BACK HOME with KEVIN COLE • An Evening of Musical 'Firsts'

Fans of home-grown musical creativity should mark the day March 1^st on their calendar and plan to attend this first-time sonic partnership between world-renowned classical pianist & composer Kevin Cole and The Saginaw Bay Symphony Orchestra, as it promises to deliver a rare opportunity to experience a number of ‘firsts’ on many levels - musically, collaboratively, and emotionally.

Over the years Kevin Cole has evolved into what one can easily consider a rock star in the world of classical & popular music. Similar to other home grown rock stars like Greta Van Fleet who rose to national fame, Kevin is a Bay City native who also rose to fame at an early age as a child protégé’ with the release of his debut album, The Unknown Gershwin back in 1985.

He was hailed as “the best Gershwin pianist in America today” by critics while he also captivated audiences worldwide with his jazz-classical artistry. Throughout his career he has performed at Royal Albert Hall and appeared with the San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra, and numerous others.

Kevin was also fortunate to work closely with the late great theatrical composer & songwriter Marvin Hamlisch during the last six years of his life, and as a Steinway Artist and graduate of Interlochen Arts Academy, his performances celebrate the timeless brilliance of George Gershwin’s music while adding his own signature artistry.

For the upcoming Back Home with Kevin Cole performance at SVSU’s Malcolm Field Theatre, Kevin will join the SBSO for an unforgettable full-length performance featuring masterful interpretations of Gershwin classics, while also offering the World Premier of his latest composition,  Cole Porter Medley.  

And if one ‘first’ isn’t enough, Cole will also perform another original piece he wrote called Taking No Chances On You. Consisting of music he was granted permission to write for lyrics to an unrecorded  Ira Gershwin song, this piece is the first time the Gershwin family has approved a new piece with Ira’s lyrics since his death.

In advance of this landmark performance, The REVIEW sat down with both Maestro Fouad Fakhouri and Kevin Cole to dig a little deeper into genesis of this long anticipated collaboration.

REVIEW: So what has it been like working together and how did this musical union come about?

Fouad Fakhouri: I’ve wanted to work with Kevin for some time now and had planned something pre-covid that didn’t work out, so we’ve been talking a long time and everything finally lined up.  With this new series of performances at SVSU this year, I thought it would be wonderful to have Kevin perform in an intimate setting - almost like watching the performance in a club rather than a far-away stage.

The main reason I wanted to work with Kevin is because of a piece written by a French composer named Claude Bolling called Suite for Chamber Orchestra & Jazz that consists of a piano trio,  and it’s one of my favorite pieces. The first time I heard it was on the radio when I was overseas around the age of 15 or 16 and fell in love with it. We added a few other Gershwin-related pieces because that is Kevin’s expertise and came up with this program; but the focus is on the Bolling. This isn’t a piece Kevin’s performed before, but stylistically it weaves in well with his talents.

Bolling was a French pianist who wrote compositions that mixed classical orchestral music with a jazz trio consisting of piano, bass, and drums, who constantly play jazz while the orchestra is playing against them. When you listen to it the orchestra sounds like its playing Bach or Haydn against this hot jazz trio, so its’ a terrific piece and about 50 minutes long.

Kevin Cole: Believe it or not the last time I played with the SBSO was when Patrick Flynn was the musical director, so this collaboration is definitely a long time coming. In putting the program together and because of the intimate setting, I’ll be performing four Gershwin variations rather than his longer pieces, because Fouad wanted the major showcase piece to focus on the Bolling suite in the second half of the show.

Regarding the Cole Porter Medley that I composed, there are two premiers of mine I’ve had direct involvement with as far as arranging and composing. I’ve also one medley featuring songs Gershwin wrote with Jerome Kern, and another with Irving Berlin, so thought it was time to put a Cole Porter medley together.

So much of what I do starts out with improvisation on these tunes because I know them all, so usually I’ll start noodling around  with the tempo or figure out if I should weave in a ballad to find the transition from one song to another and have it make sense. Other times I do it chronologically in the order the composer wrote the songs.  It’s like finding connective tissues for the moods you want to set and the keys you want to set the transitions to, so the medleys usually last anywhere from 7 to 11 minutes and are a way for the pianist to show off a little bit. 

It’s interesting because centuries ago Franz Liszt would do the same thing by going from town to town to play these little concerts he would create by doing medleys from operas, because the towns he was playing in didn’t have access to these works, so he acted like a human radio in order to spread these major works around these smaller villages.

REVIEW: Can you tell me your experience with Claude Bolling?  He sounds very similar to Gershwin in the sense that rather than being an American in Paris he was a Parisian experimenting with classical and American jazz just like Gershwin was doing.

Kevin Cole: I’ve done five of Bolling’s major works and he burst on the scene in the USA with his Suite for Flute & Jazz Piano Trio, which won him some awards and put him on the map as someone who could write in this hybrid style. He also did a guitar concerto, The Picnic Suite, and one called The Toot Suite for Trumpet & Jazz Piano Trio, but I’ve never performed this Chamber orchestra one before. 

Tracking down the music is hard to find and its 46-minutes long, which takes up the second half of the program. I’m working with Tom Knific on bass and Fred Knapp on drums. Tom is a retired professor of jazz and classical bass at Western Michigan University and President of the International Bass Society and Fred played drums on my Gershwin CD.

There are six movements to this piece that begins with the orchestra sounding quite ‘Classical’, then the piano comes in and starts swinging it up while the orchestra answers back and forth in different styles, and then all of a sudden you get this explosion with the trio and orchestra together.

Bolling wrote some very beautiful melodies and was influenced by Ravel as much as Gershwin. I would venture to say this is the first time this particular piece of Bolling’s has been played in its entirety in the United States, or at least in Michigan.

This will also be the Michigan premiere of a new Gershwin overture that I had David Snyder, my orchestrator, put together from these tunes that Gershwin performed from his opening night in the 1920s, which sets a fun mood.

The arrangements are taken from the University of Michigan Special critical editions. Believe it or not, after Gershwin passed away every orchestrator in the world wanted their name on his work, so the U of M went back to trace the real orchestrations as he originally wrote them.

Rhapsody in Blue, for example, is 100 years old now only because of all these revised editions over the years, few people have actually heard these songs the way Gershwin originally wrote and performed them. The UofM put together an original jazz band version of Rhapsody in Blue that you can catch on youtube if people want to see it.

REVIEW: What do you feel it is about the music of George Gershwin that makes it so  enduring?    I remember hearing ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ when I was about 10-years old and saw the Hollywood bio-pic  that featured Oscar Levant on piano and it was like the first time I was hit that powerfully at an emotional level by classical music..

Fouad Fakhouri: My own impression of Gershwin is that he is a terrific composer and purely American. He picked up on the vibe of that early Jazz era and died very young at the age of 38. His contribution was in his ability to take a purely American idiom like jazz music at that time and combine it so well with classical music that he was able to create this seamless new style of symphonic music in the process, which is why he resonates so strongly with lots of people, just as John Williams did many years later writer movie music.

Kevin Cole: What I’ve noticed over the years that is interesting about George Gershwin is that when a person comes to a concert in many ways Classical music is like Jazz in the sense its an umbrella word for so many different musical styles. No matter what a person’s musical taste or preference, everyone can agree on liking Gershwin whether they’re a first time or a lifetime listener.

That film you mention about Gershwin also hit me the same way at the same age, and there is a commonality with his music that still reaches all age groups and touches something very personal and emotional inside of a person.

I think the way he created his works coupled with his influences made all the difference in the type of composer he became. First of all, Gershwin didn’t grow up as a  protégé’. Most famous composers are a whiz at violin or piano by the time they’re 8-years old and their talent is apparent, but as a child George thought music was sissy stuff and had no interest in it. 

Then one rainy day when he was playing hooky from school he heard a friend playing a piece of classical music by Dvořák. He stook outside the window of the school in the rain and hearing that piece turned the lock inside of Gershwin.  That piece had something inside it called a blue note, which is a flatted 5^th note, and something about that sound shook him up inside and from there he began his journey to learn more about music.

In terms of his infuencces, Gershwin was becoming a songwriter the same time New York City was becoming New York City. In his neighborhood in Brooklyn he was exposed to music from all different cultural groups and he also heard the transition from horses and wagon wheels to jackhammers and automobiles.

It was the dawn of the machine age in that period from 1917-1919 and with the vibrancy of all these cultures and sounds coming together, somehow he became this funnel and was able to capture that energy and vitality of us becoming a nation by unifying this kaleidoscope together, which is why Rhapsody in Blue is still an exciting piece no matter how many times you hear it.

On a humorous side-note, when I was working with Marvin Hamisch during the last years of his life he made a funny joke about Gershwin’ An American in Paris. He turned to me and said: “George Gershwin goes to Paris and comes back with that masterpiece and I go to Paris and come back with 10 extra pounds.”

Back Home with Kevin Cole and the Saginaw Bay Symphony Orchestra happens on Saturday, March 1^st, at 7:30 PM at Saginaw Valley State University. A limited number of tickets are available for this one-night-only event. Secure your seats today by visiting this link.  

Kevin will also be performing George Gershwin’s incomparable signature work ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ in its entirely along with Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F with the Midland Symphony Orchestra on April 5^th at 6:30 PM at Midland Center for the Arts. You can purchase tickets for this by clicking this link. https://cart.midlandcenter.org/31526