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Finding
His Inner
URGE
Kenny Werner’s Continuous Pursuit of Piano Mastery
By Thomas Staudter Photo by Jos Knaepen
On a warm June evening, a small crowd of clean-cut young
adults stood in front of the Manhattan jazz club Iridium taking
pictures. Dressed in identical red T-shirts that announced
their affiliation to an out-of-town church choir group, the men and
women took turns lining up in front of the modest marquee for a
quick snapshot as a curious club employee looked on. A sidewalk
sandwich board next to the front door announced that the Kenny
Werner Trio with special guest Toots Thielemans would be performing
two sets that night, and the tourists angled their cameras to ensure
that all the information from this jazz tableau was included.
Sitting a few feet away from the club
on a bench and watching the picture-taking
drill with some amusement was the
maestro himself, Werner. He walked
past the visitors, entirely unrecognized,
into a Chinese-Thai restaurant a few
doors down from the club.
Few jazz aficionados would let
Werner pass by without a quick greeting
or a kind thank you for his artistry and
illuminating insights on musicianship.
Since making a name for himself at the
piano in the Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra in
the mid-1980s, Werner has become one
of the most important figures in the jazz
world, acknowledged for his improvising
and composing abilities. He has led
several questing piano trios that have
helped redraw the general map of the
format’s range, and as an arranger/
accompanist Werner’s work with vocalists
such as Betty Buckley, Joyce, Judy
Niemack and Roseanna Vitro has
enlarged his reputation as a first-choice
collaborator and tuneful pathfinder.
Music aside, Werner said that more
often he is pegged and politely importuned
as the author of Effortless
Mastery: Liberating The Master
Musician Within, his 1996 treatise on
creative fulfillment and the role of the
artist in the world. “It is unique in the
realm of ‘how-to’ music books in that it
doesn’t deal with scales and chord progressions,”
said Matt Eve, president of
Jamey Aebersold Jazz, which publishes
Effortless Mastery. Eve notes that the
book is tremendously popular, selling
“tens of thousands” of copies over the
years “because it explores the reasons
why musicians play, and why they have
to play, while also showing how to shed
hindrances and apprehensions.”
For the pianist, music exists primarily
as a spiritual pursuit; he broadly addresses
the themes that are extant in his life
and art. “Whenever I play, I just want to
get to the inner core,” he said. “We live
in an increasingly culture-less society, in
which art is not important, but I notice
people do have an increasing need to
know the meaning of their lives. A while
back, I decided to focus on that hunger in
myself, and let the notes flow from there,
instead of worrying about art. When I
started playing music, it wasn’t because I
was thinking of becoming a jazz artist; it
was because I loved to improvise. I
didn’t grow up listening to records. I was
44 DOWNBEAT September 2008