George Caldwell - pianist, arranger, composer, conductor & actor

George Caldwell is a pianist, arranger, composer, conductor, and actor who has performed with all the greats from Dizzy Gillespie to Savion Glover, and Ruth Brown to Quincy Jones. On this episode we get into how music vibrations trigger out-of-body experiences, the bridge between classical and jazz musicians, plus generous samples of George’s gorgeous compositions. https://www.george-caldwell.com/bio.html

------------------------
Produced and Edited by Arts and Craft.
Theme Music: Sound Gallery by Dmitry Taras.

Transcript

it's like physics like you you hold down the middle sea and hit the bottom note that Middle Sea will ring sympathetic vibrations and there's an overtone series and all that but our our perceptions are well they are just not as we we can't perceive things like we can't hear or smell like a dog or a cat as as a species our sensibilities are not as acute but on the other hand our six sense can be enhanced if it achieves the right frequency 

he is a Pianist a ranger composer conductor and actor he has performed with Dizzy Gillespie, Savion Glover, Ruth Brown and countless more all the Jazz Greats George Caldwell is our guest today 

my name is Nancy Magarill I'm a singer songwriter composer performer graphic and web designer 

and I'm Peter Michael Marino and I'm a writer producer Creator performer and educator we are new york- based artists you may or may not have heard of and we are here to introduce you to other artists you may or may not have heard of

George is in Buffalo right now it is winter and how do you do it every H I mean you you didn't grow up there but chosen you've chosen This Is The Life you've chosen well I lived in Oberlin for a while when I was in school that cold and I travel I travel like to a lot of called really cold countries that was like about a year ago right at Oberlin yeah yeah right year and a half all right so you're made for the cold it's to me it's to me it's like not I mean I lived in Buffalo for four years and I guess with all of my visits there probably would add up to like another two but uh it's not so much the cold although I do remember crying on the way to school like those stories you know those stories that you I walk through 10 feet of snow I did I did I really did and I would just be sobbing like just mad at the world like this sucks why are they you know but it was really more about like all of the inconvenience like the snow is such an inconvenience right like parking is hard and like um oh just having to like use more gas in your house because it's covered in snow having to dig your cars out dig your car out can't walk on the sidewalk gotta walk on the street you know you can't get a delivery from Lova Pizzeria they're not going to deliver if the snow is more than 3 feet not to mention it's really hard to carry your piano around and yeah yeah you have to think about you know you have to think about that it's true I mean that is the whole thing I used to Lug my keyboard my guitar my key uh guitar stand like all of this stuff and a I used to roll it to the subway I finally got to a point where I was like all right I just got to take a cab because this is just ridiculous but it was so much work for me to get to a gig so I can only imagine I don't know if you're carrying keyboards or if you're always playing at gigs at of Pian yeah Jo GE what's the what's in your Rider what's in your technical rider you won't be bringing your own equipment is yeah I'll be bringing on my own equipment I'll I'll be hooking all all my equipment up uh I won't have a PA I you know no I I bring I I just usually bring a keyboard and speakers you know what kind of gigs are you playing these days yeah what's the last one of the last the last great gig that you remember playing you know recently and you do many of them so well the last great gig I played you know they have a now they have Jazz series like in the winter time they used to have that I don't know if you were familiar or they had the Jazz series at the a at the Albright Knox the AKG they call it now oh you know they the remod they finished remodeling it and everything it's all like really so it's like a little like a little performance room there's a cafe there now it's very kind of modern um huge room it's like an architectural wonder is it landmarked it's like a landmarked building yeah it's it's an art building you know it's like it's a building itself is a work of art yeah it's a very impressive building and a very impressive Museum as well and is this in the center of Buffalo or where is this yes it's in the it's in the Elmwood Village area it's on the Buff State campus property sounds like you play for a lot of stuff around town that more prestigious kind of games as well as you're you're the guy well that's that's what people say I'm I I I don't want I don't want that kind of thing said about me though because I it's way one of the guys you're one of the guys I'm one of the guys yeah why don't you want that something like that said about you well I feel like it's it couldn't possibly be true is there's so many great musicians here you know but uh it's I don't know why it's hard for me to feel because people people say it you you they they sometimes say things yeah I understand that I mean it it is uh being humble you know it's like I understand how you can be like that when like you respect the community so much and that you you are a teacher but you also love to learn right so you you're inspired by your community so there couldn't be a hierarchy necessarily yeah uh in your the way you were right yeah well did when you were younger coming up well I know you didn't start in Buffalo it sounds like you've played you lived in New York probably for some time and then you eventually went back to Buffalo but did you feel like you were given the opportunities by other people who had played before you that had that sort of notoriety to sort of bring you up and sort of take you under their wing that's kind of something I've always felt about the jazz musician world that there's a whole camaraderie that's very different than almost anywhere else well I started in Memphis Tennessee is that where you grew up yeah that's that's where I went to college and uh where to make a short story long no I was actually trying to remember your childhood story and I was like I think it's a lot there's a lot of something know if it's siblings I don't know if it's moving maybe it's tell us George please so we can figure out how you became this jazz musician well I was born in Clarksdale Mississippi that's uh that's where the you know the famous blues song about playing the playing the guitar against the devil at midnight Clarkville yeah Clark's Dale CL is Tennessee but you know like a lot of those British rock bands they like the Beatles and the Rolland they all went to Clarksdale you know wow there's the Beatles again so my dad was teaching at this junior college there K County junior college and then he got a job teaching at another HBCU in uh in uh Augusta Georgia and um it was at Payne College so he taught there and that's but that's where I was sent from to live with my grandmother and did you start playing is that when you started playing or what what brought you into playing music well my dad my dad when we were in Augusta he was a he played trumpet he played piano he played uh guitar and he played the baritone horn and was he doing it just for himself or was he teaching that as as well no no he was teaching physics chemistry and math oh my gosh yeah he was a and on the side just playing all these instruments right right well he he told me he said he he started out intending to be a musician and then he eventually well what he said was I couldn't whoop him in music so he said I had to do something else so he was while we were in Augusta I remember he used to play at Fort Gordon Camp Gordon it's a it's an army base there and uh he played at the officer club and he and a guy named Starks Mr Starks and uh I I think my dad was playing trumpet and I think Starks was playing piano I love by the way I love watching you imagining this in your head trying to remember it as well yeah see no but you're seeing the picture seeing the whole picture yeah and you're just a kid and you're on an army base and your dad is playing on stage oh no I never went I never went there no they but he would go to the you know I was too young you know yeah and he would go and play you know on the weekends and you know like that and then and he played Jazz yeah all right but he also played classical music he taught me how to play the first movement of Beethoven's uh Moonlight Sonata you know that one and uh he taught me just by putting my hands on the piano and say go go like that oh nice in 1959 he got a job at the same college that his father George senior and uh my father's Junior and I'm uh Thor thior that's a first but so he got a job at the college where that's where he went to college and it's also where his his dad taught he played violin they were he I love how you're like miming it just in case we don't know what that is that look more like a fiddle I don't know much about violin fiddles but that look like a fiddle kind of the same I actually used to play violin I took I took violin for maybe I don't know three or four years something like I love the violin I love strings do you think it's important and do you try to encourage the students who you teach do you think it's important that people who are studying an instrument also learn other instruments I think I I can't speak for that in with finality but I think it's a good thing if you do I think it's a really good thing yeah it's I mean I'm thinking about like in the world of theater right they say look maybe you want to be an actor maybe you want to be a director study all the other stuff too yeah because all knowing all the other stuff is going to make you better at the one thing that you at either one any one of those but but but conversely you're taking time away from that one thing right by by studying other things but on the other side of that is how do you know what that one thing is sometimes you go through a long time thinking what the one thing is and then you're like oh I don't actually like that thing anym absolutely or I excel at this other thing that I at least I learned about stage managing that actually oh I'm GNA look I need a gig yeah and actually the more versatile you are as a as a musician the better you are to work with other musicians as well you can understand their language and how they play and what they need to play especially with the tunings of different instruments and the you know it's it's a whole different ball game I actually learned that as a composer when I was composing for myu I composed for the classical Studio at myyu for about 10 years and having to write for other instruments was a real education for me cuz I had never done that before I had never been a composer until um computers came out cu I was always a singer and a a songwriter but then it opened up a world for me because I was able to you know just play around with different instrumentation but then learning what the limitations are of those instruments is really important for me right yeah wow so you yeah so I had no idea that you you you know you had done all that stuff to music yeah that was those were the days yeah yeah I was I was kind of stupid I was kind of you know I was real smart for school stuff and all that but I was kind of stupid well your dad was a physics teacher right so probably learned a lot yeah yeah but uh I I was dumb because I should have kept playing violin but why d dumb George I mean apparently I had Talent for it but D George I was like playing a lot of basketball you know doing stuff like that too and then I and and that was taken playing piano was taking time away from that you know yeah but piano is pretty amazing violin yeah you know George I mean I have seen you play live under various uh you know types of gigs and I cannot imagine that you would be having as oh I'm going to get in trouble now from violinist I can imagine that you could possibly be having as much fun playing the violin the way you do when you're at a keyboard well if if I had continued it I I could do that yeah it's pretty much being able to jam and improvise on any instrument is pretty remarkable because violin would be a jazz instrument as well oh yeah oh see that's how um ignorant I am my brain just snapped right to oh it's classical so you're you're just playing at people's weddings you know if you want to hear a really cool quartet check out the serious string quartet I played with them for a while and these guys play every kind of music and they can they can jam like nobody's business it's pretty amazing and there you know the Chronos quartet right yeah absolutely they play Jimmy Hendrick right yeah it's great you know what it's sort of like what we were talking about with Tiffany Chang so the orchestral musicians that are classical musicians that can only play classical they're very they're much more limited I mean they do that beautifully but that's a limitation but when you're like to me when you play jazz and when you have that ability to just be loose and improvise you almost can play anything and it's and musicians it doesn't matter you know some are classically trained but when they can break out of that and jam it is just it's beautiful it's it's so inspiring to me you can use the classical technique to get to to be able to access those things and also you can use your knowledge of what ever instrument that you've it's see I started I started really on in playing classical music and that's I got that's what I got my uh bachelor's from Overland in in uh classical piano with a minor in were you like playing with orchestras or were you like playing like recital like playing like recital and stuff it makes me so I just like literally got goosebumps it's so ner formal your big uh the audition is nerve-wracking the call and then like the presentation at the very end after four years of that you got up there on stage senior recital yeah holy [ __ ] yeah yeah you did it what made you go turn to Jazz yeah well well you know my Dad loved all kinds of music so we his one of his favorite composers was rock manov and his favorite Rock manov composition was the second piano conero he had the Revel G Major piano concerto the second movement of that is so beautiful Maurice rll was an impressionist you know he was one of the Paris six composers Rael debc what's his name that did the um oh asking the wrong people the one that

goes sa oh oh I know that song yeah yeah yeah it's like commercials where it's raining yes yes yes but but yeah and so this thing a beautiful song this had all this um orchestration in it that was like I don't know theatrical so beautiful so beautiful and then the theme is so long you you think you're just listening to a piano you know cuz there's nothing else playing but the piano it's long but it's actually like really really beautiful and then at the end of this phrase that they're coming back around to the to the uh second statement and the strings just go who and it's a oh my God and that's what made you become a jazz musician yeah

and uh Debbie said used a lot of jazz voicings and right right harmonies and everything yeah yeah wow so and but we also listened to my favorite dad dad's favorite bands were in order Duke Ellington count basy and Ry Shaw and uh so we listen and you know and all the solo people you know LS Armstrong of course you know that's why my sister and I love that's why we all the whole family but my sister and I stayed in music and uh my two brothers were kind of like Elite athletes

so then we moved to Holly Springs Mississippi after living in Augusta Georgia that's when I really started studying piano my dad found a teacher or one of the faculty at uh at this college it's called rust College historically black college I started taking piano lessons from Mr McKenzie I loved piano lessons sometimes when I was practicing with my dad bought us an old upright player piano that they took the mechanism out of oh cool it was like an upright Grand it was really when was really tall yeah and uh so we so we practice on that my sister and I and sometimes when I was practicing or playing sometimes the weirdest thing would happen to me I mean you know you into what you're doing but I would get this this weird thing what happened where it looked like and and it wasn't actually a vision but it felt like that I flad it up out of myself and I'm just watching myself do this you know that that sounds like an outof Body Experience yeah yeah and it could be induced you know you just had to yeah be play the music and and practice it and then when you play it at a at a place and at a Tempo that is not too fast and that doesn't it's like this thing happens it's it's amazing it's an amazing thing anyway does that happen whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa we're not jumping off of that just yet cuz that is cool do that still happen to you when you play has that been happening throughout or was that only when you were younger it it's very very rare now but the other the normal on the normal side that has elevated but it's not like it's not it's very rare for it to be like that's that's and I believe that that's why that's what gets musicians to uh play you know people who just like really get into the music and something there's there's an elevating thing that happen you know it's like um okay here it is well it's vibrations right that's exactly that's exactly what I was about to say you know it's like physics like you you hold down the middle sea and hit the bottom note that middle CA will ring sympathetic vibrations and there's an overtone series and all that but our our perceptions are well they are just not as we we can't perceive things like we can't hear or smell like a dog or a cat as as a species our Sensibility ities are not as acute but on the other hand our six sense can be enhanced if it achieves the right frequency kind of you know what I mean it's like that it's like you tune yourself you talk about this with your students yeah how do you get yourself in that state let's say you're in you're you're getting ready to play and you're just not feeling it that day can you push yourself into that state so you get there well or is it just something that happens well it's it's something where you well okay from the time I was a little kid first started practicing and started playing for people I would get so nervous cuz I you know basically kind of a shy person you know and um you know I was I was always this I was always first or second or third in my class I was you know smart like that yeah but uh I was because of that I got skip ahead right and so I was always the smallest guy in my class one of the smartest and then people just that was just saying okay threat daily please you know so my So reading music reading meditative kind of things seem to appeal to me and music was I would have I remember the first time you know uh what's what's the name of that movie where they they use uh um AIO for Strings a Vietnam movie um there's either Apocalypse Now or Apocalypse Now that's it that's when they start playing that and the helicopters coming over that yeah as and all that and it's well the first time I heard that I cried like a like a like an idiot tears I still can feel it like I I didn't know you know I didn't know something could be that [ __ ] I'm sorry it's okay you're totally allowed so beautiful and so true music is just a it's it's really if you're if you're open to it it's a the best very powerful thing you know so and I I for the longest time because you know because I was I wanted to play basketball you know I could so I could be like my brothers you know and I loved it you know I loved I still love to watch it you know but um it's like jazz kind of and so I used to I used to get away with not doing everything I could but just doing enough to do good and um one day I realized that I was doing that well I knew I was doing it I was just and it was a source of Shame for me and and I had a thing happen to me that woke me up that say what what would happen if you would really bust your ass what would happen if you did that you know really just go for it I mean just just go just go and O open all doors all doors open uh all all burners on full you know ears wide open you know just what what what would happen if if you did that

I

after I graduated I'm at Memphis State and I'm I go to this guy who's a big WD star and he always asked me because he was a musician his name was Robert Garner they called him honeymoon Garner oh I'm totally stealing that name from and uh anyway so uh so he would always say play something for me and I play like a chopan atude or or Bach Prelude and fug or something like that and then at the end he would always ask me the same thing do you ever think about playing jazz and I and I was drinking the the Kool-Aid of the era which is that classical musicians just could not play jazz music ah and I and I I was say the era I think it's still it's still a stigma isn't it well it's not so much now cuz there's a lot of classically trained musicians like a lot of the new Jazz stars are classically trained and then they got this unbelievable technique and then they got J the Jazz like there's a guy named EMT Cohen who is unbelievable there there's uh Julius Rodriguez bunch of people man listener look these people up look these people up but yeah it's like having the classical training is like the Special Sauce yeah Jazz right that's cool that's cool that they can do that that they can parlay it into jazz I I never believed I could do it I I didn't even try right oh my gosh and then every now and then though my dad like I remember my dad we we we would share stuff like and I remember when the big bosanova craze hit in the 70s you know uh what's his name stetts and asto and uh and and so I came home from my paper rout after school and and my dad came home from the lab and he had been he got there before I did and he was listening to the radio he said mocus you a't gonna believe this because he called me mocus that was his what's mocus well I you know I never knew what it was until after my dad dad died I was looking up another word in in uh I I used to belong to the to one of those book clubs and uh as a as a as a prize for signing up I got uh a um book The Oxford English Dictionary oh wow but it was in it was in miniature and I was looking up a mineral and then uh oh yeah yeah what what's what's what's the chocolate and C mocha I was looking up mocha and then and uh because sometimes I would just look at words just to see where they where they came from yeah I'm into that yeah has a name I forget what it is atmology yeah yes yes yes and good one Nancy good one wow it's good every now and then I surprise Pete like I know so uh and I'm looking at that and it said ancient you know in a parenthesis it said ancient uh colon mocus and then uh it it alsoo said see caleton it's a it's a mineral it's a semi-precious Stone caleton caleton sure that makes sense and I thought it was caledoni I thought affidavit was a FID of it when I was a kid I had this huge fight with my mother and I was like I saw the affidavit and she's like looked at me like what the hell are you talking about and she's like you mean affidavit we used to have Aon my mom always made Italian meals and of course you use poo cheese that's like a brand of oh yeah and I remember coming home from like fourth grade my actually my mom came to pick me up fourth grade and I come out of school and I'm crying and she's like why are you crying I'm like because we learned about polio today and we've been eating polio this whole time no J it's okay they have a poo a poo vaccine is coming back thank God uh so uh and and I do want to get back to uh so we got the nickname but we have to go backwards from there I don't know where we left off you're just discovering Jazz but I do need to say that uh George is really good at making coffee uh when you said mocha it made me think of your so George will spend a good portion of the morning making coffee when you are a guest in his house also really good if you have a cold my friend George calwell will will look over some ginger and brown sugar and M whatever the hell you put in there no no just Ginger and honey ginger and honey he will look over this cooking for three hours wow then you you will then drink it and you and you will heal you will heal it's really good for you you're magic you're magic I found that out yeah I was envisioning go just going back a little bit cuz I'm obsessed with the out of body experience of musicianship and Pete I want to find out if you've ever experienced that as well um creating or doing what you do but no okay you seem to you you seem to have been going to a place where like something happened that cuz we were talking about ever recreating that passing that on to the students it seemed to be like there was this big moment or something for you I don't know maybe I got lost in in feelings about that yeah it it just it just seemed to be a place uh I heard it described once uh there's a Pianist that I went to school with at at Memphis State and uh he he went on to become like he's pretty well jazz jazz star pretty well-known Jazz star but he's not like you know wenton marceles or that what or but in the Jazz within the Jazz circles yeah yeah jazz people know who he is and he's is an incredible artist he has a video where he says sometimes you get this this feeling this he said it seems like you're playing and you just like what what does he say creativity just takes over yeah it's like a flow and you're not even there you're just watching you know you're just watching it and experiencing it do you feel like that when you play jazz regularly no it doesn't always happen it's it's I I feel I have moments where it's really good though it's really good yeah but but there's some sometime you know it just seems like everything comes together and you're not even I don't know it's it's like you just let go or something I don't know what what you call it I feel like that sometimes happens for audiences at totally I think it happens for actors too Madison Square Garden you're at a concert man everyone is just the heartbeats are going a Broadway musical right you can feel there's an electricity in the air it's all yeah yeah g a gay club at 2 a.m. believe there's sparkles

every have you ever experienced it when you're playing with a lot of musicians or is it mostly when you're by yourself uh it's mostly when I'm playing with other people oh cool yeah most it's like you're all in um vibrating together and and the thing is the thing about that's makes a um well the the shows that I've done have all been Jazz oriented the Broadway shows uh black and oh when you played oh right I saw the one that you did out in New Jersey wait you play black and blue yeah is that the Ruth Brown you know I worked with Julie Crosby who was oh yeah I know yeah yeah I I wrote a musical with her wow called mankind yeah and I remember hearing all about that musical about black and blue oh yeah Ruth I even I I was a member of Ruth Brown's band

I had a lot of scholarships when I graduated I even had got a letter from uh Yale but Yale was not known for a music school at that time and then I lost my way uh Vietnam uh Martin Luther King being killed John Kennedy being killed Medgar Evers being killed all those Freedom Writers getting beat senseless in uh Selma all that it just I lost it yeah yeah well you're also sens you're a sensitive fellow and there's a lot going on and it got to affect you emotionally as an artist as a human being as an optimist because you're an optimist and you're the world is you're watching all these terrible things happen around you and you're that age where it's so impress you're so impressionable yeah is it gonna be like this forever yeah and I was like who wants to live in a world like this you know it's gonna be interesting now that you're teaching to see kids as they go through the next four years or whatever time because I think it's a very tumultuous time yes um not it's nothing like what you were going through back then but it has there's a lot of potential for it to reflect that right yeah and I think it's going to be interesting to how to see how your the kids that you work with respond to what's happening well it's also it's not only is it it's going to work the other way too though it's it's it's GNA it's going to give like people a false sense of bravado because that's what they're going to be they're modeling right they're that's what our leaders are all being like I'm doing what I want I'm doing what I want I'm do I didn't do that I'm it's gonna give all these these the the other students this like you know the ones who are I mean we can't assume just because you're an artist you are necessarily a good person a good person right yeah no I think that's I mean that's a whole other issue to me thing you're right you're right what kids are learn that that young kids are learning that about truth and about Behavior but I I actually think it was that way back then as well you're talking about people that were killing people and PE I mean there's there's and all that stuff oh my yeah I feel like I've lived talk about sheltered right you lived across the school I feel like I grew up in a very upper middle class Jewish neighborhood in Baltimore and I felt Baltimore yeah B just outside outside of Baltimore it was it was um I was very lucky we were very privileged and we sort of had this uh you know it was post World War II so even though my grandfather lost his entire family and a lot of my relatives lost their families we still had because we were you know two generations after we had this sort of haze and you know and now we're looking at the world we're seeing a as Jews what's happening with the anti-Semitism that's rising and then also watching what's happening with this you know with the Republican party I'm just going to say it with the hatred the racism the the anti-muslim sentiment like all of this the anti the homophobia everything and seeing that that's what the right anti AB absolutely anti antium antium yeah anti-il rights and anti like it's just it's just um I feel like that golden age is over and we're about to enter into something that is not unprecedented but something that we never all thought we'd see in our life time so I think it's going to be interesting to see how the kids react yeah especially have this great fear that it's you know you said unprecedented I I think it's just going to be like not nice you know no not nice at all it's already not nice it's not nice for a lot of people and I think that I think it's also going to be a a fullscale robbery you know that's a whole other thing but that you know I think it's just um it's it's I have no idea you know it's like it's like waiting waiting for the other shoe to drop yeah so I feel like how how how are you thinking about that as a teacher with the students that you're working with like what and I know Pete we have to wrap it up soon but only because I have another thing that's all oh well I just I I don't I'm I'm just looking to them just to see what they think yeah so what did Tiffany uh teach us you you meet them where they're at yeah yes and also now I'm um you know the Stu it's it's a freshman seminar what I'm teaching and uh you know it's it's his Jazz history so so it's like you know two or three free credits for you know what do you call it electives right yeah so people are taking the course that don't have any connection with any music or anything like that oh wow they have they have songs that they like and you know everybody likes Taylor Swift and all you know what I mean so sometimes I was like I asked them I said anybody know who Duke Ellington is and none of them knew I was like it was quiet for maybe a few minutes and then somebody raised their hand and they and they said they'd heard of him

George I do hate to end this conversation but we have talked about things that were even more interesting than what we thought we would talk about hey thanks for checking us out links to today's guest can be found in the show notes don't forget to subscribe like us rate US and tell all your friends about arts and craft