote a song called "Eternal Melody" with her in mind. That song will be on an upcoming duo record I made with my German drummer Chris Scheuber which will be coming out in September on the Jazzsick label. It'll be called Avala. It's like art imitating life.
AAJ: It could be called "The Other Side of Richie's Midnight." [laughter.] Now, I always ask a question about the musician's spiritual side. Coltrane said, "Music is my spirituality." Some musicians have a spiritual practice or are on a spiritual journey of some kind. What is your take on this subject?
RB: That's complicated. I'll answer it this way. I believe music is my only religion. I don't believe in religion as such. I think religion and nationalism have divided the world. As soon as someone says "This is the truth, and you're going to hell if you don't believe it," the fighting starts. And by the way, the Bible was written by humans. I agree with Christopher Hitchens, one of my favorite writers, who is very critical of religious beliefs. But, on the other hand, do I believe in something I can't see? Yes. Just look at your own hand. It's amazing. This was not made by a human being. They can make robots, but they can't make a hand, they can't make a brain. So, to my mind, somebody or something made it. There's more than we can see. And there's a great mystery. The conditions for human life are so specific. So why would it be that on some little shithole planet in the whole gigantic universe there are us humans? Do you think it's an accident that the temperature was just right, and there was enough oxygen and water? It's so improbable. So there's an inevitability and inexorability about life. And it's not of our making.
And I believe in the unknown and the unspoken, and I love the mystery. It's better that certain things are not answered. Music is the highest art because it's not in words, it's not in colors, it's not visible. It's not translatable. It's just sound! It's mysterious. It's beyond all the other arts. It's an impossible truth. You can analyze it all you want, but you cannot prove it. It's just sound! And I love that about music. You as a writer know how hard it is to describe music in words. I can tell you how someone looks. But you can't tell me how to describe Miles Davis' sound. I love that dichotomy, that impossibility of definition. I love it, I live in it. And I'm always looking for a surprise. Leonard Feather said, "Jazz is the sound of surprise." And I want to be surprised. So that's my religion. OK?
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