Peter Hum and Steve Boudreau: Transcript
Steve Boudreau:
(music) And I think we probably went back and forth a few more times
Peter Hum:
a little bit. Yeah. I mean, I am an editor kind of by training, right? And I edit words with glee. So when music comes my way, I might want to like,
Steve Boudreau:
What if we did this and no, no, but that's part of the process back and forth. We're taking turns and of course when we're together, all of a sudden you try to in tempo, and it might be all this is clearly what should happen here. And so there's a bit of a separate taking turns, but there's also the collaborative in the room, does this sound better? Does this sound better? So it really is. It was kind of a unique compositional experience, I think, for both of us to do this. So
Peter Hum:
Yeah, we should do it more often because
Steve Boudreau:
I agree.
Peter Hum:
I mean, you did some things that I would not have done but I like it, the fact that you did it, and
Steve Boudreau:
I like how the tune ends up because I don't feel like it's all my fault.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. This podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts or it's a video on my YouTube. This week's episode is a special double episode with the jazz piano duo of Peter Hum and Steve Boudreau, who have recently released their album Nonlinear Blues. Peter and Steve performed three of their original tunes for this podcast, and we've also included some of their other compositions from their respective discographies. And in terms of the conversation, it was a wide ranging dialogue with interesting insights from their contrasting careers, Peter primarily as a music and food journalist, and Steve as an educator and performer across many different styles. Please check out the links to their recordings and websites linked in the show notes and on my website, LeahRoseman.com, where you can sign up for my weekly podcast newsletter and get access to sneak peeks for upcoming guests. If you're a jazz lover, I have featured a lot of wonderful jazz musicians and have well over a hundred episodes to explore. Please share this episode and consider following me on your preferred social media and supporting this podcast. Everything is linked to my website and the support link is directly in the show notes.
Thank you so much for joining me here today, both Steve and Peter.
Peter Hum:
Well, I'm glad to be here. We're glad to be here.
Leah Roseman:
It's such an interesting idea to have a jazz piano duo because of course, normally it's a question of venue to have two pianos.
Peter Hum:
So you used the word interesting, and I guess the other word could be impractical or unlikely, but it is rewarding when we do get to pull it off. And fortunately, there are a handful of venues that can take us because they have two pianos, or I mean, if we have to, I mean, we have lugged keyboards around and done it on a little 73 key matching red and black cord SV1 keyboards, and something's lost in the translation, but we can still do something that we like to do and that we think people like to hear.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Now I'm speaking to today and you're in Steve's home. So this is where this musical partnership really came together, right?
Steve Boudreau:
Yeah. Although actually the idea to me came because when I was in school, all of the best piano rooms were always two side-by-side pianos from, concerto and just for teaching, it's great to be able to play duets together. And so when I was in university, we had access to that. And when I came back from Boston, we had access to the A900 at Carlton University at that time, had two pianos in it and had done some performances there. So I just tried to hook up some two piano concerts, and Peter's one of the first people I called to do this with. I think probably when we practiced for that, it was a keyboard and a piano at home. I didn't have two pianos at home, but that's always been a goal to have the same kind of a university level of teaching setup at home that I could teach on or concertos. Now during the pandemic, I had the two grands just like in a university studio, but since then, we've downsized. So you can see I have the upright in the back instead. It's a little bit better for the space in the house, but it was really nice when we started playing that we could have that we could see each other a little bit better, just sideways instead of having to do sideways and back a little bit. So
Peter Hum:
Yeah, back then we were playing elbow to elbow and could sort of cast the occasional glances as needed. But otherwise, the sound was great in this space, and we were both bringing in original music that was, I guess one of the mandates of this partnership was we would road test each other's tunes. Eventually we started to write for each other.
Steve Boudreau:
That first show was probably mostly jazz standards, just like most jazz piano duos would do is just get together and play common tunes you both know. But because we did it more, I'm just like, well, what have we been up to? Been writing music. Let's check it out. And that's kind of a fun part of it was to bring in stuff that we know. It was kind of like learning each other's music is interesting because it changes it a little bit, but we have so much in common that actually sometimes I think it's hard to tell who wrote what songs or who wrote what parts of the songs that we wrote together.
Peter Hum:
The Venn diagram, I guess between what Steve likes to do at the piano and the sounds that I like at the piano and what I'm going for, they don't overlap completely, which is what you want, I guess. But they also do overlap significantly so we can kind of get around in that common zone and muck around and then do our own other things and see what happens. So we've been at it now, I guess More intensely, oddly enough, since the beginning of the pandemic. So we are three years in, I guess, have a little book to play from and want to keep this thing going.
Leah Roseman:
I was very fortunate to be able to hear your album release concert as part of Chamberfest, which is one of the world's largest chamber music festivals, that's not only classical, but it usually doesn't feature jazz. So what was that experience like for you playing in that theater with the two Steinways?
Steve Boudreau:
Yeah. Well, a big part of that was I think that it was original music, even though it clearly we're jazz musicians from the way we interpret these pieces. The fact that it was all original music is I think a mandate of a lot of the festivals is to feature composers and new works. And so I really think that was very fortunate for us because I don't think any other outlet in town would've just said, oh, sure, we'll put together two Steinway concert venue and let you do their album release here. I just worked out. So with Chamberfest and yeah the pianos were amazing, the room was really beautiful. It was like a late Wednesday night, so it was a little bit quiet, but I think it's the best show we've had so far was that CD release thing. I really enjoyed the music we played that night, so I'm glad you got to see it.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, it was really wonderful, and it did make me think about the way jazz is often presented is in small clubs where people aren't necessarily listening. Of course, that comes from a whole history, but you'd think now in 2023 there would be more concert venues in a city like Ottawa. Certainly,
Steve Boudreau:
Just generally there should be more concert venues. Yeah, I do think it's interesting to see how many more places we've come across since doing this. So we did actually, last time we played was at the 10,000 Hours rehearsal studio in Vanier just opened up. They have a little room 60 seats, and we brought out a Steinway upright similar to kind of what we're doing right now, and just did their kind of the soft launch of their rehearsal studio. We played a couple songs for the Welcoming Everybody Party, and again, it's just like there's another
Nice place that we can play and it gets smaller is nice. Then you don't have the pressure of having to sell a whole lot of tickets for original music. That's basically, I guess, more of a niche audience than what you would get if it was a singer-songwriter, original music.
Peter Hum:
But at the risk of repeating myself and while still trying to respond to your question, Leah, we have done this for isten, audiences are I guess what we would call in the jazz world, like listening audiences and we've done that both in the venue where you saw us, but also in backyards when that's the only place that happen during the pandemic. And that was kind of lovely to play with birds singing in the background. And conversely, we've played in those more conventional jazz situations where there is a certain amount of kind of muttering going on in the background and the clinking of glasses. And honestly, I came up doing that and I'm in a way more comfortable doing that than when people's full attention on what I'm doing.
Steve Boudreau:
Sometimes it's nice to know that a little bit of the pressure's off because there's a little distraction going on. I like that too.
Peter Hum:
Maybe the hardest thing actually is doing what we just did, which is just playing for cameras.
So I'm still not
Steve Boudreau:
Yeah, that's the hardest one. Yeah.
Peter Hum:
Even though we've done a bit of that from Southminster United.
Steve Boudreau:
Oh yeah, that's it. But there, there's an audience, so you can just focus on the people in the room at Southminster, and then later you're like, oh yeah, look, that was on the internet, that version of us playing those songs but if you were thinking about it the whole time, you'd just be like, oh, let's go back and do that take again. So for today, we just wanted to just play everything once for you spontaneously and not go back and try to come up with multiple takes of our favorite things For that reason,
Peter Hum:
You've got better things to do then too. Choose Between Takes.
Steve Boudreau:
Yeah. Our live, pretend it's a live show for just you
Leah Roseman:
At this point, my listeners will be wondering what are they talking about? We haven't heard music yet, so
Steve Boudreau:
OK
Leah Roseman:
Let's just say full disclosure. I suggested, Hey, why don't you play music first, record it, and then we'll get into the conversation, and I'm going to edit in the three selections you performed for me solo. So the first tune Irreversibly is by Steve. Can you speak to that tune?
Steve Boudreau:
Sure.I wrote this piece kind of based on, I think this may be a harmonic first song. I'm always thinking about whether I wrote the melody first or the rhythm or the harmony this one very much came out of the harmony and some colors that I liked that hadn't been applied to that harmony. And the title Irreversiblyis I have a friend who used that word in lyrics of one of her songs, and I just thought it was really interesting word that described kind of a lot of changing. And when I first played it for a friend of mine and I told him that his title was irreversible, this is kind of a grammar nerd, he said, is that a word or is irrevocably the correct word? I think? Is there ever a situation where you would say irreversibly instead of irrevocably? And since then, I think that has changed. It's definitely, I've heard irreversibly multiple places. It's like it's a real word for sure. I can't use that banter as an excuse anymore. It's a good word, and I like it a lot. That's where the title comes from.(music)
Leah Roseman:
I was thinking it would be interesting, Steve, to talk about your weekly YouTube concerts that you continue to do.
Steve Boudreau:
Sure. Yeah. This is something, again, that came out of two things. One, it came out of not having a lot of opportunities to perform during the pandemic, and just knowing that if I didn't, I would lose some of the technique I need just by not having enough time. But also, there's something different that happens, and it's what we were just talking about with recording for cameras. I've kind of discovered that the more you do something, the less of an effect it has on you. So I know we have a friend who I think records every time he performs and listens to it the next day, and that's a bit too much for me to do. I can't handle that much of myself in every day. But I did think that if I performed some consistent thing like that every week, it would simulate a little bit what it's like to live in a bigger town where I would be gigging more.
So I kept doing it after the thing started opening up. Now I'm busier than I think I'm almost as busy, if not more busy than I was before the pandemic. But that Monday afternoon, I picked a time where I usually would be practicing, and now that's my performance practice time. I do anywhere from half an hour to an hour, depending on what stuff I'm working on. Just this last Monday, I did four songs of Carla Bley's because she passed away last week. But often I'll just do a set of jazz music that I'm working on for, or I'll even play our originals, things that we're working on. If we have a show coming up, I'll practice those. And it's just performance practice, because often when I sit here and there's nobody watching, I'll just work on the hard bits or I'll practicing doesn't sound as nice as performing, so it's nice to make myself come up with a final product. So that's where that comes from.
Leah Roseman:
And a lot of people tune in, and so people can watch those for free on YouTube or support you on your Patreon.
Steve Boudreau:
So mostly it's just on YouTube and I keep them up, so there's always one there. So at the end of the week when I do the new one, then the old one goes behind the Patreon. You could still watch it if you're a Patreon subscriber, but generally it's on my YouTube channel at one o'clock every Monday. I think it's SteveBoudreaumusic is everything, the YouTube and the Patreon and the website. But if you Google it, you'll find it. That's the easiest way to figure it out.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, of course. All your links will be in the show notes connected with this episode. Yeah, I was wondering about that because I'd listened to your concert last week and I thought, oh, he must take down the old ones, but I guess they're available.
Steve Boudreau:
Yeah, they're still on the Patreon if you missed one. And they're searchable too, so if you're like, oh, did he ever play? Because at this point, I've done every Monk tune, so I sometimes think, oh, I wonder how that one sounded. Maybe there's like three or four I haven't done yet, but if I can go back and theoretically cobble together the whole Thelonious Monk library from the last two and a half years of Mondays, it's way too much of me. If you want to hear more of me, sure. But I think it's too much. Maybe my mom's listening to the whole thing. I don't know anybody else that's gone through the whole catalog of everything I've played, so
Peter Hum:
I don't think of it as too much. I mean, I tune in now and again because I'm usually doing my day job thing Monday afternoons, and sometimes there's a bit of a lull and I can go check out Steve do it, right? So that's good. But I like the idea that you've done the entire canon of Monk tunes over time. That seems like a real good way of chipping away at a big rock over time.
Steve Boudreau:
74 tunes, 74 Tunes by Thelonious Monk, but I only do one or two a week, but it's been a couple of years now,2023. Yeah, I started January of 2021 doing all of the least live stream and the Patreon posting and stuff. So that's been almost two full years.I guess that means a hundred concerts, 52 weeks times two.
Peter Hum:
I just want to come back, if I can, Leah, to this idea of recording all of Monk's music, which to me is okay, some kind of very admirable bucket list achievement. And maybe in the classical realm, great artists are more purposeful and diligent and they're going to do all of the Beethoven sonatas or something like that. But I think maybe we're less disciplined in the jazz frame, or at least amongst the jazz people that I know. And I really applaud Steve, I guess, for tackling that kind of tremendous set of Monk's music.
Steve Boudreau:
I do think in jazz, there's less things like that where there's a finite number too. I remember when I was in Boston, they were doing the entire Haydn sonatas, all of his piano sonatas, and I remember we talked about it, and they're like, the poster was something like, nobody knows how many sonatas by Haydn there are, and we're going to play all of them. It's like, well, that's a conflict, right? If you don't know how many, and so with a lot of jazz artists, people are, at one point I was learning a lot of Herbie Nichols compositions, and then somebody pointed out that, oh, here, there's a tune of his on that record. And so there's no real definitive catalog of all of his music out there. But with Monk, there's a, Steve Cardenas, a great guitar player from New York cataloged. I think he must've really meticulously gone through it to do this. So we have this great resource, and you'll see other jazz musicians have done Complete Monk, the Complete Monk. It's kind of one of those things like the complete Beethoven sonatas or something. It's one of the ones. So that's
Peter Hum:
The Frank Kimbrough one.
Steve Boudreau:
Frank Kimbrough did my favorite one, the Frank Kimbrough. It's called Monk's Dreams, and there's a couple others too. There's a Dutch free jazz one that's pretty, I can't remember the guy's name right now.
Leah Roseman:
So Peter, you made reference to your day job, so you're well known as a journalist. We can talk about the different beats you've covered. I don't know if we'll have time for all of that, but certainly as a music jazz journalist and as a food critic. So I definitely want to talk to you about that. I know one of the memorable articles you wrote was about Herbie Hancock.
Peter Hum:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
You had a very memorable personal interview with him. Do you want to speak to that experience?
Peter Hum:
Well, I guess I could just say that since Herbie Hancock has been probably one of my top two or three heroes musically since I was a teenager, getting to meet him in, it was 2000, I believe. And I actually flew from Ottawa to San Francisco to do this interview back in the days when newspapers would be willing to do that kind of expensive enterprise. So I was able to interview him in person, which first of all is incredible. And then he was gracious enough to talk to me about his life and his music for a full 90 minutes, which yielded a story that was on the order of about 6,000 words or something like that, because the newspaper hadn't really had much coverage of Herbie Hancock over the years because I don't think he'd played under his own name until that year 2000. So I mean, what can I say? He was a fantastic person, better and more charming and personable than I could have hoped for. He just seemed really down to earth, and it's always fantastic when you can have that kind of interaction with someone that you admired for so long.
Leah Roseman:
One of the quotes of his in that article was he said, all the fun is when you go outside the comfort zone. And I was wondering if you could reflect on that. I was thinking back to the days when you did your masters at McGill in English, but you were fully into the jazz scene and playing and meeting all these people, and definitely going out of your comfort zone. Right.
Peter Hum:
Well, I'd like to say that I can relate to what Herbie's saying to some degree that's true. But I'd also say that Herbie is probably a more courageous musician than I. Yeah, with certainly. I mean, there are moments certainly when we can get out there, and I find in my own practice, whether I'm playing with Steve or with my own bands, which can be as large as six people, that it's kind of in that safe social situation where you're making music with people, with the assistance of people and with the inspiration of your friends, frankly, that you can get out there and hopefully and open that door into that kind of discomfort zone that Herbie's talking about. I think mean he was doing that big time, especially in the 1960s, I think, when that band that Miles Davis had with him playing piano and Wayne Shorter playing saxophone and Ron Carter playing Bass and Tony Williams on drums. I mean, they were full on 24 7 in that blissful state of uncomfortable exploration. And for me, I think I probably need more things going on to kind of tether my music making too. But it is, I guess, the things that happen differently over successive iterations of the songs that make me feel like yes, I'm being to some degree creative or imaginative or trying to get beyond what I've done before.
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.
Now, Peter, we didn't talk before. If you might want to share clips from previous albums, I was thinking your first album, A Boys' Journey, your debut album, the title track is such a beautiful ballad, and it's dedicated to your dad, I believe.
Peter Hum:
Yes, that's right. I mean, you're making me reflect fondly about my first a more serious effort to make music, to document my own composition. So that goes back to, I think 2008 when that recording took place. And I think that really followed after the passing of my father. It was following his passing that I was thinking more about issues, what's my legacy or what do I want the people I know to remember me with? And music was part of that, certainly. And so making a record came from that. And there was this song that I'd written about my father, which oddly enough is called A Boy's Journey, but it refers to him being born in Ottawa in the early 1920s, but then going back to China in the late 1920s, and then coming back to Canada in the 1930s, 10 years after. So that that's the journey that he took, which was something that unfortunately I never really spoke to him enough about, but it was enough of a feat, I guess, because it involved crossing the country by train and then crossing the ocean by boat, and then being on a train again, and then doing the whole thing and reverse. So I just thought of a small child going halfway around the world back in those days, and I thought of my father who I knew only as an adult, and then I wrote that piece. But what I would say just as a postscript to that is I'm happy to reflect on that, but I also feel like in the 15 years that it's been since I did that recording and since I grew more serious about music, so that's really only in my forties that I think I became more committed to trying to develop music of my own, that I've actually covered a lot of ground in 15 years. So I almost feel like you're making me, sorry, you are asking me to talk about juvenalia.
Steve Boudreau:
Career retrospective. It's a little bit of, a lot of musicians don't like to listen to their old records because we're thinking about the next one. That's a good story goes with that.
Peter Hum:
That's exactly right.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, that's an incredible story about your dad. Do you know what motivated him to go back to China?
Peter Hum:
Oh, I know exactly. It was family circumstances. His mother passed away, and then some members of the family moved back to China and lived there for a while, and my grandfather remarried, but he could only remarry by meeting someone back in the village rather than in downtown Ottawa where they live. So that was the circumstances.
Leah Roseman:
I know that Canada didn't allow Chinese women to immigrate here for a long time. I don't know when that changed.
Peter Hum:
Yeah, I mean, those would've been the issues with the Exclusion Act, things like that. I mean, it took Canadians serving in the Canadian army, I guess, during World War II to kind of help those people press for their rights or equality.
Leah Roseman:
Steve, you're a jazz educator but you also teach piano, you teach different styles, popular music, classical.
Steve Boudreau:
Yeah, yeah. Well, the, the reason that I kind of have that broad line in my bio is because a lot of people know me from my playing, but I'd say almost a larger portion of people know me because I accompany vocal students a lot, and I have since I was a teenager, and my sisters took singing lessons and I started playing for them. So it's been the decades of doing that now, including I have kids that I played for who have been on Broadway for 15 years now, and other ones who've gone off and have recording careers in television and movies, and just when they were in Ottawa taking singing lessons, I played for their conservatory exams or for their Kiwanis Music Festival. And for that, what I like about it is the broad styles that I get to play from. So even though it doesn't seem like, I mean, I just finished the Operatic Showcase last weekend for one of the teachers I work with and which included a large 20 minute portion of Tosca, and it's like, oh, Puccini, how does that interest you? And it's like, of course, it's good music and good music is always worth learning and digging into. And in the end, it's the same skills that I bring to jazz it's listening and interpretation, and what do I want to do? What do I think is the best sounding way to approach this music? And so I think of it as all music. So when you say you play jazz and teach classical and all that, really, it's like, I think of it as just the big umbrella of music, and especially this instrument, the piano. I try to factor in anything. I don't want to disclude any style or part of the history of this instrument that's been performed from my interests.
Leah Roseman:
And you've delved a little bit into Hindustani music.
Steve Boudreau:
Oh, yeah. And that's not piano at all, right? So
Leah Roseman:
Yeah,
Steve Boudreau:
I was a student at Carlton University for my undergrad, and at that time, this great vocalist moved here from France and he moved here. He had a PhD in physics and was bilingual in English and French, but he was known as a hindustani classical singer. He had toured with Ravi Shankar. And so the Indian High Commission, I think through Carleton University, set up that he could teach a course there as an introduction to that music. And I was in the first class that among, I think there was six people in this class, and I was senior finishing university, and it was offered as a fourth year course. And it immediately struck me to be closer to jazz than a lot of the other courses I'd taken because it was cyclical. They would improvise over a structure, maybe a 12 beat structure instead of a 32 bar structure. But then the sophistication of how they approach melodic improvisation and the different approaches, which were completely by ear, if everything that's written down, it was not as easy to follow as stuff that was taught by word of mouth. And that's why it's a thousands of years old oral tradition that I really got into that I ended up studying with. I'm talking about Vinay Bhide. He's a singer in Ottawa.I just played for his 70th birthday at the Shenkman Center last year, and I studied privately with him for a while, and I've been kind of playing with him whenever he has some kind of concert where he's looking to put something together. I actually accompanied one of his students on harmonium at Canterbury last year for their grade 11 recital doing classical piece. And I love it. It's all music. It goes to the same point. Yeah,
Leah Roseman:
Well, that's a lot of the point of this podcast, so
Steve Boudreau:
Yeah
Leah Roseman:
It's really, really great. Now, the second tune we're going to put in now, Nonlinear Blues is the title track of your album. So Peter, you wrote this tune, right?
Peter Hum:
I did write this tune, although the funny thing about this tune is that it's been recorded twice, but the first recording was by Steve in a solo piano situation. So I guess that speaks to, well, our compatibility. I guess. I figured when Steve asked me, could you record this tune? I said, sure. And that was somewhere in early pandemic days. And then when we got around to recording our own duo then of course this piece remained in the repertoire. Although I think this is one of the interesting things between us is that we will, I think, left to our own devices, we find different tempos for tunes. So in fact, Steve's version of,
Steve Boudreau:
I think mine's slower, right?
Peter Hum:
Is
Steve Boudreau:
Slower,
Peter Hum:
Significantly slower.
Steve Boudreau:
I think I got the chart. We played it maybe, and then I put it away for a while. So when I went to record it, I was thinking bluesier, maybe because the title is Nonlinear Blues, and I know now where he was coming from, but at the time, it's just lockdown. It's just me kind of playing around with stuff. And I ended up, maybe I was feeling more melancholic and felt like doing it slower, but it ended up then having to be an adjustment to go back to the original way of doing, which we had played before.But it's just a different thing. I think that's part of it too, is that if every time you do a tune, you bring a fresh outlook based on where you are to it. So it kind of worked out well, I think.
Peter Hum:
Yeah, I completely agree about that. And I mean, just to close the loop with respect to that tune and the title of that tune, it was written in, I think the summer of early 2020, summer of 2020. So the first pandemic summer and life was feeling rather disjointed at that time, which I guess gave me that word non-linear. And to me at least some of the harmony kind of leaps of moves around in kind of a funny way, I guess I didn't want to just call the tune Nonlinear, so I called it a blues, even though it is almost in no way a blues, it's really stretching things to say that it's a Blues. But I did think that we had the blues about living.
Steve Boudreau:
Yeah, we had the nonlinear blues.
Peter Hum:
We had the blues about the at that time. (music)
Leah Roseman:
Okay. Well, thanks so much for sharing that. I was just thinking before you guys were recording this earlier, there was some confusion, like Steve said, oh yeah, I have a chart, slightly different harmonization or something
Steve Boudreau:
Probably from that. Yeah, I probably pulled out the chart from the solo album, not from the duo concert. Yeah, that's probably what
Leah Roseman:
Now for memorizing standards. I think it was when I interviewed Mark Ferguson, another jazz pianist, he said, definitely lyrics are so helpful with standards to help you remember, but you guys play actually mostly not with vocalists and not mostly standards. So how does that work for, if you want to take turns talking about memorizing charts and how that works or how much you depend on lead sheets?
Steve Boudreau:
Yeah, how about I start there because I kind of realized this at one point I was learning some Charlie Parker music, classic jazz staples, and there are lyrics that people have set to those tunes. And I do find that can be a fast track if you have the lyrics, but I still think that learning the melody vocally is a really good kind of way to internalize anything is if you can kind of remember what it sounds like vocally, it gives you the thing. So I have a friend who he always writes nonsense lyrics to every instrument tune to learn them faster. I remember, I can't remember, he had the silliest lyrics to (singing) Tricketism another bebop tune, right? And I can't remember something about going for food, I think, but ever since I heard him singing that one, I knew the melody. So it is really helpful to have anything else to get your memory to grab onto it. In fact, a lot of memory specialists, I think they say that the more ridiculous an approach you take, the more memorable it'll be, right? If it's just kind of vanilla, then you're going to have a harder time committing to it. So for me, that's a big part of it. But I also think that memorizing a harmony structure is the same for a vocal standard as it is for this is you have to hear how the bass and the harmony is moving and internalize that. And then you can also figure out how the melody fits with that. So just I guess with classical music, it's similar too. You're not just putting everything in in a row, you're also looking at the macro and saying what's happening, big picture, and then filling in details and that kind of thing. So I guess that's my educator approach to it. Not that that's necessarily how I always do it, but do you want to speak to how you learntunes?
Peter Hum:
Okay. Well, I would say in the way that a, what's the word? An amateur pianist who wishes that he could learn them in a more thoughtful manner, learns, tunes. I mean, I take advantage, I guess, of the fact that in the jazz world, we can be a little more lenient about learning other people's music and even our own music. I mean, I have most of my tunes probably 85 or 90%. It's kind of all there. And I can move around quite flexibly within my own material if I've refreshed my memory before the gig or something like that. But at the same time, I'm still going to have sheet music on the piano, just like a security blanket or something like that, or a last resort if needed. When it's come to learning tunes by Steve or by, I recently played a gig with a friend of mine who's a fantastic trumpeter and a composer, David Smith, who writes great music, and he writes them, I guess, in what is now an old fashioned way by hand in script on sheet music rather than using notation software. So sometimes, because literally the font's too small for my weakened eyesight, I will just copy out the music again. So that's a good way, that's my thing to learn other people's music is to write it out and write it out sometimes in a way that's more intelligible for myself. And then learning, it may not be the same as memorizing it for me, learning it will just mean that I can get to a state where I can again, maneuver through the music and do things to it using that kind of cheat sheet as my point of reference.
Leah Roseman:
And when you guys are playing together, how much are you working out beforehand in terms of taking turns with solos or how you're passing things back and forth?
Peter Hum:
It may sound like to some people it might sound like an insufficient amount.
Steve Boudreau:
Well, sometimes, yeah. I think because we've recorded these pieces now, we've kind of settled on, oh, I'm playing the melody for these portions. But off the cuff, other things happen. It's like if I all of a sudden am playing chords and they feel really good, and I don't want to leave playing chords, Peter can hear that and we'll jump in and play melody. And so I do think it's a constant back and forth that can be a little scary because there are moments where we both are waiting for the other one to do something, and then we both do it at the same time and have to go. It is a little bit of that. You're walking down the street and somebody's coming towards you and you both dodge the same way. But over time, now that's happens less and less, and we can kind of hear where the other one's going and play.
And I even find that in most bands where it's trumpet solo or a saxophone solo where there's a certain amount of politeness, but there's also a certain amount of just intuiting what the right move is and going for it. And I think that's a big part of improvising as well. So that's something that I think has gradually happened more and more.n
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, the best kind of performances.
Peter Hum:
I think we are both kind of content in terms of our disposition with letting the chips fall where they may. So some things kind of have solidified over time in terms of how some of these pieces are performed, but a departure isn't a bad thing at all. If we can figure out how to make the departure work. It could be, again, a question of tempos, for example. I do changing the tempos of the tunes.
Steve Boudreau:
I even think of the way we play today for these performances. There were some things that happened that we'd never done before that I was quite happy with. Even though usually in a situation like this, we tend to go to the safe place because we know we're recording and all that. There were a couple of moments, I think, in each tune, actually in all three tunes, something happened that I was like, oh, we're doing something cool in the ending here or So that to me, that's why it's worth doing is that you could find those things every time.
Peter Hum:
Yes. I don't think we'd want it to be too impeccable, if I can put it that way. And if it gets a little bit kind of murky or unclear, if we can find our footing or if we're going into some new situation or finding some new sounds, then that's mission accomplished, I think.
Leah Roseman:
Well, before we get to the third tune, Steve, I thought it might be fun for people. You have a group F8-Bit, where you do game console music.
Steve Boudreau:
We just played last night, actually, we have a monthly residency now at House of Targ, which is this cool bar in Ottawa that was opened by friends that used to hang out at the Manx Pub, a legendary Ottawa, a watering hole. And they just all came together. And I think because there's so many owners sharing the responsibilities, they were able to make this kind of magical thing happen that even withstood the pandemic. It's a pinball arcade with somebody's grandmother's pierogi recipe. So they serve pierogis for food. They have a lot of punk bands play there on the weekends. They also have, I think, new age eighties music and DJs some nights, all ages, family days on Sundays and things. And so we've convinced them over the years, we've played on and off a couple times a year for various functions they have as a game centric place.
We've played these jazz versions of video game tunes, but we now, just as in September, are doing a monthly, the last Wednesday of every month, we're doing a full night of this band F8- Bit looks like F eight dash bit. And we just, as a result, started all the social media things. There should be an Instagram and a Facebook page, and all those things should be out there now if you go looking for them. And what it is is, actually, I was thinking about this the other day. It's guitar, piano, bass, drums, but we end up getting a lot into the technology. Part of it is it's the electric music and the band that I've been listening to that closely resembles it is actually the Tony Williams Lifetime band. I was listening to some of their stuff because there's a lot of roads, and then Holdsworth outer space guitar playing, and we have a new guitar player now. Ben DiMillo replaced Alex Moxon when he moved out west, but they both bring in kind of guitar, electric guitar stuff that you wouldn't usually hear in a traditional jazz band. You hear effects pedals and distortion and things. And so that's kind of pushed me to do some things with synthesizers and introduce that. And Jake, the bass player, started bringing in a pedal board. And every once in a while there'll be a sound that is unusual. And what is fun about that band is usually in that style of music, everything is very rehearsed because the music is so ingrained in people's subconscious from having heard 24 bars loop for 10 hours. If you play these games when you're a kid, they get ingrained in there in this way that kind of makes them instant nostalgia for anybody who hears them. But for us, the fun thing is jazz musicians is not to do it the same way every time.So unlike most of the other video game music projects out there, we are going to be doing a different tempo, all the things we just talked with our music, or all of a sudden we'll do a soft version or a loud version, and the tempo will be different, or the groove will be different. And I remember when we started, somebody said, I mean, is that all you play? There's video game songs. I think last night people in the audience called out 10 video games that we not just didn't play tunes from, but had never heard of. We're like, alright, write them down. Go check out this new music. And did you know anything from this? And Michel's like, I don't even know what you're talking about. It sounds like you're not speaking English. He was saying the some really complicated name game, but I guess the music is great. And then someone was like, how about Pictionary for the Nintendo? And I encourage you to go look up Pictionary for the Nintendo. It is bananas music. And I think they knew that that's the unofficially the hardest song for the Nintendo canon is Pictionary theme song the video game Pictionary. So we'll have to play that someday, but that's learning the flight of the Bumblebee or something. So anyway, it's a fun thing, and I encourage you to check it out, kind of the Prog Rock instrumental version of kind of niche. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
I heard some of your videos that you've posted online live. Would we be able to use audio clips of any of that? Do you want to ask your
Steve Boudreau:
Yeah. Well, the neat thing is with this residency, we've been able to record every night that we play there. And we're hoping over time we'll get some things we can release, some live audio that we can release. But we definitely have clips. I don't know if we have a full take of anything, but yeah, you can share a video.
Leah Roseman:
Awesome. Thanks.
Steve Boudreau:
Great.(Music)
Leah Roseman:
Peter. So when I started reading your restaurant reviews, I thought, how did he get this great gig? Talk about a dream job.
Peter Hum:
It is a dream job. But I would also say, as I've said to other people who make comments like yours, is that I have these other duties too, and those are also jobs unto themselves. So it feels like I have multiple jobs, or at least wear kind of more hats than I would like in my,
Steve Boudreau:
what'd say you doing court reporting like last year, right? So many different, not as glamorous.
Peter Hum:
Yeah, I do what's needed, I guess mean, I've been a full-time journalist for 33 years here at the Ottawa Citizen, my hometown newspaper. So life couldn't have turned out better for me in a professional sense. And as you noted, I got to spend 90 minutes with Herbie Hancock talking to him and a multitude of other musical heroes and peers I've got to meet and know and listen to because I assign myself that work when I can do that. On the restaurant side of things, I mean, not to derail the podcast, it's something that I came into because I was previously the editor of my predecessor. And then it is something that I kind of had in my background. I mean, my father, who we spoke of, had a restaurant. I worked in a restaurant when I was in high school. There are other members of my extended family that had restaurants. I mean, that's very common in the Chinese Canadian experience. But I came to be kind of very food curious, and eventually I was asked after being a substitute restaurant critic to become the full-time restaurant critic. And that's several days a week worth of work. But then there are other things that need to get done. So I do those things too.
Leah Roseman:
I remember reading a number of years ago in terms of the Chinese Canadian food experience, how a lot of these early immigrants, they weren't trained cooks or anything, but they started restaurants in all towns, all across, and then they would share recipes. They would mail each other because they had to work with unfamiliar ingredients. Did you run across any of this history?
Peter Hum:
Well, that sounds about right, based on the restaurant kitchen that I spent a lot of time in the 1970s when I was growing up. And it was a case where my father and my, well, more so my uncle who was his partner, would bring over relatives from Hong Kong who, I don't know if they worked as cooks there, but they could man a wok for hours and hours and hours and crank out that food. And I don't know who, whether there was even a head chef or a keeper of recipes, but it's just something that got done and was standardized over the years in my father's restaurant, which was open for 20 plus years.
Leah Roseman:
You wrote an article, maybe it was a year ago. It was like an in-depth look at the struggles of substance abuse among restaurant workers.
Peter Hum:
Yes. Yes, I did. I mean, that was a topic that I guess has been even to some degree romanticized, I suppose, in the industry, that it's thought that they're all kind of night owl rebels and almost like,
Steve Boudreau:
you mean almost like jazz musicians, right?
Peter Hum:
Yes. Yeah. I mean, they have a nocturnal life. They work, and then their downtime could be in, you could be rubbing shoulders with jazz musicians at late night haunts and stuff like that, and then sleeping in and getting up at noon or one o'clock and living that kind of bohemian life. So yeah, one of the bad aspects of that is that it makes it very easy to fall into substance abuse. There's alcohol where you work and you can have at it when you're off or sometimes even when you are on. But it was something that I was very fortunate because I got a lot of firsthand accounts of what it was like to have lived your life that way, I guess, before you got so fix things. So that was a meaningful assignment that I took on last year.
Leah Roseman:
It's a really strong piece, and it really stayed with me.
Peter Hum:
Well, that's nice of you to say. Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
If we could talk about the third piece that you played bursting. What's it called? Bursting the Bubble. So is that a reference to the pandemic bubble?
Peter Hum:
Yes.
Steve Boudreau:
Yes, for sure. Because it was probably, Peter's probably one of the first people I saw when we were allowed to expand our bubbles of who we were seeing. And I guess that we are all these conversations of what's your bubble? Who is in you? Just so you could see who had interacted with who. And a lot of people were really careful about that, right? Okay, well, we can see these people as long as they don't see these people. And so part of it was that we were getting together, and it was the first, I think we were wearing masks in this house to get together and play and making sure we were distanced. I may have even had plexiglass. We had all kinds of temporary rules that we went through. But the real idea there was that we wanted to try to write something together that collaboratively in this time when we were so isolated and so to Burst the Bubble was to work together and to create together. And I think Peter came up with the initial little introduction, and then I did a bunch on my own and sent it back, and then he glossed it up a little bit. He kind of cleaned up the edges. I'd say he ironed out the seams a little bit, and I think we probably went back and forth a few more times
Peter Hum:
A little bit. Yeah. I mean, I am an editor kind of by training, and I edit words with glee. So when music comes my way, I might want to, what
Steve Boudreau:
If we did this and no, no. But that's part of the process back and forth. We're taking turns, and of course when we're together, all of a sudden you try to in tempo, and it might be, oh, this is clearly what should happen here. And so there's a bit of a separate taking turns, but there's also the collaborative in the room, does this sound better? Does this sound better? It really, it was kind of a unique compositional experience, I think, for both of us to do this.
Peter Hum:
Yeah, we should do more often because
Steve Boudreau:
I agree
Peter Hum:
You, I mean, you did some things that I would not have done but
Steve Boudreau:
And vice versa.
Peter Hum:
I like the fact that you did it,
Steve Boudreau:
And I like how the tune ends up because I don't feel like it's all my fault. I like the tune better because I don't feel as responsible for its success or failure. So it actually makes me it more because it feels like, like I created something, but it also is, I can appreciate it more because it's not just self adulation to say I like that too.
Peter Hum:
But I think coming back to the title, we were able to play that for people in one of those early outdoor concerts where people brought their own lawn chairs, but they had to make sure that they were in bubble a certain amount of feet from
Steve Boudreau:
Yeah, yeah. Even though they other by
Peter Hum:
Backyard
Steve Boudreau:
That was above bubble, almost bursting too. People wearing masksoutside, but coming in carefully. So nobody ever was within a certain range of each other. That was the first concert I think I did in post March, 2020 was, and it was probably August of 2020.
Peter Hum:
Yeah, I think that's when we did it There would've been a good,
Steve Boudreau:
Yeah, things were starting to relax. I mean, even just doing that was probably carefully strategized, not just on our part, but what are the rules? They change so often
Peter Hum:
The title is facetious, at least minutely so , but it really does point to a time when we were all able to realize just how significant making music and listening to music in a social situation was because we were deprived of that for a batch of months. I mean, maybe we've forgotten and we are. That's one of the downsides of being quote, back to normal with what we learned, something about music and what it meant to us
Steve Boudreau:
Bursting the Bubble, which is co-written by both of us.(music)
Leah Roseman:
Now, right before the Lockdowns, Peter, you were touring with your new album, the Ordinary Heroes 2020 album?
Peter Hum:
Yes. Yes. So yes, we were on the road during the first week and the second week, and we were supposed to be on tour like the third week of March. We were supposed to be in the Maritimes in the second half of March. But of course, the curtain came down very abruptly. I think March 15th was, I think a Sunday. And we played a gig on March 14th, and some people said that was ill-advised, I think we played the Rex on March 10th and 11th in Toronto, and then we played in Waterloo on 14th. And I just remember that feeling of things shutting down when I was doing one of my most favorite things. It was kind of especially poignant to have that all. That's where I was during the Covid curtain coming down. But we recovered, I guess, in the sense that the tour of the Maritimes that was supposed to happen in Spring 2020 eventually happened, I think two years later. So people were nice enough to honor their invitations, and maybe the music was a little better for it having kind of matured, I guess, over those two years.
Leah Roseman:
And Peter, that album, ordinary Heroes, I mean, it's sort of your intersection of your work as a journalist and as a musician. Do you want to speak to it briefly, and maybe we could include a clip from it?
Peter Hum:
Sure. Well, I'll just say that with respect to that album, I mean, it has sort of an unlikely inspiration, which was the 2016 election of Donald Trump as the US President. And I think a lot of people, I kind of have to come out now and state my politics. I was aghast at that happening, and I felt fearful and somewhat kind of powerless about what might happen as a result of the politics changing in the way that it did in the US. So I think my equivalent of kind of political protest or political action was to write songs that, for me anyway, even though they're instrumental compositions, took their inspiration or took their titles from notions that I guess fall on the progressive side of politics. So I don't know if that's clear. And then the idea of ordinary heroes, I guess it actually comes from a quotation from George Takei, if I'm saying that correctly. George Takei, who spoke of the people who gave support and comfort to intern to Japanese Americans during the Second World War. He spoke of those helpers as being ordinary heroes, which I guess now in this kind of Marvel cinematic universe age, we think of superheroes. So I was trying to borrow from George and refer to us all being ordinary heroes, I guess having an impact on other people's lives and society. So that's where it comes from, I guess. I think maybe the tune Spare Hearts is a nice one to play, and I guess it's a pun of sorts on spare parts, but I meant spare hearts in the sense that we should all have more heart and kind of concern for each other and resilience. So that's what I met with that title. And the tune itself, it's one that I still really like to play, and I played in trio settings, or I played in duos. We've probably played it in some of our concerts, and it lives as a sextet piece with two horns and a guitar, all everyone going at it and loud drums. So I think that tune I'm proud of.(music)
Leah Roseman:
Thanks so much for sharing that.
Peter Hum:
Oh, I'm glad to. Thanks for asking.
Leah Roseman:
Now, Steve, we talked a little bit about Thelonious Monk and playing all his music. You've also done a deep dive on George Gershwin.
Steve Boudreau:
Yes. Oh, that's my, so I did a trio record, I think in 2016 called Preludes, the Music of George Gershwin. And I really, with that, I just was here in practicing and I was looking at, one of the things that I'd had on my bucket list of things to check out was, of course, Porgy and Bess, the opera that George Gershman wrote, and I bought the full score and I started going through it. And it is epic in scale, but also in what familiar it is and how many pieces we know. But one of the things that happens a lot in jazz is we say, oh, you should consult the originals. Make sure the source material and the source material for those pieces is so different from how we often hear them. Because just like in other jazz pieces, people come up with their own interpretations. And Summertime the original compared to how you might hear another singer or piano player do Summertime, it's, there's a vast array of different ways people do these pieces. And by the end of getting through it, I was also interested in hearing, well, what about his early music? What about the stuff that he did without, with Ira Gerwin, but with other lyricists? What about his instrumental music? What about Rhapsody and Blue? What about these instrumental preludes? And by the time I was done just going through it and I had 20 songs I wanted to play, and so I just put on a concert at Gig Space with a trio of two great local musicians, John Geggie and Michel Delage. And then I ended up doing, I think a Southminster concert with it. And at that concert, Brian Brown was attending Brian Brown, great Ottawa pianist, kind of a hero to many of us here. And he came up to me and he told me I should record it. And he said it in a way that was like, you should just go record it. He knew that it would just disappear if I didn't. And it was just a fun project. And so I hadn't really put that kind of stock in my own arranging to just all of a sudden say, okay, well this is worth making a record out of now. I just thought like, oh, here's some fun music I'm playing. And so I did kind of a budget thing where we did it kind of live off the floor at Gig Space just with nobody there. We spread out so we could isolate a little bit. But I still quite like that record. I actually really enjoy how John and Michel, what they brought to these arrangements that I made. And once in a while I will break out one of those arrangements. It's not like it's retired completely from my catalog. And I think I squeezed originals on there too, just since it was my first real trio record, I wanted to make sure I got some music. And it's not completely unrelated to Gershwin as most jazz is in some way related to Gershwin. Anyway, so yeah, that's how that came to be.
Leah Roseman:
What you're about to hear is George Gershwin's prelude number one that he wrote for solo piano and Steve Boudreau's arrangement for Trio on the album Preludes, the music of George Gershwin with Steve Boudreau on piano, John Geggie on bass, and Michelle Delage on bass. (music) And you've also put out six solo piano albums as well.
Steve Boudreau:
So the big chunk there, five of them, was during the 2020 there was a Canada Council initiative called the Digital Originals Grant, which was so the musicians could have some things they could do through online means with some support from basically what used to be the touring grant, I think, because nobody was able to travel. So they used that money and kind of redistributed it to artists working from home. And I pitched this idea that I could come up with about an album's worth of music every four to six weeks during the five, six months of lockdown from March through November. And I did a test with this piano with the various recording equipment I had. And a friend of mine who was really a wizard of Phil Bova Jr. At making perhaps less than ideal recordings sound professional. And so those five, the home recordings came out of that.But since then, the Monday Live streams has kind of served the same purpose, even though the quality is live stream quality. Basically what I was doing in 2020 was this version of that. But just to, I guess, of course, the idea behind the grant was that I would release it all online, so you can get it directly from my website, you can stream it for free or from any of the streaming services out there. The idea was the digital release, but just in the end, I wanted to have some hard copies. So I, I made a short run of about a hundred of each, and I have about 20 left of each, I think, which is not too bad. It's like people really were keen to support artists during the pandemic. And really when I look back at it, it's quite amazing. So that's the record that Peter was talking about with one of his songs on is I really wanted to play all kinds of stuff and I played one of Peter's pieces. I played some other Ottawa composers things as well as just whatever came to me. That was the whole idea was to just keep exploring and keep growing artistically in a time where you felt a little bit of panic.
Leah Roseman:
So during the pandemic, you guys developed this very positive habit of playing together. And then Steve, you've been doing your live streams. Are there other positive habits either of you have had in your just for mental or physical health that you've continued?
Steve Boudreau:
You want to go first?
Peter Hum:
I think you should.
Steve Boudreau:
I should go first. Okay. Well, I mean, I don't want to get too much into all this world of self-help books and podcasts and all that, but I did recently discover Gretchen Rubin, I dunno if you know her, she's a happiness project and just a really extremely organized and intelligent person at life. She seems to have everything like how to organize your belongings, how to organize your time and things like that. And I think when you spend a lot of time on your own in the practice room, we think about those things. There's also Noa Kageyama who does the psychology of performance. He has a podcast about that kind of similar things as we have to think a little bit about not just the notes that we're playing, but about how we do everything else in our lives. And I think for me, I'm in my mid forties now. I have to start thinking about my diet. I have to think about some physical exercise things. I feel like I've stopped. I can't consume any alcohol at all anymore, so it's not like I'm quit. I never really had that much. But on a gig, you have a beer after the gig or something. I found if I had one beer after the gig at Minotaur my Tuesday morning, I just feel sluggish. And it didn't used to be that way, but okay, well, if I want to have a more productive day, I have to think about those kinds of things Work-life balance. That's the big one.
Peter Hum:
Yeah, for my part, a whole lot of changes have happened in the last couple of years. I mean, my experience over the last couple of years has included not just the pandemic that we all went through, but other transitions or changes in life. So my son started going to university outside of Ottawa, so I became an empty nester. And with respect to work, all of us who work at the Ottawa Citizen, we left the newsroom to become remote workers, and we never looked back. We are not going back to the newsroom, so I work from home. So if we're talking about the work-life balance, well, it's just sort of one big long blur for me, almost like every waking moment until it's dinner time and then we get to have dinner and then probably we watch TV or something like that. And it kind of feels balanced to me. What I can say though now with respect to kind of pandemic lessons probably have a greater sense. And this also comes from having just turned 60 years old and reflecting on things like legacy or what really matters. I have a greater sense of probably what I'd like to do musically in terms of peopleI want to play with, music I want to make and places I want to play. So I endeavor more to make that happen. And what you've made me think about lastly is just the fact that I haven't written any music for a couple of months, but just all of a sudden in the last couple of weeks, sorry, in the last couple of days, new music is kind of knocking on the door as I sit at the piano and I'm starting to compose again. So that's exciting. And just the feeling of having something that wants to be completed is really something for me to savor. And then I'm going to feel even better once I have it and I can bring it to Steve and say, Hey, let's play this.
Steve Boudreau:
Yeah, I've blocked out some time to do some writing. I've got ideas that are incomplete and I just need the time, and I've actually put it in my schedule. I was like, this time is for that, and we'll see if it comes to anything or not. But I remember Fred Hersch, he did a retreat one year where he went to do a composing retreat for a week, and after three days he's like, I'm not writing anything. This isn't working. They're like, don't worry, the retreat is still doing what it meant to do. And he said as soon as he went home, he unloaded compositions for another week. It was the retreat, just kind of set the stage for the music to happen. So even if you don't actually do, I'm going to compose on Monday, and then you don't compose on Monday, it's like just that getting your sights set to get started, it's like, yeah, we're starting down the right path here, so things will start moving. So I'm excited for that kind of stuff too. Going in a new creative upswing, I guess.
Peter Hum:
Yes. That's where I feel like that's where I'm at this point in time is there could be another creative surge. I'm really pretty pumped.
Steve Boudreau:
Exciting.
Leah Roseman:
Just a couple of one question for each of you, Steve. I was curious, as an educator, how do you encourage creativity in your students? And you're teaching people across genres?
Steve Boudreau:
Yeah, that's a good question because I do really value that, andy And in jazz especially, that's a big thing that happens. I remember meeting a pianist from Israel when I was in Boston who sounded exactly like me, and I was like, wow, this guy couldn't be. Like, wow, he's from across the world and he sounds so much like me. And when I met him, it was like, we actually had the same teacher for four years. And so I was like, oh. So that's how much of our education is in our playing that we both, even though we're from different backgrounds, we have this similar thing, but by the end of our two years in Boston, we sounded like completely different people. And so I was like, okay, so what we did, there were the basics, and then we went off to find our own creative path. So I try to use some of those lessons, and those lessons include things like bringing in the music you're listening to, and we work on that instead of the music I assigned to you, lots of ear stuff, lots of just what do you hear? How can we pursue those things that your ears are leaning towards as opposed to any kind of fixed things? So don't, that's kind of a very vague way of looking at it. But the neat thing is everybody's different. And I do find that even though I push certain things on people like basic skills, most people do benefit from being told to go and find their own way in a way that then encourages them automatically kind of, you're looking at people becoming more in touch with that side of themselves just by giving them permission to, I dunno if that's a good complete answer or not, but
Leah Roseman:
That's beautifully expressed. I love that. And Peter, I was thinking you have written, of course, lots of restaurant reviews and also album reviews of jazz colleagues, and what intimidates me about that is you have to have this incredibly broad knowledge and also way to talk about niches and comparisons. Does that come easily to you?
Peter Hum:
I've been doing it for so long, then I guess I just have to kind of battle inertia to start writing all of this stuff, and I enjoy doing it. So once you just get started and I write words the way that I write music, which is I just started the beginning and go to the end, which I don't think everyone does necessarily. I guess the short answer is when you've done it as long as I have, you can kind of just do it. I'm not saying that I can do it well, but it's just I'm not intimidated by it. And I probably have a certain number of go-to things, stuff like that. I mean, it is just repetitions and iterations, I think when it comes to writing.
Steve Boudreau:
Like 10,000 hours of writing.
Peter Hum:
Yeah, thousands and thousands. Thousands of hours.
Leah Roseman:
Well, thanks to both of you. It's been a really thrilling and interesting episode to put together. Do you have plans to put together maybe another album?
Steve Boudreau:
Oh, we're too early in that creative upswing to say that, but we're going to keep playing together for sure, because the last couple shows have been some of the best ones we've done. And at the very least, jazz musicians, we need to have sessions to keep ourselves honest to play with everybody, and so we are going to be sessioning and trying our tunes together and as well as playing with other people too. So I think it really depends on what unfolds in the next couple of years and what other projects. I think ideally we want to play with lots of different people, but also you want to have something familiar to do when you know, oh, this would go great with this situation, so maybe another backyard concert next summer or see what comes. And then all sudden we have 12 tunes that go really well. Maybe it's worth recording it again, but we'll cross that bridge a little bit later.
Peter Hum:
I mean, what I can say to this very quickly is that once you turn off the webcam, Leah, or once we're not recording anymore, I'm going to show Steve what I've kind got in the works and say, what do you think? Or
Steve Boudreau:
We should, yeah, we'll do have a little session, right?
Peter Hum:
We'll do that.
Steve Boudreau:
Whether that results in an album in any short amount of time, probably not, but down the road, maybe, yeah, a couple years. It's a slow process, but this is probably my favorite part of it too, is the creation at the beginning is really getting the ball rolling, so it's good to be back in that stage again.
Leah Roseman:
Wonderful. Well, thanks.
Steve Boudreau:
Thank you.
Peter Hum:
Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please check out my catalog of episodes for many other fantastic jazz pianists and jazz performers and composers, as well as improvisers in different styles. There's such a fascinating variety to life in music, and this series features wonderful musicians worldwide with in-depth conversations and great music. With over a hundred episodes to explore, many episodes feature guests playing music spontaneously as part of the episode, or sharing performances and albums. I hope that the inspiration and connection found in a meaningful creative life, the challenges faced and the stories from such a diversity of artists will draw you into this weekly series with many topics that will resonate with all listeners. Please share your favorite episodes with your friends and do consider supporting this independent podcast. The link is in the description. Have a great week.
