David Gleason – Interview – Thanks for Asking!

David Gleason – Interview – Thanks for Asking! – by Liam Sweeny.

We connected with David Gleason and talked music and more music. This is what he had to say.

RRX: Who are you? Not, like, philosophically, but you know, who are the members of the band, who plays what? Describe yourself in one sentence (it can be a long sentence.)

DG: My name Dave Gleason. I’m a jazz pianist and composer. I play with several jazz groups in the Capital Region including Keith Pray’s Big Soul Ensemble, Bopitude, It’s a Jazzy Christmas and the Arts D’Echo Trio. That trio consists of Mike Lawrence on bass and Pete Sweeney on drums. We play our own arrangements classic jazz piano trio music as well as a variety of originals.

RRX: Do you have anything out right now that people can enjoy, and if so, what’s the best way for them to get it?

DG: I’ve been very lucky to have been invited to record on about 20 albums. The most recent releases and the Piranha Brothers album, Keith Pray’s latest entitled “Home” and Michael Benedict’s album “1,2,3 Go!” The Art D’Echo Trio has also recently completed the recording phase of our upcoming album. Much of the things I’ve recorded are available on streaming platforms. My personal catalogue is available on Bandcamp as well including my solo piano EP entitled “Old Calabria.” In addition to the trio record, I’ll be on releases from Kelly Bird, Tim Olsen, Keith Pray and my duo with Mike Lawrence in the coming year.

RRX: How can people keep up with you? What’s coming up, soon or eventually?

DG: My website www.davidgleasonmusic.com has links to all of the various projects I’m a part of. People can also find me on Instagram, Facebook, SoundCloud, Bandcamp etc. As far as upcoming shows go for the next few weeks I’ll be the pit conductor for a musical at Schenectady High School. I’ll also be performing with the Big Soul Ensemble at the Cock and Bull on 2/27, I’ll be at Panzas on 4/3 and also play with master Jazz trumpeter Ray Vega in Schenectady on 3/15.

RRX: Our style comes from the extension of our influences. It’s like an evolution. We’re influenced, and it inspires us to influence. What can you say about your influences, and what you feel you’ve done with their influence as a musician or band? Have you extended their work?

DG: I love all kinds of music, therefore I have some pretty diverse influences. I‘m inspired by Miles Davis’s improvisational style and his overall mix of swagger and sensitivity. I love Oscar Peterson’s tremendous technique. I also love salsa and other Latin styles. I’ve listened to a lot of Los Van Van, a Cuban super group. I’m inspired by the way they develop their grooves and compositions. I also love the way the Tango composer Astor Piazzolla orchestrated his music and developed his themes. I’m also inspired buy by great singers and I love the way Tony Bennett sang the American songbook. I have had some pretty major classical music phases, and I have a great love for J.S. Bach.

I haven’t set out to extend of the work of these influences but rather to synthesize my favorite aspects of their work into my own. My jazz improvisation borrows ideas from dozens of jazz pianists but I try to put the concepts together in my own way and use their improvisational ideas as models to create my own. Compositionally, I’m focused on melodies but I want my chord progressions to have unity and color and for the overall structures to have balance. I learned that from Piazzolla and Bach even though they wrote in other styles.

RRX: Part of learning to be a musician is to fall in love with a song, an album, and hammer away at your instrument until you can play that whole thing. What was that song for you? Was there a hardest part?

DG: This is definitely the way jazz musicians learn. We not only learn the melody and chords but also learn the solos note for note to get inside the improvisation so we have a basis to create our own solos in the moment. Back in college, I transcribed the pianist Keith Jarrett’s solo on Bye Bye Blackbird note for note, by ear, and without a computer. As I figured out how to play it I also wrote down the music by hand. It was only later that I realized other musicians slowed down the recordings to transcribe them! I was working with a CD and doing it in real time. It was a painstaking process, but in the end it was well worth it. I still play that song and use the ideas from Jarrett’s solo all the time.

RRX: Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Or so they say. Whether you’re off the wagon, on it, or never been, there’s something you got a thirst for. What are some of your basically harmless vices?

DG: Vices huh? I like to travel, I guess that’s a kind of vice. I also love going out for really good sushi. I love to be around people and have good conversations. I don’t know if that’s a vice but it does lead to some pretty late nights sometimes. I’m not a gear head so I don’t collect musical equipment but I do have a pretty good vinyl collection. It’s not huge, probably about 300 albums, but they are all really great selections that I found vintage over the years.

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