Haley's picking out her band!

[My Alter Ego]

From an Internet Q & A site:

What are the main differences between a jazz Pianist and a classical Pianist, If there are any?

Both involve hard work and technique, so don't let anybody tell you better.

The difference is in the STYLE. Although both require the skill to play the piano, classical needs you to be more structured and follow the notes as is. Everything that's on the score must be followed perfectly and there's not much room to do with it what you want, unless you are composing your own material.

With jazz, you are encouraged more to improvise. Classical music is sweeping yet very rigid, while jazz is intense yet very rhythmic - you have to find a stride. You can also learn to play it by ear, meaning, you trust your instincts and what you hear, and not the music sheet in front of you per se. Jazz piano is not technically demanding and is more liberal, but if you're not very experimental/spontaneous then it might present some difficulty.

I was originally trained as a classical pianist and was headed for a career as a concert pianist until I had the opportunity to spend time with a REAL, well known concert pianist and came to the conclusion that classical piano was not for me.

Classical piano is VERY STRUCTURED it's all about TECHNIQUE and precision.. JAZZ piano is very UN-structured and it's free flowing, so it fit my personality much better. I can and do still play the occasional classical piece during a gig, though... but that is NOT what people come to see and hear me play.

Catch up with me at JazzFest in New Orleans at the end of April and I'll be happy to talk to you.

Jazz and classical music have different traditions and points of focus. In classical music the distinction between composer (or creator of music) and performer is highly divided - only in specific instances is the performer allowed to improvise (discounting 20th/21st century classical music). In jazz, the roles are much more closely integrated, and the main focus of this art is improvisation and embellishment upon standard tunes (this again discounts the most modern developments). Accordingly, classical music has a much stronger focus on notated music, while jazz is more focused on using chords to describe a work. Playing the music of pop artists falls somewhere in between - most performers in this style can play based on chords, but the sense of improvisation is usually not as rigorous or important - in fact, it's often important the melody remain largely the same. In addition, jazz is very focused on extended tonal relationships, meaning that the piece can change keys in a single measure. This rarely happens in pop music, which tends to focus on one or two related keys.

None is necessarily easier, but if you don't know a ton about theory, jazz might seem pretty daunting. Classical performance focuses less on this aspect, but technique is often very important.

Jazz is a collective, public and free art. You can train yourself alone, in private, up to a certain point, but a jazz pianist is someone who plays piano with other musicians (sometimes they are only there through their musical legacy): the improvisation component is the important point, not the themes or they origin.

In fact jazz artists use any theme from any source and transform them, reinterpret them, mock them, rock them or magnify them. You can do jazz with a little excerpt of Beethoven or Chopin, the Beatles or the latest broadway musical, as well as your own musical ideas, pre-cooked or not.

There is a lot of material on the net, fabulous records, more and more jazz transcriptions and classical scores. But the best way to learn, jazz or classical, is to find people more experienced than you are (teacher or not) and interact with them. It is perhaps easier to find official teachers for classical piano technique or around classical repertoire. More and more colleges and conservatories have jazz courses.

Miguel, once again, "you've got it" -- in fact, I'd say you've absolutely nailed it.

For days I'd been waiting to hear Neara "cut loose." For the first performance, I assumed that it had been hastily put together and that since Neara was the only accompaniment, she couldn't do it all, so she concentrated on the main objective. Once John Notto joined, I looked at it as a matter of the two gelling.

Maybe once the drummer and the bass joined and could provide the chord lines and rhythym, Neara couldn't do the improvisation that everyone expected from her.

And here's the sad thing: it's probably extremely close within grasp for her, and she may not know it (and neither may Courtney).