Matt Ball went from practicing piano to practicing law. Then inspired by the boogie woogie pianists he
heard at a Detroit music festival, he went back to practicing piano in the rousing jazz style.
Ball, of Detroit, now makes his living as a pianist, lecturer and teacher with the goal of keeping the
romping jazz style genre alive and thriving.
He will perform Nov. 7 at 7:30 p.m. at the Pemberville Opera House as part of the "Live in the
House" series. Tickets are $10 and are available at
Beeker’s General Store or by calling Carol Bailey at (419) 287-4848.
Ball, 38, started playing piano when he was 4. His mother was a "church pianist" and her mother
was a pianist as well. Ball showed "an inclination" for music, he said, When he reached the
age of about 12, though, he decided he wanted to quit. He admits he was "not always ambitious at
routine practice." But his parents insisted he keep at it.
His love of piano "kicked back in when I had a chance to showcase it in front of other
students," Ball said. "I just discovered at a certain age that I’m pretty good at this."
Then his parents sent him to Interlochen Music Camp in western Michigan. There surrounded by other young
serious musicians, "I turned a corner," he said, and decided "I want to keep doing
this."
He attended Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., double majoring in history and piano performance. On
graduating he decided to go into law. He spent a few years skipping from firm to firm trying to find a
footing in the legal profession before finally deciding "I didn’t enjoy the practice of law."
Bob Seeley was one of those pianists he heard at the festival that inspired his return to music about
eight years ago. Seeley had learned boogie woogie from one of its masters and originators Meade Lux
Lewis.
The music, though it dates back to earlier in the century, became a craze in the early 1940s after Lewis,
Pete Johnson and Albert Ammons performed at the Spirituals to Swing extravaganza at Carnegie Hall in
1938.
The style is an outgrowth of the blues tradition, Ball said. "It’s a happy version of the
blues." It’s what the piano player accompanying a blues singer might perform when offered a chance
to play a solo, Ball explained.
"He’d amp up his tempo."
The style is marked by a driving eight-notes-to-the-bar left-hand patterns with blues based melodies
splashed over the top. The style grew out of ragtime and swing and looked forward to rock ‘n’ roll
pianists such as Jerry Lee Lewis. Boogie woogie is music for dancing, Ball explained.
Ball builds his concerts around the standards of the style, pieces like "Pinetop’s Boogie
Woogie." He puts his "own spin" on them but keeps them "close enough to the original
to be identifiable." He makes sure he mixes in pieces from the New Orleans and Chicago schools,
each of which has its own distinctive groove.
He also writes new boogie woogie compositions of his own. "It’s an opportunity to try to create a
style that has my own signature."
He
improvises some. "I use it as an escape hatch," he said. "It keeps it fresh." And if
he comes up with a particularly good extemporaneous turn of phrase, he’ll make it a permanent part of
the arrangement.
Besides music he also learned from Seeley and other veterans "how they make a lifestyle of it, how
to make a living out of it."
For Ball that means teaching as well as performing.
He teaches both adults and children. The adults tend to be attracted to the jazz style, while the
children’s lessons tend to be more traditional piano lessons. But he does include boogie woogie in
those. Young students "like anything has a lilt or pep to it."
He has published a couple books on the genre and makes presentations to other teachers on how to
incorporate boogie woogie into their lessons.
When performing, Ball markets himself to concert venues, rather than bars. "The reason I do that is
to brand it as art music as opposed to an entertainment music… This is a new place for it to go."
To be able to present the music he loves "is validating."
"It’s been quite a journey," he said, "to start from scratch to speak the language with
the proficiency I do today."
Blues at the opera
What: Boogie woogie piano concert as part of Live in the House series
Who: Matt Ball
When: Nov. 7 at 7:30 p.m.
Where: Pemberville Opera House
How much: $10. Tickets available at Beeker’s General Store or by calling (419) 287-4848
