Mark Davis exudes affable intelligence and sharp style. At the piano, his personality and talent transmit incisive, fluent and swinging music. The city’s premier jazz pianist directs the Wisconsin Conservatory’s Jazz Institute and plays in the faculty jazz ensemble We Six, which can be heard on the recording Bird Say. He’s performed with jazz greats Jimmy Heath, Charles McPherson, Slide Hampton and Frank Morgan, among others. Davis has also authored Jazz Piano Method, published by Hal Leonard. The book includes online access to 180 recorded examples of exercises, introduced and performed by Davis.
What’s the genesis and motivation for this book?
I’ve worked with students of all different backgrounds and levels. There wasn’t a perfect book that fit my way of teaching. Why not write my own? I began recording for Hal Leonard (the world’s largest music publisher) accompaniment tracks for various books with bassist Jeff Hamann and drummer Dave Bayless. But I really wanted to write the jazz piano method. From pianist Barry Harris, I learned how interconnected teaching and playing are. I hope the book allows students a method to find their own way.
Jazz seems mysterious, created out of the ether. You show how to make the music happen. You point out that diatonic chords contain the same notes as other chords—which helps a student move through progressions musically and easily.
I try to give each note a purpose. Jazz is not easy to play. You can get very comfortable with certain chord progressions and I hope the book gives people fundamentals to attain a certain kind of freedom, so they can really take off.
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You recommend learning directly from recordings. You address the idea of tension and release in the basic II-V-I chord progression. Does this help a student make aesthetic choices for expressive, dramatic or sonic effect?
Yes. Tension and release is an important factor in so much music, or even in movies or theater. If you just give a student a scale to improvise with you can point out the tools to see how tension and release occurs, which is the music’s drama. Otherwise it’s like going to a movie where nothing really happens.
Why do you emphasize that the rhythmic and the blues feel are so important, even more than the correct note or chord?
Learning to play jazz is similar to learning a language. When a baby learns to speak, before words they get the rhythm of language. It sounds like talking but you don’t hear words. Then meaning starts to be filled in. Similarly in jazz, the more we learn, the more we can fill in, like language, the specific thoughts or ideas.
At the end, why do you characterize jazz piano as a never-ending journey?
In his 90s, pianist Hank Jones said, you never fully master it. I find that students with careers outside of music can escape the day-to-day grind of their own personal lives—escape inside music to a place where nothing else really matters. Charlie Parker didn’t want to go back to that other place. Maybe that’s why he was such a genius player. It’s the beauty you can find within music.
We Six will perform at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, March 18 with Grammy-winning trumpeter Brian Lynch and saxophonist-composer Benny Golson, at Marquette University’s Weasler Auditorium, 1506 W. Wisconsin Ave. For information, visit wcmusic.org.
