Dorota Banasiak talking to Roy Eaton, special guest of K'Ozzie Fest 2013. Time over 17 mins.

Polish Version of Dorota's interview with Roy - with music. Duration 17 min 55 sec.

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Transcript of Dorota Banasiak’s SBS Interview
By phone on the afternoon of Thursday February 21st.

DB.: I have the pleasure of speaking to Roy Eaton a renowned American pianist who is here in Australia to perform especially at the annual Kosciuszko Festival in the Snowy Mountains. Are you here in Australia for the first time?

RE.: Yes, this is my first – first visit.

What are the first impressions? How do you find the countries, quite different from America?

It’s different in many ways and alike in many ways. Of course, our histories are different but it seems like different world events have brought us much closer together. I felt very much at home. I didn’t feel like I was in a strange place at all. Of course the presence of franchises like McDonalds and Starbucks and Kentucky Fried Chicken –

Yes that’s right, they help.

-- yes. But more important than that there was just a sense of a welcoming presence. I really felt quite comfortable the minute I came here.

What or who convinced you to travel such a long distance and join us for the festival?

Well it came about actually through Polish connections – a Polish influence. I happened to be the first winner of the Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin award in New York –

That’s right, in 1950.

- right, and there was a launching of a new biography of Kosciuszko by the author, Alex Storozynski, and I went to be there. Also present there was an Australian, Felix Molski, who saw me and heard a question that I asked, and heard me play, and was quite intrigued about the possibility that I might add a dimension to the K’Ozzie Fest.

The one fact that I learned in this biography of Alex is something we didn’t know and never was taught in schools when I studied history was that Kosciuszko, when he was one of the Generals in the American Revolution, wanted to convince Jefferson and other of the American leaders to follow in truth what they declared ‘that all men are created equal’ by freeing the slaves. And, but of course, slavery was not - was a very important economic tool for the early colonists and they weren’t willing to give up that easy source of income. It really was an economic matter and they declined. And he was disturbed at that and the fact that they weren’t able to pay his full salary. So he left and went to Europe, and when he came back, the salary that they were – that they held in escrow for him, he said he wanted to use that to buy the freedom of slaves.

He was a close personal friend of Jefferson, and so that he freed –or bought the freedom and paid for the education and care of Jefferson’s slaves first. It was sought of an in your face you know.

That must have been quite shocking in those days?

Yes, yes, but it was marvellous to see that, that spirit existed by Kosciuszko for African-Americans who were then in quite dire straits.

And here you are in Australia and we have got Thaddeusz Kosciuszko again on the map and –

Yes

- and K’Ozzie Fest itself celebrates a few cultures together. It’s the Australian Aboriginal, Irish and Polish cultures.

Yes

I understand the significance of the Polish heritage in American, how it relates to you, but how do you fit in to the Australian perspective – to the Australian scene?

The story of the relationship between European and Aborigine population has some parallels to it, and in fact there is a different heroic figure involved here, who also happens to be Polish. I’m probably not going to be able to pronounce his name right, Strzelecki, who was very influential also in exploring Australia, but doing so by permission rather than by force. And so that same spirit of acknowledging the presence and value of others, even though they may be different, was demonstrated there, the same thing that Kosciuszko had demonstrated in America. So that there is a parallel there and I felt that an acknowledgement of these two really great heroes, particularly in terms of that sense of inclusion, and that sense of welcoming and acknowledging the value, the presence of people who are different, and allowing them to discover their own unique place in the world was something that was worth celebrating and I was honoured to be asked to be part of that celebration.

In your young years in America you grew up in a migrant family. Very early in life when you were five or six years old, you took up the piano. Was that something that you needed to do in order to find your own identity?

Well I think so. It was not something that I did with any great conscious intent; it was just something that I was just drawn to. My mother started me with piano lessons when I was six, and unlike – I happen to have ten year old twin boys who are starting on the piano, but getting them to practice is a matter of - it’s like pulling teeth – and I am sure my experience is not unique. But for me it was so different when I was a child. It was – my mother had to take me away from the piano rather than try to get me to play. I guess, you know, everyone has some things that are so native and natural to them it’s as if they are bringing something from a previous life time or whatever. But whatever it was, I was just drawn to the piano from a very early age and sort of decided when I was six, that that was the way I was going to spend my life – was in music, and specifically as a pianist. It took a while before that career path actually took off. When I won the Kosciuszko Foundation Chopin Award in 1950 – yep, 1950 – you heard right, there wasn’t yet an acceptance by the American public of the possibility that a black man could be playing classical music like Chopin, and I had a lot of resistance from the establishment in setting up my career.

I had a lot of help also from the Kosciuszko Foundation, they sponsored my debut recital; also I played with the Chicago Symphony in Chicago in the following year. And there is a large Polish community there, but it wasn’t enough to get over the resistance of the establishment, but now I much more able to perform and am beginning to receive the acceptance for my talent, and I say better late than never.

In your early years what was it in particular about Chopin’s music that made it special, that made you fall in love with it, that made you be drawn to it?

I have no idea what it was; I just know that I felt that I composed it. I felt as if it was my voice that was speaking when I was playing Chopin. The idea of entering a Chopin competition wasn’t even mine. It was someone else’s who heard my Chopin playing and said that, you know you should enter this competition; I think you would have a good chance. They were right, I won the competition, and since then a lot of musicians, and shall we say critics and authorities in music, feel that my interpretation of Chopin is quite unique and quite arresting and I have been very pleased that I have gotten that feedback. I was very happy to see that Vladimir Ashkenazy is now conducting here and he was one of the people who I had played for, who, even - and he is as you know a very well-known Chopin expert - and he, even though my approach is a little different from his, he very much admired what I did in my performance of Chopin. So that was a quite a nice validation to receive.

And in fact you grew up in America during jazz’s glory years. So it’s quite interesting that you decided to take up, well, as you said your mum paid for classical piano lessons, but you were still drawn to it. So did those two different styles come in in your life in early days?

Not in early days. In my early days there was an unfear, almost prejudice against jazz, un the part of the classical establishment and I sort of absorbed that unwittingly and my appreciation of jazz did not develop actually until much later, and actually on the latest album that I did called ‘I Play for Peace’, I started off with a composition that was created by a jazz musician by the name of Bill Evans who was one of the co-creators, with Miles Davis, of the bebop era in jazz, and his playing – I happen to have had the fortune of meeting him when he was still alive – his playing has the same quality of peace, and meditative and contemplative aspects that I find in a lot of Chopin’s works. I think it is that aspect of Chopin that has appealed to me most. My first album in fact I called ‘The Meditative Chopin’.

Most pianists are more interested in the virtuosic elements that can be demonstrated in the A tooth, for example. His own compatriot, Franz Liszt, loved his virtuosic works, but Chopin didn’t really appreciate the way Liszt and other pianists played his compositions with that - focusing on that element. I found out later even that – I put together, for example, a program of Chopin works that I played without interruption, in order that the audience could appreciate the silences that Chopin creates, and I would say a good seventy five percent of his works end quietly, and it just struck me that here was someone who was preparing you to go within. His music was – the silences between the notes and between compositions - was just as significant as the works themselves. When I studied two nocturnes in particular, it struck me that this was his focus; they are opus 27, number one and number two. The number one is in C sharp minor and number two in D flat major, but the number one ends with a D flat chord that as it spins out then becomes the basis of the opening chord in the following nocturne, and they really need to be played without interruption between the two. And so I put this program together and asked that the audience not applaud, and I put together numbers in sequence that I wanted them to listen to and to appreciate the silence between the composition and called it ‘The Meditative Chopin’.

I later found out that my discovery was really not that out of the ordinary. George Sand had written, actually satirically, about Chopin that if he had his – she was his –

Lover, yes.

- lover, that if Chopin had his preference he would play on a still piano in the dark with no audience. It’s almost as if he was trying to recreate the beauty of silence. The music that he heard, really silence was the way he wanted it to be appreciated so I think that is at the core of my performances of Chopin, where I make the pauses, the silences, just as important as the notes.

Now on a different note, in America you are well known for your compositions for famous ads. Was composing for television ads and for radio ads just a way to make a living or was there something more to it?

Initially it was, it was sort of an accident and literally yes, just a way to make a living, but I was fortunate in that I never left my resolve to make music the vehicle for my life expression and I was fortunate in that my advertising career was primarily focused on my music abilities. I was – I ended up being music director of an advertising agency and introduced concepts in advertising music that were effective in selling – yes, but also brought to the attention of the listener, music that could be enriching for its own value. And so that I made sure I wrote good music when I did my ads. And some of the things that I wrote have become like - or did become like advertising classics for long – they are there for like 30 years and people still remember them even though they might not be broadcast now.

It’s quite interesting. You’ve got the classic and you’ve got the jazz and then you’ve got really contemporary music because I suppose those tunes would have been contemporary tunes.

Yeah. Well they were tunes I created, but I created them with a new philosophy in that I felt that music at the time, jingles as they were called, they just wanted them to be memorable. You know, simple and as really asinine as possible the better. That they were effective, things like ‘Pepsi Cola hits the spot, twelve full ounces’ – that - you know the nursery rhyme sort of thing. But I felt that music could do a lot more. For example one of the jingles for which I was most well know was one that I wrote for Beefaroni which was - I don’t know if it’s sold here, but it’s a mixture of beef and macaroni in a can; lunch food for children. And when they were launching the product the manufacturer wanted to use ‘Yankee Doodle - beef and macaroni, da Beefaroni da da’. You know, like that and I said ‘no, that’s not right because Yankee Doodle is an American revolutionary melody and it’s very American, you’re selling a product that you want people to think is Italian, you should use a tarantella.’ And he said ‘what’s that?’ And I said well it’s like this – and so I wrote a tarantella, which more clearly -

Described what the product was about.

- Exactly. ‘We’re having Beefaroni, it’s baked with macaroni. Beefaroni is what we like to eat. Beefaroni what a treat, Beefaroni is really neat. Hooray for Beefaroni.’ And I did that in all of the music that I used. I tried to find out who is it that you’re trying to talk to? What is the message you’re trying to deliver? And what is the intrinsic uniqueness of the product? And out of that you get what the music style should be. And so, as a result of which I am now in the advertising hall of fame, I guess. But unfortunately that lesson is still not being followed as you look at television by many products -

Nowadays yes -

All they want to do is what is on the pop charts and who is the hottest current artist, which really has nothing at all to do with the product that you’re selling, it will get their attention but what will it do in terms of communicating what you are selling.

Ahead of you the K’ozzie Fest and a performance at the foot of the famous Australian mount named by Sir Paul Strzelecki - very, very important part of Polish heritage in Australia. Will you compose something special, something that you will take away from Australia?

Well yes, well I found – or someone else found and exposed to me the fact that Kosciuszko was not just a wonderful soldier and General, he also was a painter, but he also was a composer.

That’s right

He wrote two polonaises and a waltz and I took one of the polonaises and made an arrangement of it, that sort of contemporises it a little, sort of brings it up to Chopin – not up to rap. But it makes it a little bit more, a little bit more exciting as a polonaise and I will play that as part of my program. I also will be playing music by Scott Joplin, who was a black American at the end of the century, who was writing classical music but was not getting recognition for the fact that it was classical music. He did for the African-American rhythms what Chopin did for the Mazurka. The Mazurka was as you know, a Polish -

Folk dance, yeah

-folk dance, but he made it into great classical compositions; so did Joplin with what we call rags, or ragtime music. Yeah.

All the best of luck and it was pleasure having you, I can’t say in the studio, but at least having you over the phone and hearing your voice and I thank you for your time.

Thank you.

(Transcript by Felix Molski)