search every one of its eric mintel thank you for joining me here with talking jazz and i am so excited to have my first musical guest here one of my favorite jazz pianists and somebody that i've admired for a long time musically and i'm really really happy that he's here today in the morning but i'd like to welcome new and introduce you to jim riddell they are you doing very good very good glad to be here well thank you for being here and like i said it your you you've been one of my  you know inspirations in favorite pianists for a long time and we were just talking recently about you know how you approach a tune which will get into that but basically what i like to try to do is you know we we've always seen each other in passing it gigs are a we've always been it's always a hey jim right and then we have to you know scurry on to the next gig but it's nice to be able to sit down and talk about the music and really the music being jazz obviously  one of the things with the show is that i'm trying to educate a little bit of the public on more about jazz and about how it works but tell me let's just give our audience like a little background on where you're from and where you were raised and things like  state there was music in my family my grandfather played my czech ancestry my grandfather played accordion wow and i'm the youngest of five kids and we all took piano lessons and with me it stuck but my oldest brother was you know had a rock band and you know and he was also a composer and a poet and he was an influence on me you know for sure and so we had a certain amount of music in the family as far as listing my but my parents are not mean musicians but nature they love music and so consequently i mean when i got into into high school my father saw my interest in music and especially jazz although i didn't know much about it i was playing by ear there was a great pianist a student that the local college in my hometown and he had a duet gig with the guitarist from boston he originally from edmonton canada ok calgary i guess it is and anyway my father heard them play and thinking that all this you know this would be nice for my son to study with him so he asked his name is keith trick where ok ok if you know if i could study with him so and actually my teacher had just started teaching at a local middle school in any event set up the lesson i was fifteen years old and when i heard him play for the first time i go that's exactly what i want to do i mean it was very enlightening moment from that day you know and so from that point i studied i studied with him in high school and then i got you know totally taken by this music see it's the end that's in that's really good to hear because same thing when i was fourteen and i think it's around fourteen fifteen i think that's when we're like formulating what we want to do with the rest of our lives you know if you know we're right i knew that instinctively knew it sounds like you had the same thing you knew that like spoke to you somehow and went and speak a little bit more on that like how did that make you like from that point on what did you do from that point well i i  s first of all i think i was taken by piano playing so on a anytime i would hear something on the radio it would be primarily am radio in north dakota at that time i was taken by things that it pop out and so when i heard my teacher play it was a great jazz player but he was also very well versed and like some ragtime and country music you know country piano playing so there was this a little bit broader scope of  started into furthering my education so out of high school i went to denver university of colorado at denver and i got a degree in scoring in arranging there but i was playing like all the time you know in ensembles and starting to gagan denver ok anyway i just knew i wanted to play i had no concept about like economically what this mean financially or anything like that i was just yeah very much wanted to do it and my parents not being musicians but seeing my passion and my confidence in it they were one hundred percent support makes all the difference and i'm very grateful to them for that phenomena and you have to have that supportive background because i'm definitely a lot of if you like the arts unfortunately sometimes or not you know especially music you know you always get the thing that would be really going to do you know it's like this is what you can do and you can make music is a business i mean it's we're providing that service for people yeah so it's a job i mean it's it is absolutely legitimate business and there are and i'm really glad to hear that because so you were playing a lot in in the university in the and then do you remember your first like real like paid gig while as a solo piano i think i was eighteen yeah or possibly nineteen at a french restaurant the suburb of denver  and you know i was just you know very elegant place but i was just playing tunes and i was yes for it i think the owner of the restaurant probably called the university and then they said do you have any body that can play anyway it was it was cool i mean that was like my first you know paying gig and then and in a steady job for a bit it wasn't it wasn't terribly long but the good thing was is that in school as you know it's like you end up meeting other musicians and all they have a band here and so it started to build and as my playing got better you know i was able to expand more to you know more opportunities to play but also with musicians that were you know expanding me by far and so that's the beauty of this and that's the beautiful thing you meet other musicians and you you kind of make each other better yeah right as you go along when you're first formulating your you know you're playing aqim in so to speak you know your style do you remember like a shift that you had in your playing that you said well this is the one stored was it something that evolved would you say it was something that has of i mean obviously it's evolved but your style now it's it's like just and we're going to look at a video clip here in a minute but just your style now is like almost like evolve to the point where i mean it's really like effortless you know but you know funny valentine or something you know i want to change this up it's been played like the scene you know that all that you know it didn't you remember things like that the you wanted it changed like an arrangement of yeah and i think you know certainly like you like you said it's progressed and it and it's and it's an evolution that that happens maybe sometimes in a subconscious way and i want to consciously when something happens and you go oh wow like that i pivotal in a way because all this and all you played something you hadn't played before right i you know particular moments i'm not so sure but i i think there are a lot of them in a way because i feel like when you see this far as like this particular art form it's about experimentation you know and it's not that i was thinking that when i was a teenager going well i had to experiment and i didn't have that kind of view of it but the fact that there was so much freedom and one of the things that you know this particular teacher keith require and then later the great pianist in l a rob who was in denver he was one of my early teachers too you know he both teachers enter introduced me to improvisation which is freedom and and especially with rob he introduced me to some like more free kind of playing just like play randomly whatever comes to mind and so not only working on tunes but just sitting at the piano and i know you do this too like where you just start playing and you create something you just create on the spot yeah and i think those are like that process provides some things that like all of a sudden the planets align get this idea and that can actually form into a composition other times it's just like  oh it's the enjoyment of just playing other things you might get that are really much more concrete right and i think maybe when we're real young players we don't always recognize something that maybe kicked in later we go oh yeah exactly no isn't and it's it is and that's the thing to it like when you approach like a tune when you like you're approaching like in improvisation what are your what are you trying to go for you trying to go for i know for me what we had just talked about to i'm always trying to go for the emotional content of that time or that the piece or not even really the piece but of the the chords or something you know and that's why i love the piano so much is because it's just a and you know it's a voice you could voice those chords to infinity so many different ways of doing that to express yourself and so i try to get out that emotional content in the music and i just wonder how you approach that too and that's what we were talking about like when you get into that improvisation like even if you're starting out a very light piece even and it just kind of like starts to evolve and where do you go from there is it something that just happens where is it something you know are you thinking like well i want to play this particular line or are this particular chord scale are you ever thinking that way or such as they are because i think that times you know if i'm would be writing for something specifically if i'm right commissioned to do something there's there's a deadline there's an agenda i think the mind works differently in a certain way and your craft and part of your being has to come forth yeah much more but a lot of times for me i'm not in that situation where i'm getting doing a lot of commissions or anything like that so my yet not yet not yet sometimes but my like my agenda is like well it's  it's just sitting down at the piano and playing like i do every day so a lot of times a lot of my music i would say has an emotional content to them that's you know for instance on this particular record a lot of things are programatic they remind me of something so maybe something in the landscape or an emotion of a person or something like that so compositionally something will move me that i played oh oh i love this particular chord or this melodic movement or the combination of the two now the other side of it is like being in jazz i think that it's a highly evolved art form where i mean we can play a lot of complicated things which i don't complex things maybe a better way of putting it and it it doesn't necessarily transfer to an emotion least i don't feel it sometimes is like if i'm feel like i'm  burning on a blues or something it's like well i i want to rise to the occasion of like all great players i'm like wow like this is really really interesting and it's a heightened emotion of excitement yeah inside of that it's like you go wow you're playing all these i mean technical things that we work on for many years that's it in and of itself is not an emotion but it it can create that so it's a combination of the two of our craft and our emotions coming together and speaking in speaking of that i want to show the and i want to talk about your new record or your recent record and i also want to show our audience a video clip of you do this solo piano recital yeah honestly that was in october a classical venue with the to recycle halls and i mean it's a beautiful space it's not the first place you think of you know for jazz but a lot of they do all kinds of music there and this particular series is called project one forty two and it's got alberts and who's you know would be also an interesting place for you to play i'll go look as well you know but he you know he has this series a long running series that was started by this older gentleman dick leonard ok and they do classical they do jazz it's great and and and since i was presenting a solo piano concert with some classical pieces i just wanted that vibe of a real listening room a dedicated space yeah that is for recitals yeah exactly and and so consequently that's you know what i did and number of the pieces were my originals grangemouth of some jazz standards and a few classical  it's from your upbringing in north dakota correct and basically it's like just we were just saying what's the emotional content for me with jazz people places and things and it sounds like you've got the mix right there in the yeah right now you're always like isn't that what really jazz is all about really is like pete for me anyway it's people places and things all those different experiences that we've got and everybody looks at it differently you know but being on the road you've had some incredible  you know performing opportunities yes i have found them very well and you know but but you've also worked hard at it oh yeah you know it doesn't come it's not something that's like an overnight thing but you've worked toward that and that's the thing the other thing i love about  love what you do now you love to play it's not like it's not a job it's like this is what you and this is what we have to have that kind of attitude you know as to make you know to make any kind of strides in the jazz world you know like we were saying that people sometimes they we have the audience that loves jazz but sometimes doesn't really understand what goes on in the jazz performance yeah so and you know what you're doing and what i'm doing and other jazz musicians hopefully is that we're bringing the audience into what we're doing keeping it maybe we're keeping it melodic maybe we're keeping it in a way that's a little bit more of a storytelling my ideas which you have on the record so tell us a little bit more about that aspect of it yeah w this this particular recording it's dorna feel this is volume two of the first recording is from like two thousand and three and so it's a similar vibe the thing is i'm a jazz musician everybody that plays on it are great jazz musicians but jazz musicians and they believe me and said this to me too which i believe he said jazz musicians can really play anything that can play almost everything i mean we take in a lot of different things so elting pa yeah so the musicianship there's a wide range of expression on this particular recording it's it's more programatic and just meaning that the pieces themselves want to kind of x i'm not so explain but paint a certain picture i mean i'm being very direct about that you know there's there's not a lot of like i don't i play piano and everything but i'm not playing like wow i'm getting into all these different thing right it's much more compositional and so it's it's very specific it's different from other records i've done but in the far as the title door in a field it's quite obvious there's a door a field  in this is you know the landscape is my family's land it's very clear the full plays songs of the green river the green river runs through our land base of the doors like is that the deaf metaphor like that's opening into new thing the very last piece has my wife cathy who's a great musician and graphic designer this is all her work that's beautiful her she grew up in a classical family of singers and strength players ok primarily singers and all church musicians as well always had this dream of finding a space on one of my records to have them saying so on the last part of this i wrote two pieces that are very simple cannons about like say people or a family is out in the field you know you know some of the members are here some are members are here some members are there and they start this round of  a motif and they sing like they're working in the field like they probably did i see like a work song and so works on yeah i did more folky but a little bit classical school and but in any event the special thing was all the planets aligned again and i got thirteen members of the family because it's larger than that wow a lot of them professional classical singer and anyway and the icing on the cake is that cathy's mother who was ninety five ninety seven at the time was a great singer and educator and a composer of children's music you know were very well known she sang as well wow and so i got three and i wait to hear anyway i mean it's but it's like it's that particular thing it's like it tells the story you know there's on that tune there's no there's no blowing there's no improvisation it's a vocal it's vocal and some instrumental but that's the all the time when you're having conversations with not only audience you have conversations with your musicians yeah it's that nonverbal you know yamuna cation that we have there so yeah and then people you know will will hopefully feel that  yeah and and i agree music jazz musicians it's like a huge melting pot of styles that we now have ready at our fingertips you know yeah i know me personally as a player you know it's like one of the journeys that i keep going on is just learning there's just i mean it's that's why i love jazz so much it's just there's so many things that are it's infinite there to learn you know just different ways of voicing chords and and playing certain lines and just coming up with different types of like rhythms and so that's why a lot of because it's always like you can go into your laboratory rate you know we sit at the piano i call that's our laboratory we can come up with like all these different permutations of different things and then hopefully put it together and then we're blessed enough that we can play and put these things to use you know at a gig yeah i know i try and try that experiment and see see how it goes and then as it happens right with a tune if you bring in original tune it's not going to be the same when you play it right  won't be the same like that first time you play it it's going to evolve yeah time and it becomes a whole nother that's another beautiful thing about jazz it's like it's that it's always peeling there's always layers of things that are always like it's coming more and more to the surface and i think i think more and more people are getting it i think if we can see like like i'm so really blessed for the show and i go and chuck in there was a gentleman that had a show called jazz talk and his name was leslie ford that was doing a similar thing here to bring you know talking about jazz and trying to educate the public i think we can have shows like this that really just educate the public on what we do it's i'll tell you i know you have to the audience that comes to jazz are some of the greatest people oh yeah because they are they want to hear something that's not out there that you know that's they that's not a real like in the in the popular so to speak they want to hear something that's different you know and they're willing to take the time to think about because it is that jazz is like a thinking type of music you know you have to put a little bit of thought into it and and because the world is moving so crazy right it's like so and it's nice to have people there so you know lately i've been noticing a lot more people and i know you have to at the at your audiences there's a lot of newer faces that i've been seen yeah at at concerts so that's a good thing too and i talk about your now talk about europe we have a couple more minutes here but talk about your your residency at the at the fifty five bars and tell us about that who's going with you when the next gig is and yeah well the fifty five bar is in the west village fifty five christopher street and it's it's a funky little club you know in manhattan but it's it's a it's an amazing place it's it's been there for many many years i mean it's used to be an old speakeasy but it kills a great venue for playing i mean they they don't serve any food it's just a bar it's but it's interesting internationally no and i mean mike stern has played there for many years and jocko pastorius many years ago when krantz was there and there's in the table is really open and so i'm i played there for quite a few years but beginning this is the fourth year just starting of a residency second monday of every month and so i play the early show and i'm very blessed to have that as we all know to have a steady gig like that is great so i'm very grateful for it but it's i play with a quartet for this past year i mean i switch it up sometimes but this past year it's been with on violin and chris terry on bass and jol rosenblatt on drums ok and then sometimes players vary with that but you know we got a thing going and that's that's why you your own group for many years you know the the group really starts to coalesce when you have more and more gigs together and some consistency yeah and it's great use all you start reading each other's minds you know it's that kind of thing now do you have a website where people can see where you're playing next yet side jim at jim riddell dot com jim at jim riddle dot com so make a note of that everybody and jim i got to tell you this is been a lot of fun and it's all it's just really great and getting to know you more and like i said i've admired you from afar again we're going to be back for future shows i've got some really really great guests both musicians a lot of folks behind the scenes that are helping bring jazz to the forefront of the public mind set so you know tune in you can he see us right here  thirty and also on my facebook page talking jazz with eric mintel so thank you so much and god bless