Rabble Without A Cause
Wednesday February 23rd, 2011 with Bernard Stepien
Ran Blake tackles the George Gershwin songbook

Ran Blake is one of the most fascinating pianist. Fortunately, instead of just performing like most Jazz musicians, he devoted most of his career to education, thus transmitting his knowledge to legions of young musicians that includes our local pianist Steve Boudreau that studied with him at the New England Conservatory. Ran Blake has been influenced by two major sources of music, on the Jazz side nothing less than the great Thelonious Monk and on the classical music side Bela Bartok and Igor Strawinski. The result is of course different and he even got a name for it: the Third Stream. His music is a high art of deconstructing the Jazz heritage, extracting an essential melodic line or harmonic pattern and practically re-composing it. Tonight, we will explore this deconstruction principle in his Hatology CD on the George Gershwin song book but I will also play both the graduation recital piece of Steve Boudreau at the New England Conservatory and a small interview on Steve's experience with Ran Blake. You will see or hear for yourself that we are lucky to have a piece of Ran Blake roaming around right here in Ottawa through the Steve Boudreau medium...