MARC COPLAND   WILLIAM LENIHAN​

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"It is a rare in improvised music, jazz or beyond, when two musicians find themselves to play with such spontaneous compatibility as found in the concerts of Copland and Lenihan. Musicians of similar musical background find a common language. In duo or quartet their music crosses boundaries of genre, style, and generation, lyrical and songlike, serious and subtle, light-hearted and human. Their sound is intense, subtle, and sophisticated, swinging and modern-minded. Copland who reigns as one of the most interesting pianists of our time with a distinct language and approach has captured the attention of the world stage." 

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They first met while Lenihan's trio shared the stage with the John Scofield quartet while Copland toured with the latter.  Scofield, Marc, and the band were intrigued by the trio, which also included bass virtuoso Tom Kennedy, and so they struck up a friendship and mutual admiration. Years later they decided to play concerts and record together, and finally to tour. With mutual associations of Ralph Towner and Gary Peacock (both teachers of Lenihan in his youngest years), they brought to the stage a shared musical experience that includes a wide breadth of composed and improvised music, American and European.

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Copland, one of the great pianists in jazz, his modernist romantic piano style is like no other. His musical language is direct, without complication, deep, and listenable. Lenihan's acoustic playing at the classical guitar is at once melodic, contrapuntal, and intensely harmonic, matching the sound and approach of his playing partner. His electric guitar playing lends a third voice to the duo, enabling their post-bop approach to the standards and original music.

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Drawing from the deep traditions of American jazz, they also share the love of the popular song. They sometimes cover the music of their youth, including Joni Mitchell's "California" or "Both Sides Now", or music of Neil Young or Marvin Gaye – always through the lens of the great, wider American songbook that only the jazz musician knows well.

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Their playing of the jazz standards is their most common ground having been raised on the music of the master improvisers but they display their adeptness with their original pieces with a flair for the adventurous. Copland's longtime work with guitarist John Abercrombie, Gary Peacock, and others has taken him through the long exploratory tunnel of original music. Lenihan’s concerts and recordings with legendary bassist Ron Carter and Bob Brookmeyer, collaboration and sessions with Jay Oliver, Dave Weckl, Tom Kennedy, and the world of film and chamber music give him a wide lens of musical perspective.

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Their concerts in USA and in Europe are sold out, and their master classes are attended widely by professional musicians and students looking for the answers to the aesthetic questions of the day.

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Their approach to duo playing is such that they draw an audience not only of the jazz aficionado but others as well, their music crossing genre in content and sound. Audiences of music lovers, fans of jazz, and also of the classical guitar and modern music fill auditoriums for the pure sound and effect of the duo.

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PRESS REFERENCES

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Gazzetta D’Alba

Saranno due immense firme del jazz internazionale a chiudere il secondo fine settimana di Roero music fest. Il famosissimo pianista Marc Copland duetterà con il virtuoso della chitarra William Lenihan nell’arena esterna della confraternita di San Francesco sabato 8 luglio. 

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E mentre si fa alta l’attesa per il concerto finale Lenihan e Copland, Gazzetta ha raggiunto il chitarrista, celebre per il suo saper trarre sonorità inusuali dal suo strumento, durante il tour europeo che lo sta impegnando insieme a Copland e gli ha chiesto qualche anticipazione sul concerto dell’8 luglio a Santa Vittoria.

 

«È con grande piacere che Marc Copland e io suoneremo al Roero music fest», ha dichiarato William Lenihan e ha proseguito rievocando i lunghi anni di collaborazione con il pianista: «Marc e io ci conosciamo da tempo e per molti anni abbiamo condiviso gran parte della nostra musica. Poiché abbiamo sfondi simili nello stile musicale e nel vocabolario, ci piace giocare insieme. Le nostre lingue musicali e gli approcci all’improvvisazione, alla composizione e agli standard jazz sono simili e dove si differenziano sono comunque complementari. È con grande gioia che abbiamo un’altra opportunità per esplorare insieme la nostra musica in Europa. Marc sta lavorando attualmente anche con Gary Peacock che insieme a Ralph Towner è stato uno dei miei insegnanti molti anni fa, quindi abbiamo molte connessioni in tutte le generazioni. Il nostro concerto al Roero festival spero sia, per il pubblico, un’occasione speciale di ascoltarci mentre esploriamo le sfumature della musica, dal classico al jazz, in un dialogo intimo».

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Roma Today

“Giovedì 6 luglio l’appuntamento è con Summertime alla Casa del Jazz con , formazione completata da Francesco Puglisi al contrabbasso e Lucrezio de Seta alla batteria. Una band internazionale che attraversa le lunghe strade del jazz e delle diverse musiche con suoni e idiomi che derivano da New York, passando da St. Louis per raggiungere Berlino.  Il linguaggio e lo stile esibiti nella musica originale della band sono alla base del jazz moderno, ma si sente anche l'influenza del modernismo europeo, musicale e pittorico. Lenihan e Copland hanno sviluppato individualmente idiomi armonici, come altri musicisti di jazz prima di loro, dalle invenzioni di Stravinsky, Bartok e Webern, ma le profondità del jazz sono i loro veri punti di partenza.”

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La Stampa

“Spetterà al duo formato dal celebre chitarrista William Lenihan e da Marc Copland, uno dei più noti pianisti al mondo, chiudere stasera il Roero Music Fest. 

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Lenihan è conosciuto per l’uso della chitarra classica nella musica improvvisata e la sua capacità di creare un suono quasi pianistico, mentre Copland è uno dei maestri interpreti dello standard jazz, un pittore del suono, sofisticato e cosmopolita.  

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Entrambi hanno creato il proprio linguaggio musicale con profonde radici nelle tradizioni sia del jazz sia della musica classica contemporanea.”

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Jazz Times (on Marc Copland)

Few pianists commune with a tune as poetically and with as much abandon as Marc Copland. Once into a piece of music, whether his own or a well-worn standard, Copland is a pianistic prospector panning for harmonic gold. “When I play, I search around inside until I hear something that feels right,” he says. “And when it feels right, I go with it.”

This searching spirit has permeated Copland’s music ever since the mid-1970s, when he switched from saxophone to piano and quickly found his voice on that instrument. As he told writer Gene Lees in Jazz Lives: 100 Portraits in Jazz: “When I was coming up as a saxophonist, the idea was to burn out, to play really intense. All of a sudden here was this impressionist-lyrical thing going on inside me that I had known nothing about, rearing its head all by itself. It was so strong that it eventually took me all the way over, not so much because I wanted to play piano-although I grew to love it-but because I had to do something with that feeling.”

Now when he sits down at the piano, Copland trusts that his instincts will lead him to new discoveries as he mines music of deep beauty and expressive feeling. And as he notes, “Discoveries seem to come pretty frequently now and as time goes on the harmonic expressive possibilities of this music seem to become clearer and relentless at the same time.”

Copland rarely takes a familiar path while on his musical journey of discovery. Perhaps bassist Gary Peacock, a member of Copland’s working trio in the late ’90s, put it best when he said, “Marc Copland never plays the same thing once.”

After a string of three superb albums in the ’90s for the American wing of Savoy/Denon-1993’s Stompin’ at Savoy, 1996’s Second Look and 1998’s Softly…-Copland was on hiatus from recording for a couple of years while still actively composing and performing. Through frequent tours of Europe, he has cultivated an audience abroad, where fans swoon to his impressionistic take on standards and marvel at his intuitive daring at the keyboard (qualities that invariably invoke favorable comparisons to the likes of Keith Jarrett, Paul Bley and Bill Evans).

Following a relative drought of product, a flood of Copland recordings has washed up on our shores from Europe. Six CDs have been released since late 2001, hailing from such labels as France’s Sketch, Switzerland’s Hatology, Holland’s Challenge Records and Denmark’s Steeplechase. “I guess the common thread between all of these recordings would be the aesthetic approach I take,” Copland says. “That aesthetic involves making every note count and striving to play notes that I have not played before.”

The European press has responded enthusiastically to two of Copland’s new releases: his latest trio offering Haunted Heart and Other Ballads (Hatology), with bassist Drew Gress and drummer Jochen Rueckert, and his revealing and expressive solo showcase Poetic Motion (Sketch). “I’m particularly proud of the trio with Drew and Jochen,” Copland says. “It feels like a real level of playing as a breathing organism is going on there.”

His recent duet recordings on Steeplechase with guitarist Vic Juris (Double Play) and trumpeter Tim Hagans (Between the Lines) have also garnered raves, as has his quartet project featuring saxophonist Dave Liebman (Lunar on Hatology) and another trio recording with trumpeter Kenny Wheeler and guitarist John Abercrombie (That’s for Sure on Challenge). But the most personally gratifying of the bunch, Copland says, is the crystalline solo piano recording Poetic Motion. Recorded in a Paris studio in the fall of 2001, it is Copland’s first-ever solo outing and was followed this past September by his first ever solo tour, a daunting yet liberating task.

“Recording a solo project can feel totally daunting,” he allows, “but once that record button is pushed you just have to remember that the situation is the same: there is some music waiting to be played and it should just flow from the feeling of the moment, the honesty of the moment. The key difference is that there’s no longer an interplay or discussion; it’s a monologue. And that changes the character of emotional flow.”

“So beautiful it's almost hard to believe.” ---allaboutjazz.com

“Copland, clearly at the height of his creative powers.” ---Jazz Thing (Germany)

“A gold standard in contemporary acoustic jazz.” ---Irish Times 

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