Judy Carmichael - Articles

Judy Carmichael photo The exuberant sounds of stride piano, with its stomping left hand and ornate right-hand melodies, developed in the late 1920s with performers like Fats Waller, James P. Johnson and Willie Smith, who was known as the Lion. The style was considered transitional, a link between ragtime and the later swing era, and with its formidable virtuosic demands, stride piano never fully caught on among modern-day jazz performers. Still, a handfull of contemporary advocates have been determined to raise stride's profile, including Judy Carmichael, who is at odds with the image of cigar-chomping men playing in clubs with shirt sleeves rolled up and a bottle close by.

"When I came to New York, everybody talked about the fact that I was a young middle-class blonde from California playing stride piano," said Ms. Carmichael, who was born in a Southern California suburb and came to New York in the early 1980s and settled in Sag Harbor in 1992. "Now hardly anyone mentions that."

In addition to performing, Ms. Carmichael has written two books on stride piano, produced a documentary film on stride, recorded player-piano rolls and authored numerous articles on jazz history and style. She has toured for the United States Information Agency in India, Portugal, Brazil, and Singapore, and in 1992 she became the first jazz musician sponsored by the United States government to tour China.

She also is the host of the public-radio program "Jazz Inspired," broadcast on more than 130 stations in North America, including WLIU in Southampton and WCWP in Brookville.

Ms. Carmichael has seen stride gain acceptance among younger pianists. "A lot of younger musicians are familiarizing themselves with the stride vocabulary, and they feel that it's part of being a complete pianist," she said. Among the younger generation who have incorporated stride into their playing are Peter Cincotti, Jason Moran and Michael Kaeshammer. All are under 30.

Dick Hyman is a jazz pianist and director of the 92nd Street Y's Jazz Piano at the Y series in New York City. "Stride is a very virtuosic style that's never been that popular," he said. "But Judy has a devotion to get at the roots of stride piano, and she's always been very persistent with it."

Ms. Carmichael's career growth paralleled that of early jazz itself. Studying classical piano in her youth, she developed an interest in ragtime when her grandfather offered $50 to the first of his grandchildren to master "Maple Leaf Rag." One of her first professional jobs was at Disneyland, where she played ragtime for five summers starting in her mid-20s at a restaurant serving hot dogs. There, she met Count Basie, who encouraged her to look deeper into jazz history and take up stride, with its vigorous technical demands.

"There is no other style that is so demanding with the left hand," Ms. Carmichael said. "A lot of people can practice a lot and get that down. But to make it swing and integrate all of those polyrhythms, that's really difficult. You have to have that knack for it."

There were other hurdles, too. To learn from the best musicians, Ms. Carmichael frequented jazz clubs, male-dominated preserves that were often in Los Angeles's tougher neighborhoods. "When I started it was very intimidating to go to a jazz club by yourself as a woman," she said. "I didn't feel embraced by the jazz community in that it was not a real friendly, welcoming place."

Basie advised her to go to New York. She did, and found the jazz clubs there more welcoming. "You could meet a musician - I could walk up to a Roy Eldridge, who was one of my heroes – and introduce yourself," she said.

Since moving to the East End, Ms. Carmichael has become increasingly active in the local arts community. This year she helped raise $35,000 to buy a Steinway piano for Pierson High School in Sag Harbor. She will soon begin overseeing music education activities for the Port Jeff Education and Arts Conservancy, a new community center in Port Jefferson, starting September 17 with a concert at the Sail Loft at Harbor Front Park.

The next day she will perform in a fundraising concert at the Sag Harbor American Hotel for Jazz Inspired, Inc., the educational arm of her radio show, which she makes available to colleges across the country.

"Jazz Inspired" is another step in Ms. Carmichael's quest to make jazz more accessible by drawing connections between creativity and everyday life.

"This show uses jazz as my metaphor, so I get disparate creative people to talk about their creative process," she said. "Maybe listeners don't know that jazz has this broad influence, and if they hear Robert Redford saying he consciously used a jazz model to create the Sundance Film Festival, they get all excited."

In addition to Mr. Redford, guests on her program have included the soprano Renee Fleming, discussing the connections between jazz and opera, and the architect Frank Gehry talking about how jazz has influenced his designs.

Still, Ms. Carmichael said she thought that the jazz field had not been welcoming enough to those who are not aficionados.

"I pride myself in making my concerts user-friendly," she said. "I want to make the concert seem like I'm playing in their living room. I don't think welcoming means a smoky club atmosphere with dishes crashing in the background.

"I'm fortunate because my audiences are generally happy people. They want to come to have fun. They don't want to come for melancholy. It's a lot more fun to play for happy people than it is to play for melancholy people."

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