(suspenseful piano music) - Hi, I'm Eric Funk.

"11th and Grant" showcases the best music in Montana, traversing all styles and genres.

Tonight, in celebration of that musical diversity, contrasting genres converge through the music I've selected from "The American Songbook of Jazz Standards," Broadway shows, film music, and even a few pop tunes from various eras.

(mellow jazz music) You'll hear "This Nearly was Mine" from Rogers and Hammerstein's "South Pacific" as if it had been composed instead by Frederick Chopin.

(uplifting piano music) (melancholy piano music) In some cases, I've used a well-known classical piece as an intro that unfolds into a particular song.

(melancholy piano music) An exploration beyond melody, harmony, and rhythm, next on "11th and Grant."

(soft soothing piano music) - [Announcer] "11th and Grant" was made possible by the Greater Montana Foundation, the Gilhousen Family Foundation, Montana State University Office of the President, Judy Cowdrey in memory of Don Hyyppa, Quinn's Hot Springs Resort, Donna Spitzer-Ostrovsky in loving memory of Jack Ostrovsky, the godfather of "11th and Grant," Iris Model, Sanderson Stewart, Enduring Community Design, Music Villa and Gibson Guitar, Sal and Carol G. Lalani, the Utzinger Family, Bill and Jane Gum, Rob Maher, and Lynn Peterson-Maher, Mary Routhier, the Rocking R Bar, Stockman Bank, and by these generous donors.

(upbeat jazz music) (upbeat jazz music continues) (upbeat jazz music continues) (upbeat jazz music continues) ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ - My life as a musician has been really interesting because my family had one working parent, and my mom was working at home, but she was a homemaker and a mom.

But we didn't have a lot of money, and so my sister got the piano lessons.

And so I really wanted to play, but I didn't know what I wanted to play.

But I would listen to her come home and practice her lessons.

The way that she tells it, I would hide in the closet, and she would be playing the Chopin "Revolutionary Etude," and she's killing herself to try to learn this thing.

Then she'd get up and leave and I'd get up and play it.

I don't know if that's accurate, but the point is, is that I really wanted to be able to play.

And I taught myself to play.

And you know, I was fortunate to grow up in the time of a lot of great jazz musicians, and we had a pretty substantial record collection.

And so I listened to a lot of music and a lot of, you know, players like Peter Nero and Andre Previn, and Dave Brubeck, who I was fortunate enough to open for at one point.

But one of the things I learned about playing music is that it doesn't do anybody any good to be stylistically rigid.

You know, just to say, I never really could feel like, I just love music.

You know, whatever the range is, I'm just really curious.

And I think when it comes to different genres of music, I've been fortunate to play just about every style of music there is and have fun in it, because it's really, it's not the music as much as it's the musicians.

So if I get together with a group of people and they wanna talk about this, we talk about that.

And to be honest, you know, I've been fortunate in my life to be around some fairly complex personalities.

And as a consequence, I've assembled a pretty broad, meaningful vocabulary, which affords me to be eloquent when I need to, like teaching students.

I can say exactly what I mean.

There's no shadow of doubt.

And I wanted to induct them with that value to say as you increase your vocabulary, if you really wanna understand others and you wanna listen intently, you also have to be able to express yourself very, very clearly.

So the same thing is true when I get involved in music.

I don't need the same brand of sophistication that I would need, for example, in a pretty complicated jazz bebop music.

It's really, really fun to play, 'cause it moves really quickly, and it requires technical facility.

But the the truth is, is that these guys are all just rigorously telling the truth.

They're after it, you know.

There's just such a deep honesty.

I have that same thing happen when I'm playing in a country group that only has three chords.

They're in earnest.

I mean, they're bringing their A game.

And there's really no value in me playing 13, you know, 13th chords, you know, sharp 11, 13 chords.

It's like, that has no place in this dialogue.

It would be silly, number one, but it would stop the whole conversation.

It's like if I use some sesquipedalian term in a conversation over a beer with somebody like, "This guy's pretentious."

You know, why would I do that?

So you talk the talk that you're talking and you walk the walk that you're walking.

And it's really fun, you know.

If you get into bluegrass, you get into Old Hank senior country or new Nashville country, or you get into the blues, so many different kinds of blues.

If I'm playing funk fusion blues, I'm a whole different Eric than I am playing a three chord, New Orleans, in your face nasty blues, you know, we call swamp funk.

You know, just that, it's just really fun to drop into that pocket.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ So back in the day when I was young and listening to the likes of Andre Previn and Peter Nero and Dick Blake and Brubeck and some of these piano players who are really deep, rich musicians, I realized that, and then being a teacher, I realized that regardless of the genre in music of Western civilization, it's all melody, harmony, and rhythm.

They all have that.

It's how you package it that changes.

And so, one of the things that I would do in my classes was I would turn them on to classical music by playing "Fur Elise" as a rock tune.

♪ Ba-da dee-doo di-dun dee-dee dat ♪ ♪ Dee-dee-dee dee-dee-dee-dat ♪ ♪ Dee-dee-dee doo-doo-da ♪ ♪ Fiddle-iddle-iddle-iddle-iddle-d ah ♪ You know, just taking and say, it's not the melody, it's not the harmony, it's the style that I bring this to you in.

And so I would just take a song and run it through five, the same song, same tempo, the same key, and run it through five different genres, to show them when they say, "I like country," you're saying, "I like it to be dressed up this way."

That's really all you're saying.

And we can do that.

We can dress it up however we want to.

With our show, because we had this nice Steinway piano donated to us, I wanted to show off the richness of the instrument and pianos in generally, but also that particular piano.

And I found playing it before the gig, before the actual shoot, that it had a kind of a callow and demure personality.

It wasn't an in-your-face bombastic piano.

I used the "Khachaturian Toccata" as a way into "Night and Tunisia" to show off kind of what the piano could do.

That would sound completely different on a newer piano that had a better escapement and had a different color.

I stayed more on the, more on the personality of intimacy with the piano for the entire episode.

And I tried to use a classical piece often as a segue, setting up the harmony and the feeling tone of that, and then segueing into maybe a jazz standard or American Songbook or a Broadway show tune or a film score.

I wanted to merge these things instead of giving a lecture on its melody, harmony, and rhythm, and how I give it to you, how I give you the melody, the harmony and the rhythm is gonna tell you what genre I'm in.

I'm gonna just laminate them.

I'll start out with "Moonlight Sonata," that first movement, and then I'll just segue into "Night and Day," because the first notes of Beethoven's pieces.

♪ Dee da-dum ♪ But as soon as I play that A flat major seventh chord, classical people are gonna go, "What's he doing?"

And then, ♪ Da da dee dee ♪ And then keep that arpeggiated thing going that Beethoven had, so the accompaniment and the harmony remains ostensibly the same, but suddenly I've got some jazz seventh chords infused into this thing, but still keeping the spirit.

And so I kind of wanted to reveal the piano can do this.

I can be as symphonic or as intimate as I wanna be, but I can also traverse genres in a way that I'm using the emotional continuity as a way of captivating my listener.

I'm not really changing the feeling.

I'm just changing the vehicle that's carrying the feeling.

Big hats off and a huge from the heart thank you to Jessica Palmer and Andre Melief and all their offspring for donating this wonderful instrument to us.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ On this episode, I thought this could really be fun, you know, as a way of introducing everybody to the piano, which we now own.

We don't have to borrow one and move it over from the School of Music anymore.

We have our own piano.

But also it was a chance for me to get intimate with my audience, 'cause I'm generally acting as a bridge between my musicians and the audience.

And this time I just get to be it.

I can do it verbally in our interview, but I can also do it musically.

And there isn't any show off about it, which was also important to me.

I didn't wanna do a dig me show.

As I've taught my students, great musicians always take the listener into the music, not into the musician.

And if I get highly technical, and the only places where I kind of got near that was "Sugar," the "Night in Tunisia" thing, which is technically difficult to play.

And the "Khachaturian" is just like, good grief, you know, how fast can you go on a piano?

And the the blues thing that I did.

I thought those were a little bit more technical, a little bit more me up front.

But for the most part, my job was to be hypnotic and mesmerizing to the point where I could actually prove my point, that great musicians almost evaporate.

And when you're watching TV, it's a phenomenon.

If you're so pulled into the aural soundscape that you're not even watching the person anymore.

And because it's just me, there isn't any other visual thing to go to.

You know, there are only a certain number of angles of a guy that you can get.

And so you're really being lulled.

And I really, I almost thought of them as lullabies.

I mean, not literally, but I wanted to keep it real personal, more like I was whispering important things or saying them in a way that was highly poeticized.

I didn't do any improv.

And that's my big go-to, you know, as a jazz piano player, I'll use the tune itself as fodder, and then I'll develop all that material, like Beethoven in real time, take those rhythmic, melodic and harmonic gestures and put 'em through their paces.

But on this particular show, I thought, "I'm not gonna go development, I'm just gonna just bring tunes."

'Cause there are a lot of people who, for whom improvisation is a distraction.

They want you to get back to the tune.

And I thought, "I won't leave the tune."

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ (upbeat jazz music) - [Announcer] "11th and Grant" was made possible by the Greater Montana Foundation, the Gilhousen Family Foundation, Montana State University Office of the President, Judy Cowdrey, in memory of Don Hyyppa, Quinn's Hot Springs Resort, Donna Spitzer-Ostrovsky in loving memory of Jack Ostrovsky, the godfather of "11th and Grant," Iris Model, Sanderson Stewart, Enduring Community Design, Music Villa and Gibson Guitar, Sal and Carol G. Lalani, the Utzinger Family, Bill and Jane Gum, Rob Maher and Lynn Peterson-Maher, Mary Routhier, the Rocking R Bar, Stockman Bank, and by these generous donors.

(upbeat jazz music) (uplifting music)