“You’ve got to find some way of saying it without saying it,” jazz legend Duke Ellington once advised. Steve Larson, pianist, music theorist and University professor, communicates with his friends and fellow quartet members without saying a word. For him and his group, Jazz Piano Collective, the layering and give-and-take harmonization of four moving sets of hands pressing the porcelain keys creates musical conversation. This art of free-flowing collaboration illustrates a musical value especially unique to the improvisational, often colloquial quality of jazz piano.
“You can make really pretty chords, you can play really beautiful notes, but it always has to swing,” Larson said.
The four musicians and teachers in Jazz Piano Collective hail from Universities across the nation, span age groups and play different styles, but when they come together they can’t stop talking, whether on instruments or over a glass of red wine. Henry Martin of New York City, Steve Strunk of Washington, D.C., Keith Waters of Boulder, Colo. and native Oregonian Steve Larson met at a 20th century music theory conference in Albuquerque, where they chose to play a Bill Evans song – an interesting choice for a group of music theorists, because Evan’s music had previously been unnotated.
The song, “Round Midnight,” was recorded on an album titled “Conversations With Myself,” where Evans recorded three different piano parts and overdubbed them. In 1963, this was revolutionary. Larson took the time to write it up, shared it with his new fellow pianists and the rest is history.
“The thing that made Bill Evans stand out – his trio with piano base and drums stand out – is the high level of give-and-take. It’s not three people stuck in very different roles,” Larson said. “Sometimes Evans would take the lead, sometimes he would drop into the background.” The Jazz Piano Collective attempts to emulate this sense of smooth, inherent collation of melody and rhythm in its shows across the nation and abroad.
The three pianists plan to converge and connect with each other and the Eugene audience with variations on pieces by Scott Joplin, Erik Satie and, of course, Bill Evans. The show, “Third Stream and Other Crosscurrents,” will showcase a fusion of jazz and classical music, putting swing, style and spontaneity into recognizable pieces. The trio will perform on the keys with other school of music faculty on flute, clarinet, bassoon and saxophone.
Larson illustrated the overlapping aspects of classical and jazz piano, two seemingly opposite sounds. “Mozart, much like a jazz player, started off by stating the theme simply and then making more and more elaborate variations. Mozart’s procedure is very much like jazz player’s,” he said.
Larson will play an elaborate, sometimes improvised version of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” (a folk song originally adopted by Mozart). And while the improvised pieces can get complicated, flashy and technically mind-boggling, Larson attempts to hold to another of his jazz values. “Technique is important, but not for its own sake,” Larson said. “Being able to do things that are maybe difficult, fast or flashy, but only doing them when there’s a reason to.” This, he said, creates a more soulful and natural sounding performance.
“It’s all about the meaning of the music; it should never be about just wiggling your fingers to be mechanically impressive, or even rhythmically infectious, just because it makes you tap your foot. It should feel like a dance.”
This Friday, three of the four members of the Jazz Piano Collective will reunite for a show at Beall Concert Hall entitled “Third Stream and Other Crosscurrents.”
The impressive collaboration of live music, straight from the steel strings and felt hammers of a piano’s belly, the conversation of rhythm, melody and harmonization, the layers of history ingrained in rich chords, should make for an enriching night, to say the least.
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Performance

What: “Third Stream and Other Crosscurrents,” a performance by Jazz Piano Collective, three pianists who layer and improvise their music playing on separate pianos.
Where: Beall Hall on Friday, May 11, starting at 8:00 p.m.
Cost: $8 for students, $10 for general admission