Gerry Bryant: Transcript
Episode link: Podcast, Video, Show notes with links
Gerry Bryant:
Accessibility to the arts and arts education to me, are primo. Those are two issues that I am a deep supportive of, and that's actually because of those two things is actually how I became what I am growing up. That education was so important in terms of access. So for me, again, I'm this disadvantaged kid, this kid in a disadvantaged neighborhood or whatever, and my public schools in public schools in Cleveland were not very, very good. And so I didn't have a lot of opportunities or access to a lot of different things, arts wise, initially. Cleveland did have a, which was not part of the education system, the public education system. They had an organization and a building called the Supplementary Educational Center in downtown Cleveland where students could go and take all kinds of supplementary things, music lessons and all, and so I was there all the time. I even got a part-time job there as a kid that opened up so many worlds for me.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians, with Leah Roseman. This podcast strives to inspire you through the personal stories of the diversity of musicians worldwide with in-depth conversations and great music that revealed the depth and breadth to a life in music. Gerry Bryant is a brilliant, classically trained pianist, composer, and arranger. He came from a poor inner city Cleveland neighborhood and was given an opportunity to attend the prestigious Phillips Academy, then Harvard University. He went on to get an MBA and a law degree all the while continuing the expansion of his knowledge of different styles of music and forming his jazz group Pocketwatch. This episode partly focuses on his The Composers album with music of Florence Price and Thomas Wiggins, who was known as Blind Tom to his slave masters. Gerry, reflects on how access to a musical education changed his life and how wonderful it has been to discover and champion Black composers.
One of the musicians that Gerry has collaborated with many times is the wonderful and versatile violinist. Mark Cargill, whose playing is also featured in this episode. Like all my episodes, you can watch this on my YouTube channel or listen to the podcast, and I've also linked the transcript to my website, leahroseman.com. And before we jump into the episode, did you know that this podcast is in season four and that I send out a weekly email newsletter where you can get access to sneak peeks of upcoming guests and be inspired by highlights from the archive? Have a look at the description of this episode where you'll find all the links, including the support link to buy this independent podcaster a coffee. I hope this series inspires you and brings you a feeling of joy and connection with my creative guests. Now to Gerry Bryant. Well, thanks for joining me here today, Gerry, it's wonderful to meet you.
Gerry Bryant:
Good.
Leah Roseman:
So Gerry, we're going to talk about many strands of your creative life and your professional life. It's so interesting to me. I thought it'd be great to start with, not your most recent recording, but the one, The Composers album.
Gerry Bryant:
Ah, okay.
Leah Roseman:
Because I was very interested to discover Thomas Wiggins. I had not previously heard about him.
Gerry Bryant:
I hadn't either. "Blind Tom" as his nickname is. I read an article actually in the New York Times, not that long ago about him, and I thought, wow. And I had been on a search of basically, of Black composers for this project. And then I found out about him, and it's such a fascinating story. And actually I got into a contact with a gentleman who had actually recorded some of his music, but then as I dug more into it and found out his story, so this gentleman "Blind Tom", obviously for the sake of your audience up here, he was a slave. And so by definition I would say that he was the first Black American classical music composer. He was a slave and he was blind, and as anyone knows anything about slavery. So for a slave to be blind, then he would be of no use to the slave master because what is he going to do?
But apparently so "Blind Tom" when he was basically not a child, but I guess a teenager, somehow, I guess he got to sit at the piano maybe in the Slave Master's home or whatever. And apparently he just had this immense talent. So he "Blind Tom", just amazed the Slave Master. So then the Slave Master apparently got the idea that, oh, well wait a minute. I can make some money off of the sky, not as a slave. So the Slave Master took "Blind Tom" on a European tour. So apparently "Blind Tom" in Europe. He was there for a couple of years with a slave master. He was a sensation, so much of a sensation that he apparently made the equivalent in today's currency of a million dollars, which was a hell of a lot. Now, mind you, "Blind Tom" himself didn't get any of that money.
I mean, he's a slave, his slave master did. But the point though, and for the purposes of this discussion, the purposes of for me, so I was fascinated by this gentleman. So I did all this research to find, get as much of his music and try to learn as much of his music as I possibly could too, because I wanted to include him in my project. Now, mind you, we'll talk about this more as we move along, but the music that speaks to me is romantic music. Music, the romantic period, my all time favorite composer, heads of heels over anyone else is Chopin. But the music of Chopin, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, all of those great Romanticists, the music that speaks to me. So in putting together this project of The Composers, on the one hand, I wanted to make sure I didn't want to just pick Black composers and take any music that they had.
The music had to speak to me personally before I would put it on the album. And so with "Blind Tom" listened to when I learned a lot of his music, and it was quite excellent. I can't say that, well, he's not a romanticist, but his story was so compelling to me that I wanted to include some of his music that weren't necessarily like a Chopin Nocturne or that sort of thing. But just because I wanted the audience to learn more about this gentleman. And it turns out on that particular, on The Composers, and I'm in the process of doing The Composers volume two, and we'll talk about that. But so Blind Tom, I included four tracks of his and then eight Tracks of Florence Price while I'll talk about in a second. So with Blind Tom, three of the tracks, I really like all of his music, but what really struck me was one of the tracks on the album, it's called Reêve Charmant, is very much Chopinesque.
And I just fell in love with that, and I'm sitting, as I learned it, I was trying to figure out how did he learn one, how to play the piano, and how did he learn all these different styles and all, because he's a slave, he's a young slave, and he clearly doesn't have the capability or the opportunities to learn music from prestigious institutions or any of that sort of thing where he learned all this. Obviously he was touched by God, however you wants to think of God in the universe. But so this one particular piece is my favorite piece of his.
Leah Roseman:
You mean Rêve Charmant, right? Charming dream.
Gerry Bryant:
Yes, that's what it's called. Yes.
Leah Roseman:
You're about to hear Rêve Charmant by Thomas Wiggins, performed by Gerry Bryant. (music)
It's beautiful. I was hoping we could include it. A few things came to mind. On my episode with Julie Lyonn Lieberman, because she had done research on the fact that slaves were sometimes taught music to entertain the masters. So there were violinists trained. So some of the early Blues violinists had classical training actually to play for dances and such, which is interesting. And I was also reflecting in the past year, I've had the opportunity to perform with my orchestra with both Matthew Whitaker and Nobu, two contemporary blind masters of the piano. Really amazing players. And as a musician who reads, it's just amazing to think of memorizing music without being able to see a score.
Gerry Bryant:
Yes, yes. That's definitely a talent that either one is blessed with or one can learn. It's a little difficult. I mean, I ended up learning a variety of things. I was raised and taught classical piano. I mean, I was intending to be a concert pianist. And so that's all I did for a very, very long time. And my piano teacher at the time, who was an excellent piano teacher, Ethel Morton in Cleveland, she's passed away. I have to tell you a little bit about her because she was an amazing woman that, but for the fact that she was a Black woman and of that generation, she was also one of these people that just didn't get the acclaim, the notoriety, the respect that she should have gotten. She played, she was taught me classical music. She was an amazing classical player, music player. She also played in the Black churches, Gospel music, Jazz.
She did all of these things. And so when I was learning from her, and I am totally into Classical music only and learning, but she wanted to expand my repertoire and my skills to be able to improvise and just to be able to pick up on music without reading it and that sort of thing. So she wanted me to play some Gospel, play all these other things and improvise and not have to be beholden to reading music, which is what, as you just mentioned, which is what all of us classical music players are, basically are used to. I could not do that to save my life. I mean, she kept trying to get me to, and it just wasn't happening to me at all. And so she would tease me lovingly just in the same way my family would tease me. She would look at me, she said, Gerry, wait a minute. You can't improvise? You can't do Jazz or gospel or anything like that? You are Black. You're a Black kid. All Black kids can do that. That's just like saying, I mean, if you're Black and you can't dance, I mean, come on, Gerry, you can do this.
And I tried, and for the longest, I never could: strictly classical music. But as years went on, then I actually made an effort on my own doing various things, and we can talk about it in a bit. And so I have since picked up the ability, I mean, I have now a jazz background because I learned on my own jazz language, jazz improvisation. And so I have now gotten to the point, I can listen to music, I can learn music and play it and not have to be beholden to having sheet music in front of you, that sort of thing. But that was a lengthy process for me to be able to get to that point. So for all these other individuals who are able to do that much more readily and who are born with the skill to do that, I mean, I admire them and wish I weren't like that, but I wasn't. It's just one of these things, like a lot of things in life, you just have to learn and go through the process.
Leah Roseman:
So Gerry, I wanted ask you about your lessons with Ethel Morton because you were 12 when you started, is that right? Yes. And then you went to Phillips Andover's Academy just two years later, and you were already excelling at piano. Yes. So what did that look like, that kind of very fast progression?
Gerry Bryant:
I don't know if it was a fast progression. It was just a progression. So I had been learning from Mrs. Morton, went to Andover, I think it was 15. So we're talking three years, and Andover is a boarding school, prep school, high school, basically 10 through 12th grade. And at Andover, well, first of all, Andover was a culture shock, not from a musical standpoint, but just from a social standpoint. Because here I am, a young, poor Black kid in the inner city of Cleveland, and I was thrust into basically this mostly white elite prep school boys, all boys school with all these privileged kids. So that was a culture shock. And so that's a topic of a whole other conversation, I'm sure. So my piano teacher at Andover, Albian Metcalf, who was excellent, he had taught under, I am forgetting the gentleman's name, but he was a world famous European piano teacher who taught a specific method, and I'm blanking on it, I apologize to the audience. But anyway, so Albian Metcalf, basically, I continued on with my piano lessons and my learning from him, and he was quite excellent. I really advanced, even more so than I advanced with Mrs. Morton and Mrs. Morton really took me up, made major steps.
I have to tell you a funny story at Andover and playing. So at one point, the leader of the Andover's Orchestra came up to me and said, Gerry, I'd like for us to do this piece Grieg's Concerto in A minor, which you're probably familiar with, and we'd like you to play it so you'd be the guest performer for the orchestra. And so I said, okay. I wasn't familiar with it, but so then in order to inspire me to learn the piece, he gave me a copy of the album. There were albums back then. There were no CDs back then. He gave me a copy of the album of the performance of the piece by Arthur Rubenstein. And as I'm sure your audience knows who that person is, Arthur Rubenstein, the all time great pianist. So I take this album, go to my room, and I play it, and I'm listening to it.
And Mr. Rubenstein, as we all know, I mean, he was amazing. So I'm listening to, and he's flying up and down the keyboards, and he's doing all these amazing things, and I'm listening to this and I'm thinking, they expect me to do this. And instead of having the effect of motivating me to want to perform for the audience, it has the exact opposite effect. I thought, oh, no, no, no. Why am I even trying to play the piano? There is no way that I'm going to. So I never did it because it just completely, it just intimidated me. Totally. And fast forward decades later, I still actually have that opinion about whenever I hear one of the masters, and I'll just throw offhand some jazz pianist like Keith Jarrett or Herbie Hancock who lives out here, or whenever I see a video or hear them perform.
On the one hand, these are my heroes from a jazz perspective. And so their music motivates me. But on the other hand, whenever I hear them or go to their concert and I sit there and I hear them, my reaction is the same reaction that I've had ever since I was a child. And that is, these people are serious. They know how to play. And what I am doing in comparison is sophamorish. It's like kindergarten. It's like, what's the point? Who am I kidding? So I get totally discouraged and I tell myself, I am not touching the piano ever for in life forever. And I go through that, and then ultimately, obviously I keep doing what I'm doing, but the fact that I go through that, and I've been going through that ever since I'm a child. See, I'm so as a person, but also as a musician, I am so overly self-critical of what I do.
So when I hear or see the Masters doing what they do and what I aspire to do, I just automatically think that, oh, no, no, no. Who am I kidding? I don't have any talent. I mean, they are the real talent. I have since learned from my friends, from my musician friends, and most recently from the sax player in my group when I was talking about this very subject. And he said, Jerry, like all my friends and family, they always tease me and they say, Jerry, first of all, you need some serious therapy. But other than that, let me tell you this. Basically what he said was that, so when he was in high school and he was learning to play the saxophone, like a lot of people who were just learning, and they would listen to the masters of their instrument and they would think, oh no, this is way too, I can't ever get there.
And he said that his saxophone teacher told him that. So for those people that you're listening to from Coltrane, all of the great saxophonists understand that whatever your concept of God is, God basically chose a select group of people to be masters at what they do totally above and beyond everyone else. That does not make what you do or what anyone else does, that doesn't actually diminish what you do because what you do is valid. It is just that for whatever reason, there were only a select group of people who were just masters, who were just head and heels over everyone else. And so we then have the choice and basically, and the requirement to learn from them so that we can then produce our artistry, which is just as valid and just as good. And so as long as you keep that in mind and in perspective, that should be the inspiration to continue to create the music and to learn to practice and do all the things needed to create the music for the enjoyment of others.
Leah Roseman:
And I do think imposter syndrome's pretty prevalent among musicians and performers.
I think t's just a reality for a lot of us. It's like, am I really worthy to get up on stage?
Gerry Bryant:
Exactly.
Leah Roseman:
I'd love to get into more of your education, but if we could jump back to The Composers the first volume album.
Gerry Bryant:
Sure.
Leah Roseman:
So the music of Florence Price is being played a lot now, which is great, and I've certainly played quite a bit of it. I was thinking, oh yes, her Sonata and E Minor, the second movement, I believe that was the first piece of hers that you heard, right?
Gerry Bryant:
Yes, I heard that piece because when I was doing my research on Black composers, and so I heard that piece, and yeah, the second movement of the piece, I believe it just literally hit me in my heart like a dagger, the same way that Chopin does the same way that a lot of different music does. It just so struck me that I thought, oh my God, let me find out more about this woman and her music and this particular piece, which has become one of my favorite pieces. I just knew that I had to do that, and I needed to find out more about her. So from listening to and learning more of her music, I realized that she, one, she's obviously immensely talented and deserving of all of the recognition that she is finally getting in the last several years.
And that particular piece basically got, I thought, well, okay, I've got to listen to and play and record some more of her music. My whole point with this particular album and with the second volume that I'm working on now is basically to contribute to the efforts afoot to get more recognition to a lot of very, very talented Black classical music composers who've been denied recognition, appreciation, whatever, for a variety of reasons that we don't need to go into historically. So what I was going to do with this album was literally, basically have five or six different composers that I was researching and that I knew nothing about and not include, actually probably the one I guess is considered to be sort of not the godfather of Black classical music composers, but the probably most famous William Grant Still, I was not going to include him because he's, although he still is deserving of a lot more accolades than he has a whole lot more, but he's fairly well known if you're going to know about Black composers.
So I was looking at others and anyway, so then once I came across Florence, rather than have five or six or seven different composers tracks by different composers, I just had to play and record Florence. So I was just in love with her music. So that's why this particular volume has mostly Florence Price compositions, and then the few Blind Tom. This next volume that I'm currently recording, we'll have, as I had intended initially, maybe seven different composers, including another piece by Florence Price Violin, a major violin and piano piece that I wast unable to include initially, but it is just, I really love it. And actually, my violinist friend, Mark Cargill, he actually did a string arrangement, which is very exciting. So it's more than just solo violin and piano with some strings added that we're both convinced that Florence would've loved his arrangement. It was just amazing. But anyway, so this next volume will have not only one Florence piece, a piece by Florence, but a couple of other pieces by a couple other women. I wanted to actually have a lot more women composed of Margaret Bonds, Julia Perry, several others, and so that I'm in the process of working on, as we speak.
Leah Roseman:
This is the second movement Andante from Florence Price's piano sonata in E Minor performed by Gerry Bryant.(music)
Wonderful. Yeah. Before we leave Florence Price, in my episode with the conductor, Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser, we talked about how her lost manuscripts were discovered by this couple who bought this old house. And can you imagine, you go into this house and you find these boxes and boxes of music, and you think somebody might want this. Wow.
Gerry Bryant:
Wow. Okay. Yeah, I didn't know that as a matter of fact. Yeah. So you and probably your audience know the story of her and how she was the first Black woman to have one of her pieces performed by the orchestra. It was the Chicago Orchestra for the World's Fair, 1935 or something like that, which was that as an achievement for her as a Black and woman back then was amazing. I understand that some of the members of the orchestra basically refused to play the music because of who she was.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, just a short break from the episode, which I hope you're enjoying so far. If you want to check out over a hundred episodes you may have missed in addition to your podcast player or YouTube, I have an extensive website, leahroseman.com with show notes, transcripts, the complete catalog of episodes, and you can sign up there for my weekly newsletter to get access to sneak peeks of upcoming guests. Please do share your favorite episodes with your friends, follow me on social media and share my posts. And if you can spare a few dollars to help support the series, that would be amazing. And you can find that link in the show notes. I'm an independent podcaster, and I really do need the help of my listeners. Now, back to the episode.
Oh, yeah. I wanted to ask you about Mark Cargill, your friend, because he's featured on a couple of your previous albums, the violinist. Yes. I was wondering, how did you meet?
Gerry Bryant:
I've known Mark for decades. Mark is perhaps, well, not, perhaps, he is the most in demand violinist session player in Southern California. His history, you would not know this if you spoke to him, because he is so humble, and he doesn't advertise or promote himself within the industry. Everybody knows him. Just to give you an example, if I'm talking to him about anything, any musician or whatever, he was casually mention. Oh, yeah. Well, as a matter of fact, when I was in doing gigs with that person, just to give you an idea, yesterday was the Oscars. And so Mark is first violinist for the Oscar orchestra every year. So he's been busy with that. He's also first violinist for the Grammy's orchestra, the Emmy's Orchestra. He is the violinist when Barbara Streisand, and he's a violinist for whatever she calls him. He's the musical director for Lady Gaga.
I mean, he is what he is. So anyway, so I've known Mark for a long, long time, so I've been fortunate to be able to get him to work on my projects whenever I do something. And since we're very, very good friends, he works out the time because he's very much in demand, but he is so, so good and so expressive and melodic, both in classical music and also in jazz improvisation. So with my specific pieces that I write that are rhapsodic pieces, often I will write the piece for piano and violin thinking of Mark because I want to include his talents in the piece. And so I have a variety of my own original pieces, and there are a couple, I guess I have videos of Rhapsody videos that have his talents included, performing, if not the classical parts, but also some improvisation. And also for on the composer's album. So Florence Price, Florence has done all kinds of music, configurations of music. And so I wanted to make sure that I included two pieces on that album that weren't pieces that she actually composed. They were two negro spirituals.
She arranged them, and I included them because she arranged them for piano and violin, and they're very beautiful, and this is Florence Price. And even though they weren't her compositions, I wanted to include them so that the audience listening to that particular album got a little bit more of the breadth of what she could do. And I also wanted to make sure that I had more of Mark performing on the album because I just love his work, which is why. And so my other very, very favorite piece by Florence Price on that album on Andante con espressione, which is for piano and violin, which actually there's a video of I have.
Leah Roseman:
I was just going to ask you about that, if we could include that.
Gerry Bryant:
Oh, absolutely. Because one, the piece is one of my favorite pieces, and secondly, the video is actually quite well done. I give all the credit to my director, my videographer, who basically does most of my videos, just the staging, the lighting, and capturing the two of us performing. I think it is quite excellent.
Leah Roseman:
You're about to hear Andante con espressione by Florence Price with Mark Cargill on violin and Gerry Bryant on piano. This is on The Composers album, and the video is linked in the description for those of you listening on the podcast platform.(music)
So I thought it would be very interesting for people to hear about your culture shock going to Philip Andover, maybe going to Harvard, what that was like for you, if you want to reflect on some of those experiences.
Gerry Bryant:
Oh, sure. Those, both of those were literally defining experiences for me and in my life, and I'm actually very fortunate to have had those experiences because my upbringing, I come from, as I mentioned earlier, a poor family, poor Black family, and the inner city of Cleveland. My parents, my father had maybe a ninth grade education. My mother, I don't think she graduated from high school. And so there were five siblings. My father worked in the factories during the day and cleaned offices at night. So we were struggling, but I didn't know. When one is poor, as a child, you don't know that you're poor. That's just your experience. I didn't realize that I was poor and didn't have a lot of opportunities until basically I ended up at Andover with all these wealthy white kids. And how I ended up there, it's actually quite amusing and interesting, which also involved me actually running away from home, but I'm not going to go into that part of it.
There was a program called ABC, which stands for A Better Chance, that program, which was in its initial stages around that time, but it's still in existence. It's an amazing, it's a great program. What the program does is it seeks out, I don't want to use the word affirmative action or diversity, because both of those terms are really hot button terms nowadays, but so what this program, it's not really those two, but what it did was it would seek out across the United States kids in disadvantaged situations in inner cities or whatever, mostly Black and Hispanic kids, but also a lot of white kids, whoever were disadvantaged, but who were really, really talented. And they just happened to be in these public schools, which were not very, very good across the country. So this program would seek out those top students and then literally place them in elite prep schools in New England so that they could then basically excel and be able to, as my parents used to say, oh, great, get out of the ghetto and actually become something of themselves and to have these great opportunities.
So I ended up in that program, the ABC program, which at the time, I knew nothing about prep schools, boarding schools, and Andover and it's companion school, Exeter. I was sort of like the Harvard, Yale of boarding schools. I mean, they are the elite schools. I knew nothing about boarding schools or anything like that until all of a sudden I was basically thrust in Andover. And so here I am, and I'm thinking, oh, this is not like what I grew up in. And especially since in public schools, and I know you're in Canada, and I don't know if the public schools in Canada are a whole lot better than a lot of them here in the States, but so in public schools, our classes had average, say maybe 35 kids, 35, 40 kids a class. And so the teachers spent more time managing the class than actually teaching, which was really, really sad.
At Andover, the average class size was probably eight or nine. So I'm sitting, it's all serious about education and learning. There's none of this. The teachers have to worry about discipline or managing the class. That's not what this was all about. For me, I thought, well, first of all, it was a breath of fresh air, but at the same time, it was sort of, whoa, is this the way teaching and learning is supposed to go? I was not prepared for it. Of course, I ended up graduating Cum Laude the top of the class and president of everything and all those things. So I mean, I did well and that I give all the credit to my parents because they basically gave me the opportunities and wanted me to do well. And so just doing everything that I do or attempt to do as best I can and do it at a very, very high level has always been instilled with me.
So at Andover, I'm at the top of the graduate cum laude, do all these things. So then all of those kids end up going to basically Ivy League schools. They all go to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Columbia, all those schools as a musician. So I applied all those schools, but I also applied to Berklee, Oberlin, and some literal music schools, because I know this is what, I'm a musician, this is what I intended to do. But two things. One is, so all the schools that I applied to, and I say this just sort of matter of factly because I say this not from any ego standpoint or anything like this, I was very fortunate, but all the schools that I applied to, I got into Harvard. When I got into Harvard, I told myself, well, this is Harvard, and Harvard is generally thought of as the elite school in the world.
So I thought, well, even though I am a musician, and Harvard is not known for its music department, although it's known for everything else, I thought I got into Harvard. I need to go to Harvard. I mean, who declines Harvard? So I go to Harvard and it turns out, and Harvard's music department was not, then, it was not known for its music department. But I will say that obviously one of the students in my class turned out to do quite well as a musician from Harvard, and I'm sure you've probably heard of Yo-Yo Ma, who actually, I literally had classes with him. But so he did very, very well for me when I was at Harvard there. At that point, I was broadening or trying to broaden my knowledge of an ability to play other music in addition to classical music, even though classical music is still my number one thing.
And I intended to be a conductor and various, but I was trying to learn these other things. But so Harvard had a couple of classes, music classes that I took and that Yo-Yo Ma also took, but Harvard didn't really have much more to offer for me. So what I ended up doing is literally learning on my own, totally outside of the academic environment of Harvard learning, jazz, rock r and b, it was then called Spoken Word, like hip hop. I was learning all that literally on my, and the way I did that was the way that the cliche of the jazz musicians back in the thirties, forties, fifties, how they would learn their craft or cut their music by literally going out and sitting in with other professional musicians who were really, really good. So you would sit in and lots of times you would get embarrassed because you didn't have the skills.
And lots of times, people, they might look at you and think, what are you doing here, kid? Come back when you've learned the music, but that's how you learn from others. And so that's how I learned. I was attending clubs in Cambridge and in Boston and basically devouring all this different kind of music outside of Harvard. And so that's how during, in my four years at Harvard were actually fun. Great. I mean, I also, I graduated cum laude and all that, but in terms of my musical advancement, although I was in the Harvard Orchestra, I played percussion, which I also, oh, yeah, yeah, actually I started percussion lessons a year before I started piano lessons, but literally, I'm not a drummer. I mean, literally we're talking percussion. I mean, timpani, snare and all those other things. But anyway, so at Harvard, I was also part of a group that was formed sort of a jazz slash rRand B slash hip hop group outside of Harvard.
And that's kind of how I was really nurturing those skills. The interesting thing about that particular group was that I was a freshman at Harvard, and I get a knock on my door from a, so I open the door, and there's this individual, and he introduces himself, and he happened to be a third year law student at Harvard. So we're talking four years of college, three years. So he was seven, eight years older than me. He said, Gerry, I heard that you were this great keyboard player and I'm forming this jazz group, and I want you to be the keyboard player. And I thought, okay, you heard that I played the piano. I don't actually do any of those other things, but I was a pretty good piano player. And I thought, well, okay, and here's the guy. I was, intimidated is not the word because I'm never intimidated by anything, but this is someone who was eight years older than me, third year Harvard law student, and he wants me to be in his group.
I thought, oh, well, this is serious. Well, okay, sure. So anyway, I ended up basically joining that group, that group, which consisted of a couple other third year Harvard law students and two other freshmen at Harvard like myself, a sax player and a bass player who were jazz players and who were really, really good. And so it was that through that group, that ensemble, we played all over New England. We did some clubs, we did some things like, and that's how I began really honing my jazz and r and b and rock skills as a performer.
Leah Roseman:
There was a couple of things I did want to ask you about Gerry. One of them was accessibility in arts education because you did benefit from having access to scholarships and so on.
Gerry Bryant:
Yes. I was going to say accessibility. Accessibility, and let me speak English here. Accessibility to the arts and arts education to me are primo. Those are two issues that I am a deep supporter of, and that's actually because of those two things is actually how I became what I am today. And arts education is just so important, as you know. Arts, being taught the arts at a young age, music especially, but all the arts really helps the development of the child as the child becomes an adult in all sorts of different ways from not just musically. So a child doesn't have to have music lessons and become a musician to actually get the benefits of the education, of having a bit of a music education, music as helps development of all sorts of cognitive skills in terms of access. So for me, again, I'm this disadvantaged kid, this kid in a disadvantaged neighborhood or whatever, and my public schools, public schools in Cleveland were not very, very good.
And so I didn't have a lot of opportunities or access to a lot of different things, arts wise, initially. Cleveland did have a, which was not part of the education system, the public education system. They had an organization and a building called the Supplementary Educational Center in downtown Cleveland where students could go and take all kinds of supplementary things, music lessons are all, and so I was there all the time. I even got a part-time job there as a kid. That opened up so many worlds for me as an artist artistically and as a developing young adult. And what's really important for me was that, so again, public school systems were not that great in my area. In Cleveland, we actually went on a field trip. We didn't get that many field trips, but we went on a field trip to Severance Hall to see the Cleveland Orchestra.
Now as, especially at that time, the Cleveland Orchestra was probably the number one renowned orchestra in the world. George Szell was the conductor, and he was George Szell. So we were given a field trip to the orchestra and to here, George Szell, and I mean this to me, it this, my eyes were just wide open the whole time. And I'm sitting there, this is something I've never experienced before, but it just so overwhelmed me and struck me that this music, everything about it is just so amazing and this is what I want to do. So it was access, access that I had never had before to the Cleveland Orchestra we're talking, and George Szell, I mean, come on. We're talking the best of the best. So I was able to really see what it's like to be the very best at some of the very best music. And so access and arts education in general are two things that are so near and dear to me that I do whatever I can to make sure that others have those opportunities as well.
Leah Roseman:
How old were you when you went to hear that concert? Do you remember?
Gerry Bryant:
Maybe 12.
Leah Roseman:
So around the time you started piano?
Gerry Bryant:
Yeah, it was all around the same time. Whether or not it was exactly when I started or what caused me to start taking piano lessons. But it definitely, even if I had already started taking piano lessons, then it hadn't been too long thereafter that I went to this field trip, and that just solidified for me that, oh no, this is what I need to be doing.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I was curious, in your work in entertainment law, you work with people in different disciplines, actors, musicians, maybe dancers. Do you see commonalities between those type of creative people?
Gerry Bryant:
That's a good question. As a matter of fact, yes, in a lot of ways, and I'm always asking people in different arts about what motivates them and what do they go through when they are creating their art, because it's very different sitting down and creating a musical composition as opposed to say, the artist that do my album covers is a very good friend of mine to being a visual artist. And what do visual artists think when they're doing what motivates them? So those things are different, although the act of creating the process is still similar for all creative people because it's all about getting inspiration, however you get the inspiration, and then figuring out how to translate that inspiration into your art so that it speaks to you. So all that's the same in terms of personalities. I also find that so creative people all, I often say the creative people are different than normal people because they're just a very, very interesting different creative to overuse the word in such a way that it is actually a pleasure because creative people in general are more open to a variety of things in life.
So that conversations can tend to go on all sorts of different directions and about all sorts of different subjects, and that's what makes working with creative people a joy. On the other hand, not the other hand that said here in Los Angeles, this being the entertainment industry and the entertainment industry is full of people who are, let's just say self-absorbed. And so that's a quality that I personally do not care for at all. There are some creative people, and by creative, creative is the term of art used out here in the industry for everyone that does whatever they do, music, acting, whatever. There are some creatives who are obviously self-absorbed themselves, and I don't personally like to work with them on any level from legal level or working as musicians, but that's also true about life. There are a lot of people in life who are self-absorbed and egotistical or whatever, for no apparent reason. But that having been said, creative individuals, artists in general, I really like them because they are unique. A lot of them are eccentric in their own ways, and people can say that I'm eccentric in my own way too, but it's fun and I enjoy it.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I was thinking more about, for me, the persistence that's required to be in some of these fields, but I should take a bit of exception with the idea that there's creative people and not creative people. I mean, there's obviously a spectrum, but a lot of people just aren't encouraged in their life or their society to be creative in different ways, and they kind of follow a narrow path. And we're talking about arts education before. I mean, if every child had access to a lot of possibility of doing so, you know what I mean, developing that part of themselves.
Gerry Bryant:
Yes, absolutely. And I don't think I said creatives and non-creative. I've never speak in those terms because you're absolutely right. We all are creative, and we all have creative talents. We all have artistic talents, and I talk to people, but you're right, a lot of people just didn't have either the opportunities, the access or whatever, to really develop artistic, creative abilities. But we are all talented in other ways that are also artistic. Some people are really creative and artistic as organizers or very good friend of mine, and actually is, she bakes and she cooks for various nonprofits and does various things. She's always telling me, oh, Gerry, I wish I had your talents. And I would tell her, I wish I had her talents, because she has very talent in this area. And so she doesn't deny it, but she just thinks of talent and artistry just in the creative, artistic standpoint. But no, you're right. All of us have been given abilities, creative, artistic abilities in just different areas, and some of us have had the ability to pursue those and the access in the artistic creative world and others have done it either from organizing, being an administrator, doing whatever people do that they do well and they enjoy and they're passionate about. That is also an art.
Leah Roseman:
One thing that really I found wonderful was during the early parts of the pandemic, when people were on lockdown and they had extra time, a lot of people started learning a musical instrument or went back to one. Do you know stories like this?
Gerry Bryant:
Ah, yes, that's true. Yes. Yes. And I was pleased to hear that. As a matter of fact, a good friend of mine just started learning the ukulele, and I mean, she's not a musician or anything like that, so I've been kind of encouraging her a lot, and I thought that that is just so cool. And I learned a lot more about the ukulele myself, just to be supportive of my friend who just started that. But yeah, and I've heard of a lot of other people, same thing. They picked up instruments during the pandemic. So good for 'em, and I hope it continues because it is very nurturing and it will just be beneficial to them on a variety of different levels because the pandemic for me ended up in a lot of ways being just business as usual, only from the standpoint that I'm always, and as a violinist, you are playing and practicing the violin and the piano. It's a solitary activity, so I'm always at home anyway, not going out or whatever. So during the pandemic, when we were all basically at home, a lot more than usual to me, nothing changed basically. So I continued doing what I was doing, and there you go.
Leah Roseman:
Do you try to get to the piano every day?
Gerry Bryant:
I try to. I actually did this morning, every morning. Either when I wake up at seven, I either just work out for an hour or so, then I have to get to my legal work with, or as I did this morning, I will practice piano for an hour and then do everything else I do. But that, having said all throughout my career, one of my frustrations is no, there have been lengthy periods of time, especially when I was in school doing the JD MBA program where I didn't touch the piano for weeks. I had all these things going on, and so on a day-to-day basis, I tried to practice piano at least an hour a day. And then on weekends, whenever I have a chunk of time, two or three hours rather than, and my friends even try to get me out of this, but rather than go to a movie or do something or whatever, I know I've got a chunk of time I use it to practice because those chunks of times are few and far between.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Now your group Pocketwatch will have a new album coming out as well
Gerry Bryant:
Soon. Yes, we are currently, the two projects I'm working on right now as we speak is The Composer's Volume two, as I mentioned, and then my group Pocketwatch, our third album, which is the second album. It was quite a while ago. This album will be called, is called Only Time Will Tell. And I am very, very, very, very pleased with where it is, where we are so far because all of the musicians in my group, they're all top flight musicians that have performed with a variety of different people. And these are musicians that I basically had in my group for decades. Also, Mark Cargill, though, the violinist, he's a guest artist on several of the tracks, and he plays various, he's amazing. He did some string arrangements, but so the group, when I came out here to Los Angeles, I graduated from Harvard after a year, a year off, what's the term used now for when kids A Gap year?
Gap year, that term didn't exist then. So I took a gap year and I stayed in Cambridge and I was working for a consulting firm, and I was gigging, but intending to still go on to come out to Los Angeles since Los Angeles is where it is for the entertainment industry and also because, and I don't know how much, well, a little bit about me because you've done a little research. So I became a lawyer, and my intention, I had never intended to be a lawyer for anyone else at all, for anything. I knew as a child, I'm a musician, I'm a classical trained musician, and I'm going to be a classical concert pianist. But I also knew that a lot of artists, and not just musicians, but writers, dancers, actors, these artists can be very, very talented with what they do, but they have no concept of the business of their art.
And so a lot of artists, they get ripped off or whatever, or they just plod through life because they just don't understand the legal and business concepts of their art. I did not want to fall into that category. I wanted to make sure that I completely understood everything that was going to be coming my way as a musician. And so I decided that, okay, I'm going to become a lawyer for myself only in the music business and do that. So after graduating from Harvard and taking the gap year, I know it's going to come out to LA, I decided, okay, let me become a lawyer. Let me learn everything I can about the business, the entertainment business, the music business, so that I can continue on doing what I'm doing, which is performing.
Leah Roseman:
Sorry, Gerry, you didn't just get a law degree concurrently, you got an MBA, correct?
Gerry Bryant:
That's because I was, I'm crazy. It was total overkill. Total overkill. I mean, I told myself, okay, I want to learn the business from a legal standpoint and also get an MBA because that gives me a lot more skills and a lot more knowledge. And I actually did both of them concurrently, which is crazy. A lot of the top schools have concurrent degrees where a law degree is three years of MBA is two years, that would be five years. But when you do it concurrently, it's four years. So that program is extremely rigorous and challenging. That's crazy. But I wanted to do it, so I came out here and I did it, and mind you, despite being extremely challenging and taking up, I was still gigging and trying to do music, but my music suffered because obviously I couldn't devote as much time as I wanted to.
But I bring that up, so I come out here and whilst here, that's when I formed my group Pocketwatch. And so I met a couple of people, actually my saxophone player, who I mentioned a little bit earlier in my group, I met him at UCLA when I was in the JD MBA program. He was in the MBA Masters in Public Health or something, some other joint program with the MBA. Anyway, I met him. He's an amazing musician. So we got together and then I got together with a couple other professional musicians. So I formed the group. I didn't have a name for the group at the time, so my group performs just all of my original music. We don't do in other configurations, we do all kinds of other things, but not as my group Pocketwatch. We do all my original music, which is contemporary jazz.
It's a combination of my background and it's classical in a lot of ways, but it's jazz and ways and it's sort of festive. And even people that don't necessarily like jazz or definitely straight ahead jazz or that sort of thing, they can appreciate my music, very melodic, oftentimes romantic or whatever. So informing the group, so I gave them initially two of my compositions to learn. One of them is called California Sunrise, the other one is called Pocketwatch. And so then I was trying to come up with a name for the group, and I thought, well, I don't want to call it California Sunrise. No, that doesn't work as a good name for Jazz group. But I thought, Pocketwatch. Okay, just pocket Watch. So that's how I came up with the name Pocketwatch. And just so you know, I happen to, it's my trademark,literally. It's my sartorial trademark because I've never worn wristwatches. I just, for whatever reason, as a kid, I've always liked pocket watches. I don't know where I got that from because my father's grandfather, I never saw them, but so I've wearing a pocket watch as we speak. If I happen to go outside, I mean go out anywhere and don't have a pocket watch on. And when I notice that, I feel, oh God, I feel naked. It's like, oh no, I got to go back home and get my pocket watch. Anyway, all of the videos I have of my group, were live at a concert that we did at a club out here, Kulak's Woodshed a while ago, which I was very, very pleased with. But anyway, so yeah, there are several there. But I would say what could have been, that's the name of the piece.
I would use that one. And I will just a little background of that particular piece, and again, this is all my original compositions. What Could Have Been, I had a girlfriend at Harvard that our relationship just never jelled because I guess actually she had to go back. She had something going on with her family in Chicago. She had to go back home. And so whatever happened, I never saw her again for whatever reason. And so I was being the romantic emotional person that I am, I thought, okay, I wanted to write a piece about that and title it, what could have been thinking about what our relationship could have been. So I had to come up with a melodic theme. I had to come up with some music ideas. And so how I came up, what I came up with was I took my initials, GCB and her initials AD. So I took those initials and I came up with basically the melodic theme, and from there I added all kinds of different things. And actually, so when one listens to the live version, you would only hear those particular notes if you played really close attention and heard one part of the melody, because that's when I do it, and I do it when I do a solo whatever. But on the version that if I ever got around to recording it in the studio, which I never did, that's why I actually started it off playing those notes. And we do a sort of an overture sort of thing as a group, and I play those notes again, so it's kind of clear, but no one knows that. Okay, G-C-B-A-D-O, that's what that is. That's Gerry, and her name is Adrian. So that just kind of gives you an idea of how I came up with that particular piece. When you do let the audience see it,
Leah Roseman:
You're about to hear Gerry's band Pocketwatch performing, What Could Have Been in a live performance. This video is linked in the description along with Gerry's website, where you can find more of Pocketwatch's, music (music)
What could have been composed by Gerry Bryant with Gerry Bryant piano, Greg Cook guitars, Henry Cook Bass, Tommy Myers saxophones, Keith Swan, drums, E'dge with Curve Productions at Kulaks Woodshed with also thanks to Slick and Slicker Designs.
If we could talk about some of your volunteer work and the healing power of music. You had a regular thing where you played at UCA hospital, right?
Gerry Bryant:
Yes, absolutely. I'll say a couple of things. One is, as you know, and as you just mentioned, music is very healing on just a variety of different levels. And to the extent that any of us, you, me, other musicians can one, make sure that we just perform as often as we can in front of as many people as we can, whether it's one person or 100 people. For me, it doesn't make a difference. Even if I'm just playing for one person who happens to be listening, and if they enjoy it and are touched by what I do, that makes the world for me. I don't need to have Taylor Swift's fan club. Oh, that would be great, of course. But no, I don't need anything like that. It's one or two people. So anyway, I say all that to say that. So I've been fortunate to have performed in all sorts of different environments and clubs and auditoriums or whatever, but for me, the most rewarding experience and performances I've ever done was volunteering to play for the patients at U-C-L-A medical center, which I did for several years, a couple times a week, and I never took that for granted, meaning that someone asked me, do I change my music or whatever.
Do I think, even though I was doing that regularly, a couple times a week for years, two or three years at least, I always made it a point of I never did it as rote. I always made it a point of, I would want to make sure, oh, I want to play something different this time, even though it might not be the same people that would be hearing it. I always wanted to do something different. One to make it fresh for me, but also by, if it's fresh for me, that helps me to project freshness and inspiration to the people that are there. So that having been said, every time I perform, there's something poignant or heartwarming or something along those lines always happened. Which is why I say that doing that has, for me been my most rewarding experience. I'll point out two little examples, just to give you an idea.
They make me, as a matter of fact, when I say one of them, I'll probably even have tears in my eyes thinking about it. But, okay, so one day I'm performing and I was performing at the particular time. And so this is in sort of the reception area of the hospital. And so there's music, first of all. So people coming into the hospital, first of all, they don't want to be in the hospital, obviously. So when they come into the hospital and then they hear this beautiful piano music playing, live, it just for a lot of people, and they're not expecting that because they're not there. And so they hear this and people are so inspired. People would come up to me all the time, immediately afterwards or whatever, and sometimes be crying. They want to give me a hug. They would thank me so much and they would say, I really didn't really want to be here in the hospital, but hearing your music, it just really made my day all this.
So one day, and I literally have a hundred stories, but I'll just pick these two. One day I was playing a piece that actually, and I recorded it wasn't the theme from Paganini by Rachmaninoff, but that piece was used in the same movie Somewhere in Time. I don't know if you're familiar with that movie, the music was written by, I think it was John Williams, very, very romantic movie. In that movie. The soundtrack consisted of this particular music that John Williams wrote, and variations on the theme of Paganini by Rachmaninoff, which is one of my favorite pieces. So you can understand that both of those pieces, the music was just really, really romantic and lyrical. Okay? So I'm playing one of the two of those people, I think it was maybe the theme to the movie, which was written by John Williams. So I'm playing that. And so people all of a sudden, and so towards the end we hear a scream and this woman goes, and so I'm kind of fishing and I stop and I turn around. And so this woman comes running up to me, she says, it turns out. And so everyone was wondering what's going on? They thought, oh God, because we're in the hospital. And it turns out that that piece was the piece that was played at her wedding per her and her husband's choice. And it turns out her husband was in the hospital having some serious thing going on right then. And so for her to then hear this music of her wedding while her husband is there in the hospital just for her emotionally, she just kind of collapsed. So she came up to me and she thanked me profusely. She hugged me. And so a lot of people actually including myself, had tears in our eyes as a result of that. Okay? So that's one thing, but the other one, which to me, it just really sticks out.
So I'm there one during the holiday season, and I'm playing my version, my re-imagined versions of Christmas holiday songs, all of my music, when I play cover tunes or other people's music, I reimagine it. So I just make it my own. So anyway, so I'm playing. And so then a woman comes up and she sits kind of next to the piano and one isn't supposed to sing in this hospital, said they're basically just to listen to me play the piano. Okay? So I'm looking at this woman, and so she's sitting there and she looks so forlorn and just sad and just kind of void of energy. And so I wanted to kind of cheer her up. So I got into a conversation with a very short conversation. I asked her how she was doing, said she was not doing very well, and I said, well, maybe I can do something to cheer you up a little bit.
And so I said to her, I just said to her it wasn't really expecting her to, I said, well, do you sing at all? And she said, no, I don't sing anymore. I used to sing. That's what I used to do all the time. I got all this enjoyment out of it, but now I'm here in the hospital. She had some throat thing going on and some lung things going on. So she said she hasn't been able to do any of that, and so it's really made her sad and all this. So I said to her, I said, well, okay, I understand that well, but I'll tell you. Why don't you just sing to me just a little bit and I'll play a little something? And so we just, the two of us, and I'm talking with her, and there are a whole bunch of other people, but it is just me and her. And she said, well, no, I don't have the energy. I haven't been able to sing in such a long time. I said, well, just try a little bit. I was just trying to just kind of get her spirits up. So she said, okay, well, okay, well do you know? And so she said, the song, Oh, Holy Night, you're familiar with that song is a Christmas, Christmas, a beautiful Christmas song? She said, the key. I said, okay, fine. So I started playing. Now, mind you, now she's slumped over. She's frail or whatever. So I'm playing. She starts singing. She starts soaring.
Literally, she had this operatic voice and she's just soaring and projecting everyone in the hospital stopped and they're all sitting there listening to her, and I'm trying to accompany her, and I'm listening to her and I'm crying because she was so angelic and so projective. And so she's singing. And so I thought, well, let me keep on doing what I'm doing as I'm listening to her and playing. And so then finally when the song ended and she came off of her last note, she slopped down because it just took so much energy from her. And so there was silence in the hospital for several seconds, and then people just started applauding and people were crying. I was crying. People were crying because this woman who clearly had some major medical issues going on and hadn't sung in years, but for whatever reason, I convinced her, well, let's try to sing a little bit here just between you and me. And it inspired her and it got her going. And when I think about that, that's why we as musicians do what we do. We may not get the same reaction from different people, but we do what we do because we hope that it actually adds and brings some meaning to some inspiration, some enjoyment or whatever, to any and everyone, however they end up reacting. And so with something like that, that's just, that made my life.
Leah Roseman:
That's a beautiful story, Gerry.
I was wondering about your contacts in the arts because you've worked as an entertainment lawyer for many years.
Gerry Bryant:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
Do you have any? Yeah.
Gerry Bryant:
Oh, I was going to say, so what ultimately ended up happening, and as you know, we all know life ends up taking you on different paths that you hadn't planned on. And so since I hadn't planned on being a lawyer for anyone else, doing anything else, for anybody else, but lo and behold in my career, so I ended up, I've done a lot of law. I've worked a lot for in the arts as an arts and entertainment attorney representing talent mostly from musicians, writers, theater groups, dance groups, you name it. And I'm on the board of arts organizations. None of that did I ever plan to do or intend to do at all. But again, one, because life takes you where it will take you, and one, we should try to be open to wherever life happens to take. So, okay, it's open. And secondly, since I am, as I mentioned to you earlier, I'm supportive of the arts in general and of artists.
And so I always wanted to do whatever I can to help that artist to in their career and with their art so that they don't have to worry about these legal things. They can just focus on their art. So as I said, I'm on the board. I was chairman of the board for many years of California Lawyers for the Arts, which is an organization that literally is there to empower artists and the arts organizations by giving them education, legal services, all kinds of different things. I mentioned that one as a plug for California Lawyers for the Arts, but also to indicate, as I mentioned to you earlier, that my whole purpose and bent and objective in life was to learn everything I could learn about the industry. And so I went to law school, got a MBA, went out and first started working for a big, huge, prestigious entertainment law firm here in California and did all this stuff, which was crazy.
Total overkill. All one needs to do if you're an artist is you need to surround yourself with a team of individuals who are one very, very good at what they do. So we're talking lawyer, manager, a publicist or accountant who are very, very good at what they do, who are trustworthy. That's an important one, and who believe in your music. If you have those individuals around you, then you personally, although everyone should still have a basic working knowledge of the legal and business aspects of the music industry and what they do, but if you have those individuals and they don't have to be many, but who fit those qualifications, then that's all you need. California Lawyers for the Arts is the type of organization. They do all of that sort of thing. It's a nonprofit organization, and the services they provide are extremely inexpensive, much less than if you went directly to the individuals because it's an arts organization, it's grant funded and whatever.
And when I then joined, found out about the organization, ended up joining the board and then becoming chairman of the board, I realized that all I needed to do was become a member and utilize their services. I didn't have to go through all of this overkill craziness. I went through getting all this education. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm proud of my education and my experiences. I didn't need to do any of that. And I don't advise anybody, anybody out there in the listening audience, don't try this at home. Just make sure you surround yourself with individuals who are trusting and believe in what you do.
Leah Roseman:
So I was curious in terms of you managing your life as a lawyer and then also as a musician within your creative life as a musician, you write music, you perform, you improvise. How do you balance your focus and your time and your energy for those different strands?
Gerry Bryant:
I don't to this day, I have a problem doing that. I will say tell people jokingly when they ask, how do I find the time to do all the things that I do? I tell people two things. One, I have no kids. And as everyone parents know, kids take up a whole lot of time. And secondly, I say I never sleep. So that having been said, how do I, to answer your question specifically, how do I work out life balance? If I could do things differently and not do all of the many things that I do and focus on one thing, I would so thoroughly enjoy doing that. But I just so happen to all of the things that I do, I'm fortunate enough to enjoy and do extremely well. If any of those things I didn't enjoy and didn't do well or at a high level as I was just telling someone recently so as to make a fool of myself in doing it, I wouldn't do it.
My passion, my number one passion, as it always will be, is music playing, composing these other things, helping other artists, other talented creative people do their art and not have to worry about other things that appeals to me on a different level that is very, very important to me as well. So all of these things, since I know that I am at least, I would like to think that I am doing something good for artists and for society, then I keep doing it. And despite the fact that, so this morning, as I mentioned to you, I was in Zoom meetings on a legal thing for this PBS station that I just work for, but I really need to spend some more time practicing the piano before I go back into the studio in a couple of days on one of these projects that I worked on. But so where am I going to fit that time in? I'm always conflicted. I'm always trying to figure these things out, but somehow they get figured out and somehow each day I just figure it out. So I don't know if I answered your question well, but
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, so I guess maybe I put too much in there, Gerry. So I guess what I meant, of course you have your life as a lawyer, but then in your life as a musician, because you're doing these beautiful arrangements, re-imagining your original compositions, improvising and performing and recording. So those are different strands within your musical life. Yes. So I guess with each project you just have a focus and you kind of go, there would be the answer to that.
Gerry Bryant:
Oh, yes, yes. So my project just before, not just before The Composers, the project that was just released last month was my latest album of reimagined cover songs and some classical music. This time it was all Florence Price Music as opposed to Chopin music, which I usually do. And one piece, one original piece, which is a Rhapsody for piano and violin, which is called Anon in G Major. So for that, when I'm doing that project, and that's most of the projects that I've done, I'm just of a certain mindset that with respect to the re-imagining of cover tunes, I always first of all have to figure out what other music I happen to really, really like that I want to do a version of, but that I am not intimidated by the fact that the tune itself might be some iconic tune that someone has done.
It's like, no, I can't do that. Or if I'm going to do that, I have to do something completely different. It has to be something that I enjoy. So I'm always thinking of when I'm recording something or composing something, I'm not thinking of the audience. I'm thinking of what do I enjoy? It has to mean something to me. I've been very, very fortunate as a musician that most of the things that I've done once it's gotten out there and people have heard the audience also likes it. I mean, some people don't true with it, but basically, so as long as I enjoy something, then I will pursue it and develop it. I make it a point of, I don't listen to say of cover songs, I don't listen to the originals, or I might have listened to it once so that I kind of had generally the melody, but I don't want that to impact my thoughts of what I'm going to do with it in the same way that I don't listen to other performers perform, say at Florence Price piece or Chopin piece or whatever, except the very first time when I heard the music and then I thought, oh, I love this music.
Then from that point on, it's just me. But then oftentimes though, so when I'm learning the piece, sometimes I wonder, am I doing this correctly? Am I doing this the way Chopin or Florence really wanted this heard? And because also sometimes, and you've probably experienced this, so when you have the sheet music, which typically is accurate, but you're learning things. But sometimes I'll play something and I'll look and I'll think, I don't think that this note here, the specific note is correct, or they may have some instructions or whatever, and I can't figure out exactly how do I find out because as a matter of fact, mark the violinist, he's told me, Gerry, that he's come across it as much as many times where he'll have the manuscript of the sheet music or whatever, and the publisher would just be wrong on a note or two, and he would go get back to the publisher or whatever.
And so sometimes in practicing, I would come across something like that, a note. As a matter of fact, I just did a Florence Price piece. I just thought, this just doesn't seem right because if she did this in an earlier part, but she's doing this and a completely different note here. Anyway, so sometimes that comes up and that concerns me, and I just wonder, so if someone who is very familiar with the piece ended up hearing my recording of it as it goes through and they go, oh, wait a minute, he hit a wrong note there.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, and editors have that job. I swear. Every orchestra rehearsal I've ever been in, most of the questions directed to the conductor, should this note be in my part or is this correct? It happens all the time.
Gerry Bryant:
Okay. Yeah, exactly.
Leah Roseman:
So early in your career, you had a bit of acting experience as well.
Gerry Bryant:
Yeah, yeah. Again, I'm the sort of person who is open to and is game to do just about anything that if it's fun, if it's at least pays me a little bit of money and if it's something that I can do and do well on a fairly high level and not make a fool of myself. Okay, so that having been said, I actually, when I was young and cute way, way back then, I actually did some modeling, but I ended up actually doing some acting, and now I got into, that is a long funny story that on another occasion I'll bore you with. So I ended up doing some of that. Now, all this was happening during the time I'm doing everything that I do. I mean, I'm performing. I'm already a lawyer, so I'm representing clients or whatever, but I actually literally by total happenstance, came across this role in a soap on television, and I ended up no acting experience, but I got on this soap, and so I'm doing this acting.
So then I thought, and they liked me, the producers of this, they really liked me, so they invited me back. I ended up doing, I don't know, something like around a dozen episodes. And the thing is, after the first episode, I realized that, okay, well maybe I might get some more work as an actor. I should probably learn how to act and take some acting lessons. So I took acting lessons and commercial acting lessons and went out for all sorts of commercials and did all the things. If you know anything about actors and their livelihood and what they do, and they go out and all these auditions all the time, half the time they don't get anything, and that's just the life of an actor. You keep going. Anyway, so I did that and I got an agent as a result of that, and so I went out for a lot of commercials and other things, and I did a couple of things on television.
Now, this was, again, during my early stages, not early adulthood stages, early stages of also being a lawyer, but still playing with my group, doing, composing and doing all that sort of stuff. But since that was something that was fun, actually got paid to do it, and then I thought to myself, oh, well, yeah, let me take lessons because who knows, even though my passion is music, this is what I do, and that's what I always do, but who knows, I might become the next Denzel Washington and get millions of dollars for movies, so let me just pursue this a bit. Anyway, obviously I never became the next Denzel Washington, and I never got a lot more work acting, but that's what I did earlier in my career.
Leah Roseman:
Fun! Well, you're just so talented and your curiosity about life really comes through as well as your expressivity and your playing. It's been really wonderful to meet you.
Gerry Bryant:
Well, my pleasure. As I said, I am humbled and privileged and honored to be a part of your podcast, and so I look forward to learning more about you and hearing more of your music as well.
Leah Roseman:
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Pleased to share this with your friends and check out episodes you may have missed at Leahroseman.com. If you could buy me a coffee to support this series, that would be wonderful. The link is in the description. Have a wonderful week.
