Behind The Note Podcast

Today's guest is, pianist, Lynne Arriale. A devoted educator and Yamaha artist, Lynne Arriale is currently Associate Professor of Jazz Studies and Director of Small Ensembles at The University of North Florida in Jacksonville. She has served as a faculty member of the Jamey Aebersold Summer Jazz Workshops, the Centrum Port Townsend Jazz Workshop, the Thelonious Monk Institute in Aspen and numerous clinics and workshops worldwide, including the US, UK, Europe, Canada, Brazil and South Africa. She is a member and piano pedagogy representative of The Jazz Education Network and has adjudicated the Montreux Jazz Competition, American Pianists Association Fellowship Awards, The Kennedy Center’s Mary Lou Williams Competition and the Jacksonville Piano Competition. With jazz icon Toshiko Akiyoshi, she was a featured mentor at The Mary Lou Williams Emerging Artist Workshop at the Kennedy Center. Arriale’s affinity for music and specifically the piano was evident early on, but well outside a jazz context. Adopted as an infant, she grew up in Milwaukee and was given a plastic toy piano at age 3. Playing by ear, she soon had a repertoire of songs that she had learned from the radio and records, mostly from Broadway musicals. Throughout her school and college years, she studied classical music, earning a master’s degree before turning to jazz. “Discovering the unlimited creative potential and artistic freedom in jazz changed my life,” said Arriale. Later she learned that her biological mother was a jazz vocalist; perhaps there is something to heredity, given her reverence for songful melodies. Motema founder Jana Herzen refers to Lynne’s "singer’s-like" ability to connect with an audience… "Though she played the piano and not a sound came from her lips, I had the distinct impression I was listening to a singer." Arriale always sings when she is practicing and composing. "I have found that the key to expressive playing and truly spontaneous improvisation is singing," says Arriale." I focus on the melody regardless of where spontaneous improvisation takes me. I search for the 'heart' of the song, find what makes it special to me and use it as musical inspiration.It is very important to me that my music has a vocal quality and a heart connection. It’s a lifelong process to teach my fingers how to sing." “Lynne Arriale’s remarkable career is graced by a rare commitment to authenticity and vulnerability defined by careful craft and high artistic standards. It is precisely this willingness to remain so emotionally exposed that makes her performances so accessible to music lovers of all kinds” (All About Jazz). Press play, enjoy, then share.