When I learned to play music, my dream was to some day be on stage singing. I started practicing for that day as a junior and senior in high school. I would come home after school, putt on the records of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Johnny Mathis, and sing along. I learned expression and tone, and how they turned those wonderful Great American Songbook songs into great music.
When I got my first change to play in front of people, it was in college during the ’60s. Consistent with the times, I sang folk songs in a coffee house, backing myself with very basic guitar chords. As I started music as a career, I was able to work with musicians who were much better instrumentalists than me, first guitarists, then when I returned to piano which I had studied as a kid, increasingly an entire band.
But last week, I got a chance to play for a group of about 100 people again as a single, just me and a grand piano. I used to claim that the purest form of music was one person and their accompanying instrument, typically guitar or piano. And on October 14, at Hammock Dunes Club in Palm Coast Florida, I got a chance to play music for people that way for the first time more than 10 years. I had no band to support me, no saxophone to play the solos, no bass to provide the foundation and hold the tempo, no other instruments to add flavor.
I was reminded that, though I love playing with other musicians, especially the brilliant musicians whom I have enjoyed playing with for more than a decade now, that I also love doing it solo, that there is a special kind of joy in sharing your music with an audience when it’s just you and your instrument.