Grammy award winning Brazilian jazz pianist, singer, composer Eliane Elias performed her brand of jazz at the Tata Theatre on Thursday 30th May 2024.

In an email interview with Verus Ferreira, Eliane Elias who is regarded as one of the top jazz pianist and vocalists in the jazz world, talks about her younger days, her foray into singing, how the piano has become an extension of herself, and her performing in Mumbai.

First let’s start with where you grew up, and what got you interested in music?

I was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil. My mother and maternal grandmother were both very musical. I started studying piano at age 7 and developed quickly. My mom played classical piano and loved jazz pianists. She acquired a large collection of jazz recordings and I fell in love with the music, especially the pianists. I was transcribing the solos of my favorite pianists by age ten and entered the best school of music in Sao Paulo, C.L.A.M., at age 13. I was deep into my studies and by the time I was fifteen, I was teaching at C.L.A.M.

What got you interested in picking up the piano and jazz vocal?

My mother took me to a private teacher to study the piano as part of my general education. But soon, it was clear that I had a special talent and facility for the instrument and my interest in music accelerated at a rapid pace. Regarding my voice, I grew up in a country where music was primarily vocal music, especially on the radio and television. The Brazilian songs were vocal songs and I learned the lyrics to every song I heard. Jazz for me was instrumental music. I sang vocalese and songs with lyrics even on my first recording in 1984 called Amanda. My focus in the first twenty years of my career was on instrumental music, my compositions and piano playing. I established myself first as a pianist. In my early recordings I used the sound of the voice as a different color in the music as though it was another instrument. The transition from wordless vocals to singing lyrics happened gradually starting in the early nineties and culminated in 1998 with the album “Eliane Elias Sings Jobim”. Since then, my recordings and live shows have really blended my pianism with my singing.

What teacher or teachers helped you progress to the level of playing you have today?

All the teachers I had from the beginning had an impact on my development. But the one who had the most was my first teacher at C.L.A.M., Amilton Godoy of the Zimbo Trio. He had a background in classical, jazz and modern harmony. The explorations of music I did in those years really prepared me well for a life in music. Certain things I am doing now developed through the sheer weight of professional experience and setting goals for myself. For instance, from the age of 17 until I moved to New York at the age of 21, I worked with guitarist, Toquinho and the great lyricist, poet and diplomat, Vinicius de Moraes. We toured all the major cites in South America for three years. That experience provided me with the opportunity to explore ways of approaching the samba on the piano that were not done by anyone before. Samba is primarily played by percussionists and guitarists. There was no school of samba playing for pianists. So, over the years, I have developed quite a unique vocabulary for playing the samba on piano. I sometimes quite literally sound like a percussion section with my two hands.

What made you choose the piano and jazz vocal?

The addition of vocals arose over the past 20 years or so because as I started singing more in my live shows, I noticed that I reached the audience in a different, quite meaningful way. Plus, singing vocals opened the door to include much more repertoire. So things just kind of happened as an evolution over time with the underlying motivation of truly wanting to give the most complete and enriching musical experience that I can.

How did your sound evolve over time? What did you do to find and develop your sound?

Sound creation is a manifestation of personal expression. I was always drawn to beauty in music and it showed in me early on. As a young pupil at age 7 my teacher would sometimes cry when I played. I remember telling my mom that I didn’t want to study piano anymore because the teacher cried at my lessons. My mom tried to explain to that I had a special talent and that the teacher was affected by my playing. That teacher later explained that she had never encountered such a sensibility in a student and even the little lessons I prepared as a beginner revealed a certain sensitivity and evoked a spirit that was startling in a child. Years later, after I moved to New York, I continued my classical piano studies at Julliard.  I developed a technique that took into consideration the piano as a string instrument as well as the percussive instrument that it is.

What practice routine or exercise have you developed to maintain and improve your current musical ability especially pertaining to rhythm?

I really just play at home for my own pleasure or when I’m composing or working on a new arrangement for my group. At this point, the piano is such a deeply connected extension of my mind, heart and body that I don’t feel any technical encumbrances interfering with whatever I want to express. All the work I put in during my youth studying classical music and the hours of transcribing music from recordings really prepared me to execute whatever musical ideas I have. For instance, I learned the Scriabin Piano Concerto for Left Hand because I wanted to be able to execute lines with total independence. And the transcriptions I did of jazz pianists like Red Garland, Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans and Herbie Hancock, etc., got me deep inside the rhythmic inflections and feel for swung eighth notes. Also, there is nothing like constantly performing in front of an audience to sharpen your concentration and hone one’s skills. Of course, I practiced singing while playing before I went before a live audience, but over the years of just doing it a lot, I have become more able to play quite syncopated rhythms while singing a completely different line. Sometimes when I hear myself back on a live recording, I can’t believe what I’m doing! (LOL). It’s like having a split brain or hearing two different people performing. (LOL)

Tell us about your latest work, like ‘Mirror Mirror’ and ‘Quietude’. How were they formed and what are you working on today? Will you have a new album this year for your fans like us?

‘Mirror Mirror’ is an album of piano duets. My partners in this project were Chick Corea and Chucho Valdes. I had known Chick since my earliest days as a professional pianist. Over the years, we stayed in touch and often spoke about recording some duets together. With Chucho, I became enamored of the idea of recording duets with him when I heard him performing with his father, Bebo. In 2019, the stars aligned and we made it happen. The results can be heard on this Grammy and Latin Grammy Award winning recording and you can also see the performances with Chick on YouTube. Quietude is my most recent release. In contrast to the all-instrumental piano recording, Quietude is an album focused on the voice. It’s a bossa nova album of some of my favorite Brazilian songs and featuring some of the best Brazilian guitarists of this genre. It’s a beautiful album and was also nominated for both Grammy and Latin Grammy awards.

How was your show at the NCPA?

On this concert in Mumbai I had my usual quartet of Marc Johnson on bass, Leandro Pellegrino on guitar and Rafael Barata on drums and we performed some music from both of these albums, as well as some music spanning my entire career. In June, I have a new album being released featuring my own music and lyrics and including some very special guests. The album is titled ‘Time and Again’. I am very excited with this new release. Each song touches a different emotional place from exuberance and elation to reflective contemplation and light- hearted humor. I think it’s some of my best work to date.

Many aspiring musicians are always looking for advice when navigating thru the music business. Is there any piece of advice you can offer to aspiring students or even your peers that you believe will help them succeed and stay positive in this business?

It is challenging to be in the business of music from just about any perspective whether you are in journalism, record production, concert promotion, or music performance. That said, if a person feels that they have a calling to be in the world of music, like anything else in life, pursue it with all your heart and mind. I have always believed in following your heart and being true to yourself. Only you can know if the effort you are making is worth it. Ultimately, you have to love what you are doing or you won’t fully invest yourself in it.

Аnd furthermore, can jazz be a business today or someday?

For jazz performers, there will always be an audience for creative music. In a broader sense, I see places in the world where there are like-minded people that have pooled their resources and created some spaces for jazz musicians and for the propagation of the art form. Places like Jazz at Lincoln Center and SFJazz in San Francisco come to mind. Some classical venues the world over are regularly including jazz concerts as part of their yearly subscription offerings. There are performance spaces and clubs and audiences all over the world for this music. There are music schools and universities all around the world that have dedicated jazz departments. There is an abundance of information out there for anyone curious to go deeper into it, from a performance perspective as well as an informed listening perspective. All this education is leading to a place where some form of jazz is being sought out and played in many, many communities around the world. It’s not for me to say who can or can’t make a living from it, if that’s what the question is implying. Like everything in life, there is no substitute for diligent work towards achieving one’s goals.

How can we get young people interested in jazz when most of the standard tunes are half a century old?

The popular songs that gave rise to the development of jazz in the nineteen forties and fifties and even continuing into the sixties had structures that were already good vehicles for melodic bebop-informed improvisation. Popular music in the past 30 years has devolved to a place where melody is reduced to a simple pentatonic scale, or melody is discarded altogether, where words are spoken instead of sung, in syncopation to a static beat. The beat or the groove of a piece has supplanted melody and harmony to become the most important element in popular music. Its as if graffiti art has become the highest marketable commodity in the arts. I don’t resent this development, I just don’t embrace it. For me, music has to contain three elements; melody, harmony and rhythm. Where there are lyrics, I feel the music has to serve the words and somehow help to express their full meaning. One chord jam-band improvisations have their place, but I feel jazz artists have a responsibility to evoke many emotions. Myself and many other jazz artists have found some fertile ground for interpreting everything from the Beatles , Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley, Burt Bacharach, Joni Mitchell, Radio Head, Prince and David Bowie. Some jazz artists have included a rap performer in some of their shows in an attempt to woo audiences and stay current and relevant. There was an important development in the seventies when jazz rhythm sections started using a straight-eighth feel as the underlying rhythmic feel of the music. This was a response to the already decade old rise of rock music on the am radio stations. Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew and the subsequent ‘fusion’ bands of Weather Report, Mahavishnu, The Brecker Brothers, Return to Forever, and later Pat Metheny, etc., ushered in an artistic alternative to the ‘traditional’ approach to jazz rhythm sections. Original composition was still key, and the organizing of solo sections became more developed, often moving away from simply soloing over the song form of the tune. In the last twenty years we have witnessed the success of small groups like EST, and the Bad Plus who don’t really use any swung eighth notes at all to propel the pulse and who rely heavily on group improvisation over simpler forms that audiences can more easily grab and hold on to. Integrating new popular music into an artist’s repertoire is important but I don’t think we should ever lose sight of our highest musical values. Audiences can tell when an artist is being disingenuous so one should really be careful when integrating new music into their artistic vision to not merely cover a tune in some careless or miscellaneous way.

John Coltrane said that music was his spirit. How do you understand the spirit and the meaning of life?

Creating music was John Coltrane’s conduit for artistic expression. When a creative musician is in the throes of improvising and spontaneously creating the music whether collectively in an ensemble or alone with their instrument, it is already a glorious state to be in. There can be those moments in the act of improvising, when one is truly immersed in the moment, when the music seems to be coming through you unimpeded by thought or technique, when one’s identity actually falls away. It’s a transcendental experience that many artists aspire to and some jazz musicians that I know are in touch with. I think that being engaged in creating what truly matters most to you is in itself, a spiritual connection to life.

What are your expectations of the future? What brings you fear or anxiety?

I expect to keep doing what I’ve been doing; making recordings, and touring with one ensemble or another. At this point, I don’t worry so much about where my next gig is coming from. I feel blessed to have been given a certain talent for music and I have worked very hard and continue to dedicate myself to my art and craft. I truly love bringing music to audiences and so I continue touring in spite of what’s going on in the world. In every epoch throughout history there has been danger in some form or another, either from war or pestilence or disease, etc. We have to carry on and strive to make this a better world.

What’s the next musical frontier for you?

I’m not thinking of pushing the envelope of my musical territory so much. I have expanded my repertoire in recent years delving into more of the Brazilian rhythms and may continue expounding on those themes. The music of Brazil is so rich, especially the composers from the mid and latter half of the twentieth century. And the rhythms and grooves from Brazil are quite varied and there is a lot more there to get inspired by.

Are there any similarities between jazz and world music, including folk music?

For the past thirty years or so we have seen jazz, the language of chord scale melodic improvisation as informed by the bebop tradition, winding its way over and through the folk traditions of various cultures around the world. Dizzy Gillespie was an early champion of Latin rhythms that have become part of the jazz standard vernacular. Since the nineteen sixties with the success of the Bossa Nova, Brazilian songs and rhythms have also been absorbed into the jazz lexicon. For fifty-plus years, Manfred Eicher of ECM records has been very influential in helping to give voice and expression to the universality of jazz through combining musicians from different ethnic and cultural regions of the world. Music really is a universal language and when players get together to play, the basic fundamentals of music, sound production, and the compositional elements of music such as tension and release are in play no matter what the ethnic or cultural starting place. The main thing as players is to try to relate to one another, to find common ground. The language of jazz allows for conversation in music because it gives a player the means to create melodic phrases over just about anything from a simple minor chord to a complex dominant chord all the while dealing with time in it’s many aspects of pulse, rhythm, syncopation, shape, and feel. Jazz works with all music, because it’s a way of making music.

Who do you find yourself listening to these days?

For a while I was listening a lot to Frank Sinatra. I did an album in tribute to Chet Baker a few years ago and chose a lot of the standards that were part of his book. As it happens, those were many of the same tunes that Sinatra had popularized. My listening attention these days is usually on research for my own projects which can take me into many directions. My own work the past 8 years has found me collaborating with Mark Kibble from the vocal group, Take 6. I love their music and enjoy listening to them. Mark’s background vocals are featured on six of the eight pieces on my new album ‘Time and Again’ which is scheduled to be released on 28th June.

What’s your current setup?

I’m a Steinway artist. I own four Steinway pianos; a model B, a model Z, an upright and a model L. I also have a Brazilian piano by Fritz Dobbert that I keep in an apartment in Sao Paulo for when I visit there. For live vocals I use either a Sennheiser 935 or a Telefunken M81.

Interviewed by Verus Ferreira