2008-04-15 - Solo jazz piano interpretations of music from "Donkey Kong" and "Dig Dug"

I'm really not that interested in practicing. For the most part, I'd rather run through a song once or twice, then rush out in front of crowd and play it. Sink or swim, the performance always feels more spontaneous and fun that way. Practice too much, and it just sucks the life out of it.

I made an exception, however, for this show. I practiced and I practiced -- a few times a week for about three months -- quite possibly the most I've ever practiced for one performance. The kicker is the whole set only lasted about 12 minutes, a few of which consisted of my typically rambling song introductions.

The performance was called "Two Bits: Solo Jazz Piano Interpretations of Early 1980's Arcade Game Music." (Get it? Two bits -> 25 cents, if you missed that. I actually thought up the title first, then planned a show around it...) It consisted of only two selections -- again with the "two bits" -- one based on Donkey Kong, the other on Dig Dug.

I started out by learning some of the main themes, incidental music, and sound effects from each game, then I built arrangements around those. The songs start out more or less sounding like what you'd hear playing the games, then they meander into improv for a while, then I go back to the main themes to wrap them up.

This set was part of a bigger show, the Michael D. Wilson Symposium Arts Night (more affectionately -- or lazily -- referred to as "Arts Night") at the University of Maine Farmington. The overall event is a celebration of the arts on campus, so I tried to stir up something classy and intellectual. As I described it in the Symposium program:

These two pieces explore the possibilities of kitsch as the basis for jazz improvisation. The idea is to focus on a particular aspect of popular culture and recast it in a more artistic context, akin to Andy Warhol’s paintings of soup cans.

Here's how it all worked out:

1. Donkey Kong
   
   
   
   
2. Dig Dug
   
   
   

If you listen closely, you can hear snippets of several other songs tucked in there: Chim Chim Cheree, Take the "A" Train, Angel Eyes, The Simpsons theme song, Super Mario Brothers theme song, and even an original tune called Apocalypso, which I played a lot last year with my old band Excursus.

As if that's not enough, this was only one of two performances I gave on Arts Night. More details on the other show in my next post.