Marching to Your Own Pianist: A talk by Jacqueline Schwab April 27, 2010

Marching to your Own Pianist (or other Musician)—Improvisational Pianist Jacqueline Schwab’s Americana Work with Documentary Film Maker Ken Burns

Ferguson Hall, Room 225

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” Henry David Thoreau

Pianist Jacqueline Schwab started with a love for expressive, improvisational piano playing, a good ear for melody and harmony, and an interest in many types of music, including traditional dance music. She also grew up as a shy person, slow to develop a vision of how her talents could be of use in the world. Today, her style of piano playing is unlike any other, she performs music in a style not normally heard on the piano, and her music has been heard by millions around the world, through her playing on the sound tracks to series by noted documentary film maker Ken Burns. Schwab has been heard on a dozen of Ken Burns’ PBS documentaries (including his Civil War, Baseball, Mark Twain, The War and his recently-premiered The National Parks: America’s Best Idea). She will discuss the creation of her signature sound and the unpredictable development of her career. She will encourage music and arts students to take stock of their artistic interests and strengths, to envision how these interests and strengths might be useful for an artistic career and to find ways of starting now, with their current base of fans and networks of people they know. Topics will include the value of artists and musicians to the present-day world, ways of developing artistic performance confidence, methods for finding performance work, and networking and promotion. This will be a talk about faith and not formulas.

In the words of documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, “Jacqueline Schwab brings more feeling and intensity to music than anyone I know. Her playing is insistent, physical, heartfelt and ... unusually moving.” Drawing on classical, traditional folk and contemporary music roots, Chatham, Massachusetts-based pianist Jacqueline Schwab’s playing is in turn elegiac and sprightly. The New England Folk Almanac wrote she plays with “the jazz/classical improvisational spirit of Keith Jarrett and the touch of George Winston ....” She has performed at the White House for President Clinton (celebrating Burns’ Lewis and Clark series) and also, with singer Jean Redpath, on MPR’s A Prairie Home Companion and CBS’ Late Show with David Letterman (on May 21, 2009). She has performed solo concerts of her arrangements of vintage American music and traditional Celtic and English music throughout the US, including at the Savannah Music Festival. She has recorded and performed with many traditional musicians, including Scottish fiddlers Alasdair Fraser and Laura Risk, Scottish singer Jean Redpath and the English dance music quartet Bare Necessities. In addition to Jacqueline’s solo concerts, she has also performed Scottish traditional music in the duo New Rigged Ship (with cellist Reinmar Seidler) and spirituals and vintage American music with alto saxophonist Willie Sordillo. Jacqueline has three solo recordings: Mad Robin, Down Came an Angel and Mark Twain’s America. Jacqueline also enjoys teaching piano and improvisation. For more information, see jacquelineschwab.com. Sound clips are available on http://www.myspace.com/jacquelineschwab.

Official Website: http://www.jacquelineschwab.com