"My philosophy," said Michel
Petrucciani, "is to have a really good time and never to let anything stop me
from doing what I want to do." Nothing unusual about that, one might think. But
since Petrucciani was an adult standing only three feet high and weighing 65
pounds, one might expect his ambitions to have been, so to speak, closer to the
ground. But, had he not aspired to achievements above his station, he might
have chosen to play something more convenient such as the harmonica rather than
the piano. Had he done so music would have missed one of the most powerful jazz
pianists of the last two decades.
One of the many remarkable things
about Petrucciani was not so much the fact that when he played he overcame his
handicaps, but that one was not aware of their existence. He could do anything
and more than most of the best players of the day.
He played across
the full span of the grand piano's keyboard and, despite his tiny legs, was
able to make full use of the instrument's pedals - the loud one was of
particular importance to him. He was one of the most passionate and extrovert
of soloists and the aggressive hurdling of his up-tempo work established an
exciting bond with his audience that pushed aside any thought that he might
deserve sympathy. He certainly never looked for it.
On the other hand,
one could not regard as normal the sight of the half- moon of face peeping over
the top of the instrument - which was all most audiences saw of him - and when
the music carried him away his head looked like nothing so much as an apple
bobbing in the ocean. He was a man who could have been expected to give in to
the illness that eventually killed him: and yet he had triumphed to stand head
and shoulders above the audiences who came to adore him for his playing. The
son of the Sicilian jazz guitarist Antoine Petrucciani and his French wife
Anne, Michel was born with Osteogenesis Imperfecta, more often known as glass
bones disease. During his life he suffered literally hundreds of bone
fractures. Raised in Montelimar in a jazz- filled home, he could hum Wes
Montgomery solos as soon as he could talk. He played a toy set of drums in the
family band, along with his brothers Phillipe, who was also a guitarist, and
Louis, who played the bass. Michel's ambition to become a pianist was fired
when he saw a televised Duke Ellington concert when he was four. As a result
his father bought him a toy piano but Michel was so frustrated by its
limitations that he smashed it with a hammer. "It was not the sound I had heard
on TV."
Antoine, who had a job at a nearby military base, brought home
a battered piano left behind by British soldiers. "They were guys who had got
drunk and poured beer in the keys, but the piano sounded real, " said Michel.
When he was seven and his playing had improved, his father bought a better
piano from a local doctor.
"When I was young," he said, "I thought the
keyboard looked like teeth. "It was as though it was laughing at me. You have
to be strong enough to make the piano feel little. That took a lot of work.
"The piano was strictly for classical studies - no jazz - for eight years.
Sure, I resisted the tuition, but it paid off. Absolutely. Studying orthodox
piano teaches discipline and develops technique. You learn to take your
instrument seriously. But I did get tired of contests and competitions. The
classical milieu was a little too bourgeois for my taste."
Petrucciani
once saw Arthur Rubenstein play. "His fingers moved so fast that it was like a
Bugs Bunny cartoon. I realised then that I'd never be as good as that, so I
stuck to being a jazz musician." When he was ten Petrucciani began to absorb
the piano playing of Bill Evans, who became the major influence on the first
part of his career. He also retained his love of the works of Bach, Debussy,
Ravel, Mozart and Bartok.
His first major professional appearance was
at the annual outdoor jazz festival in the French town of Cliouclat when he was
13. "That year's guest, trumpeter Clark Terry, needed a pianist for his set.
Someone sent for me and Clark thought that I was just a kid and that someone
must be playing a joke on him. So, kidding around, he picked up his horn and
played mock bullfight music. I said 'Let's play the blues.' After I'd played
for a minute he said 'Give me five!' and gave me a hug, and that was it."
Although he had to be carried on stage for his performances,
Petrucciani had powerful, long-fingered hands. When he travelled he took with
him the extender that his family had devised to enable him to work the foot
pedals.
Already playing jobs all over France and at European
festivals, he moved to Paris when he was 16 and in 1980 made his first album,
"Flash", with a trio that included his brother Louis. By now a star, he toured
France to play duets with the American alto saxophonist Lee Konitz and later
recorded with him.
Musically Paris was an ideal city for a young jazz
star. Petrucciani had problems there. "It was mostly to do with drugs and weird
women, but I was lucky and got out safe." He was 18 he left for New York. He
didn't have the cash to pay for his air ticket, but his father later made good
the bad cheque.
When he had earned enough money from working in New
York, Petrucciani left for California, where he met his New Mexican born wife
Erlinda. He also encountered Charles Lloyd, a tenor saxophonist who had been in
vogue during the Sixties when jazz and rock had first abutted. Lloyd had then
led a quartet that had included Keith Jarrett and Jack deJohnette, but had
stopped playing when his audiences decided that his band was more fashionable
than he was. Now, 15 years later, he was to come out of retirement.
Petrucciani went to Lloyd's house in Big Sur with a friend who was a drummer.
"I didn't even know who Charles Lloyd was. He asked me to play the piano and
decided he wanted to play with me."
After generating rave reviews up
and down the West Coast, they worked across the world together for the next two
years and their appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival, issued as an album,
won them the 1982 Prix d'Excellence. In 1983 the Los Angeles Times chose
Petrucciani as Jazz Man Of The Year and the Italian Government Cultural Office,
who presumably knew about such things, selected him as "Best European Jazz
Musician". The French, not to be outdone, awarded him the prestigious "Prix
Django Reinhardt". In 1984 his solo album "100 Hearts" achieved the French
equivalent of a Grammy award - the "Grand Prix du Disque - Prix Boris Vian."
The then-virtuoso trumpeter Freddie Hubbard invited the pianist to
join his All Star band and Petrucciani also worked with tenorists Joe Henderson
and Wayne Shorter and guitarists Jim Hall and John Abercrombie, all from the
front rank of American jazz musicians. In 1986 he recorded at Montreux with
Shorter and Hall.
From 1989 to 1992 Petrucciani worked with a quartet,
often adding a synthesizer player, Adam Holzman. Petrucciani had retained his
love of Duke Ellington, and his idea was that the synthesizer could bring the
sound of a big band, Ellington's, to his quartet. Latterly he had worked as a
soloist, moving beyond the Bill Evans influence to draw inspiration from the
work of Keith Jarrett and to display an abundance of technique and power to
match Oscar Peterson in his prime.
"I don't believe in geniuses," he
said. "I believe in hard work. Ever since I was a child I knew what I wanted to
do and worked for that. But I have so much to do. I've done albums and worked
with a lot of great musicians and I've still got time ahead of me to do so much
more. It's very difficult for me to talk about myself and what has happened; so
many different events. Eventually, when I get to be 75, I'll write a book on my
deathbed. "Sometimes I think someone upstairs saved me from being
ordinary."
Michel Petrucciani, pianist and composer; born Orange,
France 28 December 1962; married; died New York 5 January
1999.
JazzReview.com
