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I don't think anyone is going to say Tatum's Tea for Two improvisation is on a level of Beethoven's Symphony No.9 but I don't think that's the point. I think it goes without saying that no jazz musician is going to reinvent the wheel every time he improvises on a song and that every jazz musician has certain chord voicings or runs that he favors. How could it be otherwise? OTOH I think the greatest jazz pianists certainly include enough new ideas to make hearing their music endlessly fascinating.

I think the criticism in the quoted posts is not what the majority of listeners think when hearing Tatum or other great jazz pianists play. Tatum regularly gets voted as one of a handful of greatest jazz pianists of all time so if you don't like him or find him boring perhaps you just don't like jazz?

If Horowitz was apparently such a big fan of Tatum, perhaps he deserves a further listen? When I first heard Tatum, I found his downward arpeggiated figures too frequent but that was a long time ago. Now I find virtually every new Tatum performance I hear truly amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apkgYw7QMhU

Improvisation is just composition in real time and many many of the great classical composers improvised and used those ideas as the basis of their compositions.

beeboss - thanks for the citation on Art Tatum - I was not comparing Andre Previn to Art Tatum, just adding Previn as a classical musician who plays pretty good jazz.

Do think it's possible that many of Chopin's pieces are transcriptions of his improvisations?

Apparently according to Chopin's friend George Sand his compositions were “but a pale shadow of his improvisations”, but I guess we will never know for sure. It is certainly true that improvisation was once at the centre of being a musician and that has now been tragically lost for most. Anyway ….
you can read more about the relationship of classical composers and improvisation here if you like …

http://ericbarnhill.wordpress.com/facts-about-improvisation/

Improvisation was more important for pianists in the 18th and 19th centuries compared to the present, but to say that it was the center(i.e. most important part) of being a musician or composer is false I think.

No one knows how well Chopin improvised although most would assume at an incredibly high level and it makes sense that some of Chopin's works were based on his improvisations. The author of the article quotes George Sand but her statement makes little sense. Firstly, what was her musical knowledge? If Chopin's compositions really "paled next to his improvisations", why didn't Chopin just write down his improvisations and use those as his finished compositions. Chopin clearly didn't feel the way Sand did, and it would probably be better to say that Chopin was a terrific improviser and leave it at that.

IMO the article you mentioned tries too hard too fit too many of the great composers into the great improvisers category. For example, I don't think anyone knows how good the improvisations of Brahms or Schubert were. If Schubert's improvisations were similar to his huge written output of tiny German dances and waltzes, they were nowhere near the level of his great works because those compositions are very minor.

Maybe he did

I forgot who said it, but apparently Debussy was also fantastic as an improvisor. And Sibelius, who isn't often thought of as piano-oriented, would spend hours improvising at the piano, and IIRC, would improvise wonderfully on pianos in bars when he was out drinking. I've heard that Stravinsky, too, seems to have used some form of improvisation at the keyboard to inspire his composition, but I've never heard that he did it in public. Vincent Persichetti, on the other hand, did improvise in public, and I once attended a lecture/concert of his where he asked for the audience to suggest three notes, which he arranged into a motif, and then he proceeded to improvise a full-blown sonata-allegro movement on that motif. It was mind-boggling.

Another famous public improvisor, from much further back, was Hummel, who said he preferred public improvisation to playing notated music. And, from the reports of the day, he was quite astonishing at it.

It's easy these days, having access to far more notated music than is even possible to read through in a lifetime, to forget that many famous composers have also been quite involved with improvisation, public or not. It's not their formal "product", but I think it is interesting that it has been so present in classical music all along.

The bottom line is that improvisations can never be as good as properly composed music, carefully structured and honed and worked over. Improvisations tend to be padded out with lots of extraneous stuff: I don't want to have another dig at jazz again (because I do like some of it - as long as there's no superfluous percussion and/or bass involved), but listen to any jazz improvisation and you'll hear not just lots of padding in the form of twiddles and runs etc, with scant melodic or harmonic or even rhythmic appeal, but also lots of meandering back and forth around various harmonies.

When classical pianists improvise cadenzas, that's also exactly what they do too, albeit in a different style.

Would any classical music lover want to sit through a whole concert of classical improvisations, no matter how good the pianist is at it? (And there are many who are brilliant at it). Maybe as a one-off, or as encores, maybe even part of a concert (like Gabriela Montero does), but improvisations on the whole don't bear repeated listening.

"...but improvisations on the whole don't bear repeated listening"

And any good jazz pianist won't dare repeat an improvisation or bother to write it down. That is not Jazz, aka "Americas Classical Music"

Here's a good read:

Classical performances are almost entirely premeditated, resuscitating scores from the distant or near past; jazz insists on surprises and lives in an eternal present tense.

In classical music since the Baroque era, the composer has been exalted above all. Performers are expected to be distinctive, but only because they have different ideas on how best to realize the grand formal architecture and fine details of a composer's work. They are, with more or less humility, interpreters. And despite the efforts of living composers, most of what classical musicians interpret is from the repertory, not new work.

In jazz, the performer trumps the composer. Jazz musicians do treat some material with reverence, but they can also bring to it irony, bemusement, savage wit, irreverence or elaborate one-upmanship. Compositions are still important; whether it's Ellington or Monk or Wayne Shorter or Tin Pan Alley standards, jazz musicians prize the combination of musicianly intricacy and indelible melody. But for jazz musicians, the underlying structure is less important than what happens to it on the bandstand. To a form-minded classical listener, the typical jazz structure of theme-solos-theme may be banal. But just as Bach and Beethoven built monumental sets of variations on modest material, a great jazz improviser can turn a trivial pop ditty or a rudimentary blues into an unforgettable performance.

While classical music works toward a finished whole, jazz is about process and interaction: about the thought and reflexes involved when the saxophonist suddenly switches into double time and the drummer answers with an approving flurry of cymbal taps. Classical chamber groups, like jazz quintets, are cooperatives, but they know what notes they'll play before they step on a stage. A jazz group doesn't.

oh no, not this argument again... More structure does not=better music. Go Listen to some Indian classical music.

IMO most classical people who criticize jazz like this don't really pay much attention to rhythmic aspect of jazz. How many of those great classical improvisers you guys mentioned above can improvise in odd meter and use complex polyrhythm on top of it? Can they keep time in 4/4 while the rhythm section plays in 5 or better yet a false 5/4(taking 5 16th notes and making that the new beat, and playing that over 4/4)? All those things I mentioned above really aren't that unusual in modern jazz nowdays.

I am pretty sure most classical people won't get what's happening rhythmically on something like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ5eduwP-4U

and no they aren't just playing nonsense, there is a definite relationship between the groove and melody, and the drummer is improvising with two different rhythms in mind.

Also when you say something like Classical musician X can play circles around Tatum, keep in mind that Tatum manages to get strong sense of swing feel across even in his most furious runs. With all due respect, I am not really impressed with Mei Ting or most of classical pianists attempting jazz because they are seriously lacking in groove/time/feel department. To say these people are better than Tatum is an indication of ignorance and lack of appreciation for different aspects of music outside the classical aesthetic. If you really want to understand jazz aesthetic, don't just listen to Tatum, listen to Monk and understand what makes him so brilliant.. it certainly wasn't his chops.

I have tremendous respect for classical musicians, but it really bugs me when they criticize what jazzers do without really understanding what it takes. Uri Caine's 1997 jazz tribute to Gustav Mahler received an award from the German Mahler Society, while outraging some jury members. That was 20 years ago. It's 2013 now, we should be over this nonsense by now

etcetra,
I don't know why you feel the need to defend jazz by attacking classical: classical musicians have to put up with criticism all the time from jazz pianists for their 'inability' (as they see it) to improvise, when in fact most classical pianists who have reached a certain standard can improvise quite well - only we don't tend to use 'added-note' chords all the time, and we use a wider range of pianistic figuration derived from Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff et al. Not to put too fine a point on it, classical pianists have a wider range of pianistic 'devices' at our disposal to use in our improvisations, from centuries of keyboard music, whereas many jazz musicians are one-trick ponies.

Earlier, I mentioned Denis Matsuev, a classical pianist steeped in the Russian classical tradition who won the Tchaikovsky Competition some years ago. He improvises in jazz style for fun, but would never dream of calling himself a jazz pianist. His improvisations typically throw in Lisztian and Rachmaninoff-type octaves and chords and runs as well as all the typical blues notes, added note chords etc of jazz - to my mind, a lot more interesting than the improvisations of most pure jazz pianists. And I don't just mean Art Tatum - in my CD collection, I also have several of Oscar Petersen, Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, George Shearing, David Gazarov, Giorgio Gaslini, Irene Schweizer, Brad Mehldau, Herbie Hancock, and Leszek Mozdzer (and a few others I can't recall at present).

As for polyrhythm, cross-rhythm etc (not to mention bitonality, polytonality, pantonality, atonality....), that's been around a long time in classical music. There're also pieces written by Charles Ives and others that have two or more completely different music (including different keys and different rhythms) played simultaneously and going in and out of phase with each other. Stockhausen's Gruppen requires three different orchestras, each with its own conductor, each playing different music, simultaneously.

Classical pianists - even in something as straightforward musically as Chopin's Nocturne Op.9/1 - have to learn to play 22 notes in one hand over 12 notes in the other. You learn to 'free' your hands to accomplish this and much else, while keeping your basic rhythm.

BTW, I also have quite a few 'world music' CDs from the East (including Indian ragas and Indonesian gamelan music), South America, joiks from Lapland etc, which I find quite enjoyable to listen to. Especially the ones using microtones. But even microtones have been used by Nicola Vicentino (16th century composer) who invented a keyboard with 36 notes to the octave to play his keyboard music. (His microtonal vocal music has to be heard to be experienced.......).

There really isn't much that's new under the sun .

I don't know why you feel the need to defend jazz by attacking classical: classical musicians have to put up with criticism all the time from jazz pianists for their 'inability' (as they see it) to improvise, when in fact most classical pianists who have reached a certain standard can improvise quite well - only we don't tend to use 'added-note' chords all the time, and we use a wider range of pianistic figuration derived from Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff et al. Not to put too fine a point on it, classical pianists have a wider range of pianistic 'devices' at our disposal to use in our improvisations, from centuries of keyboard music, whereas many jazz musicians are one-trick ponies.

I'm sure there are many fine classical pianists who can improvise very well. I've never personally run into them though.

The classical musicians I've run into are the ones who are typically slaves to the printed page. Most of the jazz musicians I encounter typically don't read extremely well (though I do) but use their ears to a much greater degree.

Being able to improvise is more than a one trick pony skill. We have to be able to improvise in many diverse styles. When I was a church organist I had to improvise in a much different set of styles. In a more jazz like setting, if the bass player shows up late, I have to cover his part while playing what I'm expected to cover. If the singer comes in late I have to make sure things keep on rolling along and the audience thinks what just occurred is what was planned .

Classical musicians, especially those who play in large groups, tend to almost always use music while for many jazz groups the music might more often be an A4 with a few ideas sketched out.

Typically musicians who spend many months perfecting one or several pieces of music don't prioritize being able to improvise sections of those works in other keys or in other styles. We do our best with the amount of time we have to practice and we all have different priorities.

It's all these differences that make it interesting.

Just because you own a few jazz cds doesn't mean you understand jazz. From your words it is pretty obvious that you don't get it. That is quite ok though, it doesn't matter at all. Taste is subjective.

A comparison is illuminating.

Denis Matsuev playing autumn leaves ….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR255oxNfU4
piano solo is at about 3 minutes.

art Tatum
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EEdCICnyL0

In terms of jazz piano playing Matsuev is like a beginner compared to Tatum. IMO he's really quite boring. OTOH Tatum wouldn't sound so good playing classical.

I think there have been less than a handful of pianists who excelled at both jazz and classical and Matsuev is not among them.

Art Tatum does exactly the same stuff in just about everything else he plays - the same kind of RH twiddles, the same kind of chord sequences etc.

Look up Matsuev playing solo improvisations, and you'll see what I mean about pure jazz pianists like Tatum being one-trick ponies in comparison with classical pianists who dabble in improvisations - whether in jazz style or not.

But that's OK, it doesn't matter at all; tastes are subjective, as you say.

The problem with classical musicians who attempt to play jazz come across as being to ridged and stiff..a result of too many years in classical studies...
I'm just not sure where the jumping off point is, many older players of the past jazz ledgends
said they had maybe 3yrs of lessons as a kid in classical then went off on there own to play pop/jazz..perhaps this broke them out of the ridged mannerisms and pratices of classical..

If you think Art Tatum is doing the same thing you clearly don't get jazz. For explanation, see below



It's not really result of too much classical training, but it has more to do with their lack of understanding of rhythmic aspect of jazz and time feel. Feel is something that can take years and years, if not your entire lifetime to master, and jazz musicians are trained to work with different feels. Even swing feel can be vastly different depending on the time period. It seems like a lot of classical musicians overlook this aspect of playing when they compare classical improv to jazz improv



I mentioned this somewhat in the response above, but the problem i see is that it seems like some people are only paying attention to the harmonic aspect of it and ignoring other important aspect of jazz improv. Sure, concert pianists probably have the chops to play what jazzers play harmonically but rarely do I hear them experiment with rhythm like jazzers do.

I find Matsuev's soloing dull too. No feel, No thematic development, every phrase seems very predictable(in other words no over-the-bar-line stuff), no rhyhmic tension.. it's just lines after lines that goes nowhere. It's impressive for like 10 seconds and after while it gets rather dull. What makes Oscar Peterson so great is that he never fails to swing hard when he is playing those virtuossic runs.

Here's an example of what I am talking about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIfHtPwF8wY

In the interview Bill Evans talks about rhythmic displacement and how he uses it in the improv(2:30). If you skip to the last 60 seconds of the video, Marian actually tries to play the melody on top of what Bill plays and she kind of gets lost. I think that little demonstration really shows the rhythmic aspect of jazz that's often overlooked by classical musicians.

To play Jazz you need to have Jazz blood, as mentioned earlier it's not just about improvising and one can't just go and study with a Jazz Master and expect to really "play jazz". Same goes for true classical pianists...

I'm a classical guy first, Jazz second but I really despise the classical purists who belittle the Jazz greats foer whatever envious reason. By the way, the jazz guys never had the privilege to ever have formal training like the Classical Greats! And for the poster who said Tatum "seems" to just play the same thing then I suggest you get your ears cleaned and go back a read the quotes from "real classical pianists" and just leave it at that. If you have any respect for Classical those guys then you should accept their overwhelming positive remarks they have made for Tatum.

Moreover, real music lovers and pianists be it Jazz or Classical should appreciate all legitimate forms of music and get over the fact that there are some things you just cant do on the piano.

Miguel Rey

I am starting to wonder whether some people's instance of classical music being superior may have to do with their educational background. Don't get me wrong, classical music education is great, and it's great to pursue music in such high standard of excellence. I think the problem is that some people kind of get locked into thinking those sets of standards they've learned are the only legitimate standard that matters.. in other words you get locked into thinking what good music is supposed to be.

This is not a problem exclusive to classical music though. There are plenty of jazz purists who vehemently denies the musical significance of any jazz that happened after the 60s. While younger musicians are generally open minded, some people were pretty outraged when someone suggested that the music of J Dilla had tremendous impact on jazz on another forum.

I personally had to do a lot of that too. I was able to open up to a lot of different types of music by setting aside what I thought good music is supposed to be.. but then again I was lucky enough to be around people with diverse music interest who were willing to explain to me what they saw in the music they loved.

Rachmaninov said that he understood what Tatum played, but was unable to do the same.   And also 'If this man ever decides to play serious music we're all in trouble'

These days a lot of the younger jazz guys have a pretty serious classical background from a young age but there isn't time in life to make the required commitment to both classical and jazz except for the odd genius (ie Jarrett).